This is a past event
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Virtual

If you’re even a little bit confused and anxious about life right now, and wondering what your liberal arts degree will prepare you for, please join this presentation on adaptive creativity. Students in all disciplines, particularly those interested in promoting radical systemic change through joyful everyday work, are encouraged to attend. There will be plenty of time for conversation and questions.

Inda Schaenen '83 P'15, MEd, MFA, PhD, is a writer, journalist, professor, and certified English language arts teacher in St. Louis, Missouri. She’s the author of Speaking of Fourth Grade: What Listening to Kids Tells Us About School in America, four young adult novels, and The 7 O’Clock Bedtime, a parenting guide.

Raised in New York City and a St. Louis resident since 1991, Inda has taught in public, private, urban, and suburban schools, from second grade to graduate school. In 2013, Inda began serving in Normandy, the unaccredited school district that graduated Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer on August 9, 2014. In response to the educational chaos and incoherence that preceded and followed that moment, Inda founded Project Lab St. Louis, an education nonprofit based in her middle school classroom in Normandy.

Over the last five years, Project Lab St. Louis has engaged hundreds of students from different St. Louis communities in projects in the humanities, including Normandy Crosscurrents, a program of cross-community dialogue, Living Questions, a year-long curriculum of philosophical inquiry, and From Deer to Venison, an exploration of meat-eating and culinary arts. Project Lab St. Louis was recently recognized for inclusion and equity by FOCUS St. Louis in their 2019 “What’s Right with the Region” awards, and that same year, Inda received the Courageous Educator Award from St. Louis’ Educators for Social Justice.

An avid swimmer and pickleball player, Inda is married to Michael Dee (Amherst ’80), a classroom teacher since 1981. They have three children and recently welcomed their first grandchild. Inda plans to present from 8 to 8:30 pm, then take audience questions until 9:00 pm (while staying online until 9:15 to answer any individual student questions).

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Loeb Center
(413) 542-2265
Please call the college operator at 413-542-2000 or e-mail info@amherst.edu if you require contact info @amherst.edu