Being Human

9 week adventure: Thursday January 29-March 19th, 2026 from 5:00PM-6:30PM CST

SHTL Harvest Monday March 23, 2026

Transforming Hearts in a Broken and Blessed World
Educating towards empowerment to be wholly human in sacred creation
A curriculum for today’s times using popular education methodology
The call to become more human invites us to decolonize our hearts. 
This will enable us to see how intimately interconnected we are with Mother Earth and all life, 
regardless of our place, time and identity. 
Justice in the sense of right relationships calls us to move from an appreciation of all creation to the active protection and promotion of the well-being of all creation. 
 This makes us responsible and accountable together for transforming the world.  Otro Mundo es Posible.

The content of this program is based on Paulo Freire’s Popular Education, the Society of the Sacred Heart’s principles, and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures curriculum. Our methodologies are experiential and include critical thinking through questioning, reading, writing, media viewing, group dialog, group art/performance and group interaction and community building. This course supports an experiential approach to learning within a framework of enabling consciousness personally, awareness of systemic influences on oneself and one’s local reality and the different experiences of “oppressor” and “oppressed” within a world of Modernity (human culture now) that is destructive of all life on Mother Earth. The course creates a container for the students to expand their worldview and deal with the discomfort of the long-term, difficult effort to decolonize their hearts and bring forth the work to liberate all life from oppression and destruction. Spiritual principles are explored within the program as a foundational practice of education and liberation. 

Program online:
Eight weeks covering four sessions/topics 
Two 1.5 hour sessions per week and one hour of preparatory homework per week. 

BEING HUMAN Sessions

1. Self Identity- how we define ourselves Exploring our humanity, humanness and kinship with all life. We are embodied persons, sexual beings.
2. Societal and structural definitions and limitations to being human Considering our own identities and how we are part of our society and in social relationships.
3. Unlearning “Othering” Realizing the construct of “Othering” affects us in all aspects of ourselves and our position in social and political structures. 
4. Transforming political structures and social relationships to become more humane Exploring our beliefs in transformational change and our agency to create a better world of care, compassion and well-being. 

Session One: Self Identity- how we define ourselves
Reflect on how we understand ourselves and which elements have contributed to our growing understanding of self-identity. 

How do we identify ourselves-what influences, limitations and boundaries affect our self-perception? What is a human being? How do we fit into our cultural environment and spiritual lineage?  

Session Two: Societal and structural definitions and limitations to being human
Reflect on how societal norms and structures have helped or hindered us in our journey to wholeness and freedom. 

What societal and structural paradigms limit you as a human being? How do you fit into your local social constructs, considering your own self-identity? What are the essential influences on how individuals, groups, and nations define their collective identities.

Session Three: Unlearning “Othering”
Reflect on the sacredness of all life. Categorizing people as “other” has been used in the past and the present as the basis for segregation, apartheid, and genocide.  

How do you change your consciousness to enable a holistic, caring and compassionate view of others? Do you come from a religious tradition that perpetrated harm on “Others”? If so, how do you lament and repent because of it?

Session Four: Transforming political structures and social relationships to become more humane
Transformation in family, work, political, societal and religious fields: to what and how? Empowering individuals, local communities and global structures to enable the survival of the world. 

Reflect on possible strategies to work towards social transformation that is marked by inclusion, equality, and participation.

Pillars or Principles:

Spirituality

• Embody these values in our own journey, personally and collectively, towards wholeness.
• Seek reconciliation and healing.
• Lament and grieve all that we must let go. 
• Through prayer in its many forms and discernment, to open. ourselves to inner transformation which will lead us to joy, wonder and awe.

 Popular Education

• Learn to see the bigger picture of your community.
• Collaborate with others for the good of the whole.
• Together we are more than the sum of our parts.
• Transcend the knowledge and problem-solving culture through critical thinking of your own concrete reality by learning active, participatory learning styles.

Decolonization

• Decenter human superiority and work in rhythm with land and earth. 
• Have compassion for yourself and for all life. 
• Live from a heart level which liberates our intuition and imagination. 
• Have patience because it is a long process. 
• Build stamina to deal with this hard work. 

Power

• Call forth and awaken in each student their own power, thus sparking their recognition and capability to develop essential critical thinking skills.
• Awaken in each one of the participants the need for popular organization as a political mechanism for social transformation and decolonization of thought.
• Importance of ancestral knowledge prior to 1492 for the independence and sovereignty of the countries of the global south. 

Methodology:

• Critical thinking questions- personal and local and spiritual reality
• Participatory, interactive and experiential learning online
• Circles such as communities of practice, learning communities, networks, etc.
• Arts and social presencing and social theater
• Info graphs, pptx presentations, social cartography and scribes, force field analysis
• Writing: Journaling, poetry, ethnoautobiography
• Film and videos