Nun Science Leadership – Spring Meeting

(March 2 to 7, 2020)

Tanya Baker from the National Writing Project led the one week meeting with 31 nuns representing 5 different nunneries. The nuns participated in activities that furthered their nascent leadership projects. These projects focused around developing and launching a new space dedicated to science at their nunnery. The nuns shared progress they made from meeting with administrators in the previous months, and initial purchases they made for these spaces. Writing activities, like original articles on why nuns should study science, developed leadership thinking. Buddhist lessons focused on impermanence and interdependence and each teaching pair tried a different way of teaching that they identified, such as through lecture, drama, story-telling, questioning of students. Nuns expanded and practiced their science lessons, using ‘backward lesson design’ templates to revisit their first science lessons from the Fall.