Explore the Hearts and Minds Without Fear Compassionate Teaching Website, where your hearts and minds will touch the vast depths of possibility, creativity, hope, and love that lies within you; waiting to be sparked by your imagination.
This site digitally displays arts and aesthetic-based research by Drs. Barbara Clark and Joss French. Their research focuses on the arts and aesthetic education initiatives in local schools with preservice teachers in elementary education, in local state community churches, and in international communities on the Aran Islands, Galway Ireland. In order to address our collective local, national, and global community issues, Hearts and Minds Without Fear integrates the arts and aesthetics in a unique and inspirational format in which thematic topics are addressed and supported by a cutting-edge model that prioritizes human connection, kindness, innovation, voice and action through the arts.
Teachers and community members who have a compassionate vision for their future classrooms and communities that promotes justice by building upon individual children’s and adult’s strengths and talents will learn to accelerate transformational thinking and action. The infusion of arts and justice into our daily mindset and actions as we walk through this world, creates limitless possibility, breaks down racism to promote empathy, and renews hope for a socially just and ecologically sustainable world community. Please contact us if you would like a program in your school or community of all types. Drs. Clark and French can be reached at clarkb@ccsu.edu and frenchjaj@ccsu.edu.
IMPORTANT NOTE: To all teachers, community, and organization leaders: See In Action tab to learn how Hearts and Minds Without Fear will inspire you to embrace imaginative possibilities and see the invisible in the time of Covid 19. This arts-based aesthetic paradigm will transform your teaching either in school or online.
“This beautiful narrative seems to suggest that if we but awaken to the presence of God within us, if we learn to live and to see at a deeper level, if we live in basic trust rather than fear, then we can withstand even the most frightening storms.” Reflection on Mathew 8: 23-27, Bishop Robert Barron, June 30, 2020
A Compassionate Community to End Homelessness, Gaffney Elementary School, New Britain, CT, 2009.