Mindfulness and Building Human Connection in Our Learning Communities

Interview with Cholee Gladney, Part 2 by Jess Yusko, LTC Student Partner in Learning and Teaching

This month’s newsletter will reach you as we are busy preparing for the Equity Symposium 2026 on April 15th, where we will be gathering as a learning community to promote connection, resilience, and meaningful change. The theme of this year’s symposium is Fires Rising: Igniting Resilient Movements. 

LTC staff and I are hosting a collaborative art mural activity incorporating evocative imagery of the fire horse, the symbol of this lunar year. Please save the date and try to stop by for this drop-in activity. Workshops will be held between 1-5pm, and the day kicks off at 10 am  with a session led by Mapuche Educator Silvia Calfuqueo Lefio and documentary filmmaker Kelly Baur. 

 As we are planning for and excited about the activities to be held during the Equity Symposium, this month seemed like an opportune time to share some highlights from my conversation with Associate Dean of Equity and Belonging, Cholee Gladney. 

Through this interview series, and my work here at the LTC, I have noticed  many community leaders working in the areas of social justice and relational equity also emphasize the personal practice of mindfulness (what I would describe as an embodied awareness of oneself in relation to others and our living world around us). I was curious to hear Cholee’s reasoning for why this common thread exists amongst community leaders and educators. I hoped to hear more about her personal background in this area and find out how these practices relate to equity and belonging work; and also how we might apply this to teaching and learning practices here at Evergreen.

This inquiry began with an activity Cholee and I participated in during a workshop with Dr. Letitia Nieto this fall. Dr. Nieto asked the participants to recollect and visualize a time when they felt connected to the natural world around them, grounded, and secure. My recollection was of the large red maple tree whose leaves withered each winter but came to life again each spring outside my bedroom window, and I observed this tree often as I did the Five Moving Forces qi gong exercise, learned in Professor Hirsh Diamant’s Reimagining the Body course. Cholee also recalled a time spent in deep connection and harmony with the natural world surrounding her. 

After participating in this small group session together with Dr. Nieto, I hoped to ask Cholee more about the ways this type of embodied awareness and mindfulness can assist us in deepening our relational equity with one another, and support the goals we have for creating communities which support a sense of real belonging. 

In case you are new to the topic of contemplative pedagogy, mindfulness in educational settings, or as a foundational practice for social justice organizing, I will provide you with the most concise definition possible and links to further reading. The Mindful Way Workbook (2014) says “Mindfulness is the awareness that emerges through paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to things as they are.”  

Jess: I am curious about the ways that you integrate mindfulness into your equity and belonging work, because this is something I carry into my art practice and also in the ways that I approach the work I do here at the Learning and Teaching Commons. So I was hoping we could start with that topic. 

Cholee: For me, mindfulness has been a real tool to cultivate a sense of presence so that I’m not in my head all the time. And I know that there’s a real spectrum about what’s going on and everyone’s head and how they come into the world. Some folks have a lot of anxiety. Some people don’t. 

What I was noticing early on, when I started my mindfulness journey back in the 90s, was that it really helped me in my relational presence with people; and just being right here.

I’m trained as a therapist; I knew that it was going to be really tough, because I’m sensitive. Most artists are, you know. And so I knew that I needed a strategy to be able to manage all those big feelings and emotions of clients and myself. So I used it really, in the beginning, more as self-care. 

But what I found is – that it’s really a tool for us. When we’re just trying to (like you were saying) be human together  – to really meet each other. 

We’re always going to have what we bring from our own experiences and sometimes that gets cloudy; but when I get more in my head, mindfulness provides a place to come back to where I can really be present and receive what someone is offering, just as they are.

In my mind, that’s the real work of equity work. Early on in my career, it was a lot about cultural competency. It was a lot about saying the right things and doing the right things so that you didn’t offend or harm someone. I think those things are still really important, but I think the focus for me now is on just us meeting each other as human beings.

I think that’s something that ALOK, who’s one of our speakers at the Equity Symposium a few years ago, said about themselves: “You don’t have to understand like me.” They said, ‘I don’t need you to understand what it means to be a trans person to be respectful and accepting of me.’ That [statement] really affected me because I think a lot of times in this work, we think we have to learn everything about every single identity in order to be this perfect ally (or that kind of thing). 

I think it comes back to: can we believe that we all deserve each other’s respect and kindness and openness? And I think mindfulness really helps, because it puts ourselves in the background a little bit, and the things that we’re worried about. It allows us to be more present and less focused on our own selves.

Jess: This could relate to hot moments in the classroom that we talk about in ed. development often. Some of the hardest things to deal with are conflicts with people, when you’re clashing, and they want you to see eye to eye with them. Letitia’s strategy of deep listening, then taking the backseat by saying at the end, “I don’t agree, but we can talk about it at another time if you’re interested.” It was just so powerful to me, to think about it that way. It was a transformative idea – that you don’t have to express your views. As advocates for justice we can sometimes think expressing the so-called right view is important, for the sake of justice. But often, expressing your views is not the most important thing. The most important thing is maintaining that connection. I think it relates to what you were just saying,increasing our knowledge isn’t always the goal. Sometimes it’s just being a decent human, relating to one another.

Cholee: Absolutely. Just cultivating a sense of awareness about what you are thinking in the moment and being able to forgive yourself for all the thoughts that come up too is huge and I think that’s really big in this kind of equity and belonging work, because I do think that we tend towards wanting to get it right (number one) and kind of berating ourselves and others (number two). I just don’t think that is helpful to the project, which is human connection. So I feel like one thing that’s helpful about mindfulness is that it does allow you to do some monitoring of your own thoughts and just label it and leave it.

Jess: I think you’re right. I agree – such a big step in the process is just that moment of noticing the judgment in your mind, and realizing you don’t have to agree with those thoughts. Also, like you said, having self-compassion – realizing you’re not a bad person, because it’s just this automatic sort of thing that your mind does, and then you move on from it. 

Cholee: So I love [the idea of] making use of each potential mistake. I love that, because I think we can function in a way that we’re just really trying not to mess up. And that’s not a good way to stay flexible and kind of fluid. You know, right? 

Jess: That fear of making mistakes can lead to more anxiety or create less expansion and prevent connection, I think. But acceptance of yourself, forgiveness of yourself, an allowance of making those mistakes will create what we want to see. 

Cholee: I think we want to do better, because we have good intentions and we care. So that’s also one of the reasons that we’re hard on ourselves. 

Jess: Yes, I agree. It’s so interesting talking with you now, having just  taken East/West Psychology Winter quarter, revisiting these familiar practices, makes me think about it in an integrative way, bringing it all together with the practice of art, my work in early childhood education and now in promoting equitable and inclusive teaching strategies at the LTC. I think that’s one of the great things about an interdisciplinary education at Evergreen. Students are continually thinking about what we are doing and how it relates with our work, our role in the community and activism work, etc. We become especially skilled at metacognitive processes and thinking about the ways in which this one thing you’re studying relates with other things – and how you can bring it together as a cohesive, integrated whole, which defines your own direction in life. 

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you on April 15th. Ignite your creativity and come make some fire-inspired art with us!