Mary Lee Webeck, Debora Wisneski, Ferial Pearson

Why Gratitude?

In 2017, heartbroken and eyeballs deep in despair, I started searching for things for which to be grateful. I asked myself the question asked by poet Katie Farris

“Why write love poetry in a burning world? To train myself, in the midst of a burning world, to offer poems of love to a burning world.”

I reached out to people who — in the way in which they live — write love poems to our burning world. I cast my net far and wide amongst my heroes — those I knew personally and those who teach us all by their example. I invited artists, philosophers, psychologists, politicians, professors, yogis, writers, clergy, and others into a dialogue about gratitude. I am deeply grateful to those who said yes. Read more about my gratitude project methodology here.

Mary Lee Webeck

I met Mary Lee as a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin. Her wisdom and guidance in my dissertation process provided clarity and shape to my philosophical questions. Her affirmation of my belief that, as Maxine Greene suggests, imagination makes empathy possible fueled/fuels my fire. 

Dr. Mary Lee Webeck is a educator at heart. As Director of Education at Holocaust Museum Houston and Director of the Museum’s Warren Fellowship for Future Teachers, she developed content and pedagogy necessary to teach about the Holocaust and other genocides. While at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas in Austin, where we met, she taught a Signature Course for freshman students on the topic of genocide. 
Dr. Webeck received an Academic Innovation Award from the RKG Center for her course, “Philanthropy and Education.” Previously, Dr. Webeck was adjunct assistant professor for the Curriculum and Instruction Department at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. When she was a teacher at Klondike Elementary School in West Lafayette, Dr. Webeck’s multi-age fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms became a district model. She co-developed the school’s intermediate multi-age curriculum and created a social studies unit called “We the People,” in which students researched and debated legal issues with help from practicing attorneys. She replaced traditional parent-teacher conferences with student-led conferences, a practice adopted by other teachers. Always active in philanthropy, Dr. Webeck mounted a significant fundraising campaign to benefit a student who was stricken with an inoperable brain tumor, and was in need of experimental treatment. Dr. Webeck is a National Board Certified teacher.

Read entire interview here.

Debora Wisneski

Deb is a dear friend. Our friendship started as graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin. Her commitment to the well-being of children, building a world that understands and supports play in all is beauty and power, and teaching teachers how to put play front in center in their classrooms. 

Debora B. Wisneski, PhD, is an associate professor and the John T. Langan Professor in Early Childhood Education in the Teacher Education Department at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. She is the past president of the Association for Childhood Education International. She has taught for over twenty years at the preschool, kindergarten, and higher education levels. Wisneski earned her BSEd and MEd in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in early childhood education at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and earned her doctorate at the University of Texas-Austin in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in early childhood education. She has several publications in the area of play and early childhood education scholarship.

Wisneski loves spending time bike riding, playing games, hosting dinner parties and gardening with her family. She is grateful for her family and friends who support her, listen to her, care for her, forgive her, and laugh with her. “Baba Nam Kevalam (The Beloved–love- is all around.)

Read the entire interview here.

Dr. Ferial Pearson

A friend on the faculty a the University of Nebraska at Omaha, who I had talked with, suggested I speak with Dr. Ferial Pearson. Dr. Pearson, also UNO faculty, had written a book about the program she created, the Secret Kindness Agents. More information about the Secret Kindness Agents can be found at TEDxOmaha and Hallmark Channel. Read more about Dr. Pearson here. Our conversation gets to the heart of Secret Kindness Agents, her life and work, and her example of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Though this conversation took place many years ago, Dr. Pearson continues to make this world a kinder, more just place.

Read the entire interview here.

Read the gratitude conversation as published on Grateful Living.