Spaces

Returning to Querencia

Querencia is a Spanish word, roughly meaning a place, a space, where one feels at home, where one feels belonging and strength. Spaces has a number of different meanings and applications in TEA’s work. In a practical sense, Spaces refers to the settings in which teachers do their teaching. TEA puts a premium on Action Learning as the most powerful tool for students to respond to the Climate Crisis. Unfortunately, the typical college classroom is a debilitatingly poor venue for Action Learning to thrive. So TEA works with faculty to transform teaching spaces that better return students to the earth with a sense of querencia. 

Spaces also refers to the natural environments that surround us and which we need to protect. These spaces also serve as natural teaching and learning environments. These spaces need to cross disciplines and settings to inform work on environmental communications, urban planning, regenerative forming, energy transition, labor studies. Notwithstanding the discipline, the Spaces should bring querencia to the earth for our students, so it is palpable why and where their studies reside.

Spaces also has a more figurative meaning for TEA. Teachers and students need the mental and emotional space of querencia to do their best work in responding to the climate crisis, and TEA supports faculty to navigate their institutions and academic cultures in order to build effective programs and initiatives.