Education

By day, I pilot and prototype interdisciplinary global health curricula at Harvard. However, facilitation, youth work, and art infuses all aspects of my life. Take peek at some of the courses, workshops, and programs I’ve been a part of over the last several years.

Wellness Mentorship Program

Coordinator & Advisor

In Chinmaya Mission’s Wellness Mentorship Program, youth (13–28) are matched one-on-one with a carefully selected mentor (29–45). Through a semi-structured program involving virtual hangouts and a bimonthly workshops, youth and their mentors explore a whole range of topics meaningful to their everyday lives. The program is founded on open, nonjudgmental support, guided by Vedantik spiritual principles of compassionate care. Designed in response to pandemic isolation, our program has connected more than 120 mentors and mentees thus far.

Collaging Our Feelings!

Facilitator

Digital collage allows us to make magic from the mundane. And it’s a gorgeous medium for making our thinking visible, too! In this workshop, a part of the Harvard Graduate School of Education course Designing for Learning by Creating, we will walk through some simple (and free) digital tools for finding, editing, and layering images before collaging our feelings. Permission to laugh/cry as needed.

Designing for Learning by Creating

Teaching Fellow (2018. 2020)

How do we design physical and virtual learning environments that center the curiosity and agency of our students? How can we practice learning by doing? These are just a few of the questions explored in Professor Karen Brennan’s flagship course on constructionism, “Designing for Learning by Creating.” In 2018 and 2020, I had the delight of facilitating a learning community for graduate students as they embarked on their own creative learning projects in the course.

South Asian Sex Ed Salon (SASS)

Co-facilitator with Sukriti Dabral

A Boston-based workshop series and space for South Asian Americans to unpack sexuality, relationships, and everything in-between. Curated in 2019, the series connected the dots and examined the fissures across diasporic identity, personal histories, and community through facilitated dialogue and interactive activities.

Imagination as a Research Tool

Co-facilitator with payal kumar at the 2018 Allied Media Conference

Imagination is a radical methodology that helps us interpret the data points of individual and collective experiences. This workshop explores the untapped potential of imagination as a research tool that surfaces unexpected insights. Through playful exploration, we will study “artifacts” from a liberated future to unearth truths about the present moment and visualize transformative possibilities for our movements. Participants will leave with a zine on using imagination in revolutionary inquiry.

Podcasts for Re-Centering Narratives

Panelist at the 2017 Allied Media Conference alongside Tanzila Ahmed

How do you use digital tools to re-center narratives about your community towards resistance? Podcasts are the latest storytelling tool used to shift hearts and minds. It is imperative that communities of color use counter-narratives to not only build personal identity power, but also shift the narratives of mainstream media. This panel will walk through steps on how to create digital storytelling podcasts as an artistic tool of resistance.

© nina bhattacharya