KoreaMaria Podcast Gwangju: September 2025

🍁 KoreaMaria Tea Time Soft Launch: Fall 2025 Mini Series 🫖

“Threshold Sessions: A Quiet Professional Development Series for Educators and Wanderers”
Fall 2025 – Gatherings for Reflection, Resistance, and Reimagining

A gentle 3-part series for educators, artists, thinkers, and wanderers. These sessions blend a personal self-guided “artist date,” a quiet online check-in, and a shared reflection space.

No performance. No pressure. Just warm conversation, quiet creativity, and collective care.

🫱🏽‍🫲🏿 Who’s Welcome

Educators, wanderers, multilingual learners, and thoughtful people curious about teaching, healing, and justice.
No homework. No hierarchy. Just curiosity, care, and conversation.

🎴 Format (3 Days Across 3 Weeks)

Meet in Person – Artist Date

Find the selected readings and reflection prompts [here]
Gwangju Gathering: Saturday, 2–4pm

Online Check-In

Wednesday, 8–9pm via Google Meet
Gentle grounding, shared reflections; casual and cozy, no slides or lectures

Reflect

Share a reflection (writing, photo, voice memo, sketch, collage) on a shared Padlet
Respond to others only if moved

🫱🏽‍🫲🏼 Community Agreement

Honesty, imperfection, and questions are welcome
No experts, gurus, or performative knowledge
No fixing, correcting, or creeping
All languages are welcome; interpretation is collective
Listen with care, speak with consent, rest when needed

🌿 September Theme: Listening to the Margins

A re-centering of voices and stories often sidelined in EFL, education, and language policy.
Come for one gathering or all three:

📍 Saturday, Sept 20, 2–4pm – Yangrimdong

Community café gathering along the Gwangcheon River: Yangrimdong, Cafe 1890, at 10yground (an old kindegarten turned community center)
Optional: visit YWCA Museum or many of the other Yangrimdong museums

💻 Wednesday, Sept 24, 8–9pm – Google Meet

International connections & journaling
Google Meet link

🌐 Sunday, Sept 28 – Community Padlet

Share reflections and creative artifacts
Padlet link

🌿 Session Flow & Seed Texts

1. Begin: Audre Lorde – Listening to Silences

“What I most regretted were my silences.”
“Your silence will not protect you.”
“It is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.”

Why: Silence shapes classrooms, policies, and lives.

Embodiment: Sip tea as you listen inward.

Reflection Prompts:

What silence are you ready to name or explore?
What story does EFL still need from you?

2. Explore: Kevin Kumashiro – Unlearning & Discomfort

“Learning involves not only knowledge acquisition, but unlearning as well… Teaching is not about mastering content or managing classrooms. It is about engaging contradictions, navigating uncertainty, and inviting transformation.”

Why: Rethink “common sense,” notice resistances, and embrace the beginner’s mindset.

Embodiment: Surround yourself with the discomfort of silence.

Reflection Prompts:

What assumptions about teaching or learning might you unlearn?
Where does discomfort signal transformation?

3. Echo & Close: Shin Kyung-sook – The Harmonium

Seed Reflection: “The Place Where the Harmonium Was”

Memory resounds in objects and silences: a blind calf, a rural childhood, a forgotten affair.
Shin’s prose reminds us of echoes that linger, half-said, half-remembered.

Embodiment: Harmonium music link

Reflection Prompts:

What silent harmonium lives inside your teaching or learning?
What untended spaces remain—moments, relationships, or stories?
How might you listen to those echoes (sketching, journaling, walking, gathering leaves)?