Haiku, Healing, and Wholeness online Fall21

Standard fee: $150
Supported fee: $100
(Supported fee for those with financial need. Use coupon code Fee100 when registering.)

We would like to invite you to gather and be present with one another in community. With grounding in mindfulness practice, guided by Carmen Alonso, and poetry/haiku written by Rudy Bankston, we will reflect, write, meditate and co-create, exploring themes that range from woundedness to healing to joy. Please join us in taking a healing pause and holding space together.

Instructors: Carmen Alonso, PhD; Rudy Bankston

Carmen Alonso, PhD is a licensed psychologist who has been teaching mindfulness meditation classes for 18 years. She has taught mindfulness-based interventions to patients with depression and anxiety, veterans, Spanish-speaking populations, medical residents, and police officers. Currently, her primary focus is teaching mindfulness and other contemplative practices to incarcerated men and women. Carmen has practiced the martial art of Tae Kwon Do for over 30 years.

Roderick “Rudy” Bankston is a committed educator, Restorative Justice practitioner, and writer. His powerful story describes his experience as a survivor of the school-to-prison pipeline and surfaces and explores intersecting themes that include identity, equity, justice, trauma and resiliency.

After gaining his freedom in 2015, Rudy began working for the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD); first serving as a Peace Room Liaison at Memorial High School. He added a second position guiding students’ learning and growth within ‘Restore’, the district’s expulsion abeyance program. The following school year, he transitioned into a Central Office position as a Restorative Justice Coach to support engagement of Restorative Justice across all levels of the organization. He left MMSD in August 2019 and continues his work engaging Restorative Justice as a founding member of Small Fire, LLC. and founder of i Am We Classics, i am We Coaching and Mentoring and i am We Global Village.

Rudy has served as an adjunct professor at Edgewood College and currently is a consultant with the National Equity Project and various school districts, serves on the advisory board for the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice (NACRI), and is a member of the Black Educators Network.

Rudy’s published works include a novel, ‘Shed So Many Tears,’ a collection of Haiku, ‘Snippets of Soul in Seventeen Syllables,’ and a book of poetry, ‘Buried Alive.’