Goddard MFAW Spring 2021 Commencement Speech by Sherri L. Smith (Transcript) Hi Everybody! Welcome to commencement. Okay, let’s just acknowledge it’s been a really weird week. And a really weird year, and the year’s only just begun. I spent some time last weekend thinking about what I was going to say today. And then Tuesday […]
The sudden shift to remote instruction has caused a needed moment of critical interrogation in higher education. Colleges, universities, and the students that attend them are all making difficult choices about the Fall semester. At the heart of these decisions lies a question about the fundamental nature of education. Goddard College, a well-kept secret in the […]
I was like many Goddard students. I discovered this remarkable student-centered pathway in the 1990’s but did not enroll until 2006. It took that long to manifest Goddard in my life, but it was well worth the discovery. I was an artist, educator and social worker in the midwest growing my tribe of five beautiful […]
Dear Goddard Prospective Student, I am not going to tell you my story. I am going to take the things I have seen and heard over the last two years at Goddard and create your story. It’s just the two of us here on this page, so let’s not be humble and shy. Admit it […]
by Bernard Bull, president of Goddard College ((((ring)))) By the time that someone graduates from high school, there is a good chance that they have been through a multi-year Pavlovian experiment that consistently results in people learning to respond on command. ((((ring)))) Doing the simple math, if you attended a school that used bells between […]
In Episode Four in the Writer in the World podcast series faculty spotlight series, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto interviews fellow faculty member and award-winning playwright Rogelio Martinez who teaches dramatic writing on the Vermont campus. Martinez speaks about leaving Cuba: “a land where trust doesn’t come easily.” In May 1980, when he was nine years old, […]
In the third episode of Writer in the World Podcast, author and Goddard faculty Sherri L Smith talks about why writers should take time to express gratitude to trees and be prepared to listen. Smith teaches fiction, graphic novel, non-fiction, screenplays, and fantasy at the MFA in Writing program at Goddard College. Fellow faculty Rahna […]
by Julia Bouwsma As a poet who lives off-the-grid in the woods of Northern New England, my working practice has come to align with the seasons. In winter I hunker down and write, recalling my first winter in Maine when I hunched by the woodstove watching the snowdrifts swirl and amass at my kitchen window […]
“If you want to change someone’s mind, tell them a story.” – Dr. Craig Chalquist, PhD, depth psychologist, Pacifica Institute Dr. Craig Chalquist has created a course in how to use dreams, myths and deep storytelling to inspire positive change. He is also a master gardener, which adds an ecological element to the work–our well-being […]
I was in a master’s program in education when I felt a wave of wanting to be in spiritual practice. A gifted professor wove together Toni Morrison, Freud, the myth of Psyche and Cupid, and the professor’s own interviews with 9-13 year old girls. Voice, resonance, relationship, democracy. “The honesty of things is where they […]
