My workshop at unSCHOOLING OPRESSION conference

I am sooo excited about the upcoming unSCHOOLING OPRESSION conference on November 5-10. The summary reads:

unSchooling Oppression is both a critical examination of the various forms of oppression within traditional schooling models and a hopeful exploration of liberating educational alternatives.Six evening presentations will feature speakers on a broad range of topics, each concluding with a period for questions and discussion. Subjects shall include the historical roots and purposes of traditional schooling; power, authority and oppression; institutional violence; systemic racism; freedom and deschooling; alternative models for learning; and much more. The speakers will be traveling to Ottawa from around Canada and the USA The conference will also include a series of daytime workshops organized by members of the university community and local organizations on various issues that they consider relevant to the themes of education as oppression, and education as liberation. The conference will conclude with a caucus, wherein conference attendees will have the opportunity to brainstorm together a way forward in applying some of the ideas presented during the conference. Our goal, as conference organizers, is for this event to catalyze a new movement of projects and campaigns here in Ottawa to directly address the issues presented. We hope you can be a part of this.

For more info, see their blog and Facebook event. I will be giving a workshop on Wednesday, the details:

Healing Oppression with the Circus Arts
a peaceful and creative approach to physical education
Wednesday November 7th
1:30-3pm @ U of O's Institute for Women’s Studies (143 Séraphin-Marion), room 205

A workshop on the value of the circus arts as a non-authoritarian, non-violent, self-directed, and creative form of physical education. First I'll tell you the story of how and why I got into the circus arts. Then I'll talk about why we should challenge sports as the predominant and sometimes only model for physical education in schools. Then, I'll share some of the benefits of the circus arts, and lastly, I'll give a little interactive demonstration where participants can learn how to juggle,play baton, and spin poi.

This topic is very important to me, and in fact, sharing physical creativity is how I intend to make a living eventually. I'm applying for the YMCA's youth entrepreneurship program to realize this intention (whoo-hoo, I could get paid a decent wage to realize my dream of getting paid to play). Because this venture would be a sole proprietorship, I don't feel like staring a business is against my political views because profit only comes into play when you start making money off of other people's labour. Maybe one day my project will outgrow myself, and at that time I could help start an edutainment co-operative, but first thing's first...

Considering this, I've decided to do some in-depth research on the topic. I have bookmarked the links in my unschooltalk del.icio.us tag, so for more background info, check it out.