{"id":1341,"date":"2025-01-27T12:31:42","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T18:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/?p=1341"},"modified":"2025-01-27T12:31:43","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T18:31:43","slug":"sacred-spaces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/sacred-spaces\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacred Spaces"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I recently sold my parents\u2019 house.&nbsp; They built it, and it had sheltered the Scott family (and only the Scott family) for over 60 years.&nbsp; A friend of mine referred to that house as a sacred space, and it got me thinking about sacred spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What are your sacred spaces?&nbsp; Is it a house? A mountaintop? A yoga studio, or a ballpark, or a church sanctuary, or a boat on the lake, or a backyard, or a golf course, or something else?&nbsp; I am a lifelong piano player, and one of my sacred spaces is sitting at my Steinway in my living room.&nbsp; I am a lifelong reader, and another one of my sacred spaces is my \u201creading chair\u201d in my living room.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSacred\u201d can mean \u201cregarded with reverence\u201d, or \u201creverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object\u201d, or \u201csecured against violation, infringement, etc.\u201d or \u201cproperly immune from violence\u201d.&nbsp; (Thank you Dictionary.com for these definitions.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For me, one of the most&nbsp; sacred spaces is the classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"512\" height=\"407\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/213\/2025\/01\/Picture-credit-Gabriel-Bertram-Bellinghausen-Public-domain-via-Wikimedia-Commons.jpg\" alt=\"Gabriel Bertram Bellinghausen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons\" class=\"wp-image-1342\" style=\"width:394px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/213\/2025\/01\/Picture-credit-Gabriel-Bertram-Bellinghausen-Public-domain-via-Wikimedia-Commons.jpg 512w, https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/213\/2025\/01\/Picture-credit-Gabriel-Bertram-Bellinghausen-Public-domain-via-Wikimedia-Commons-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\">Picture credit:&nbsp; Gabriel Bertram Bellinghausen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Classrooms are where we honor the act of learning.&nbsp; Classrooms should be protected from violation or infringement.&nbsp; Classrooms should be regarded with reverence.&nbsp; It is in a classroom that we challenge, contradict, debate, discuss, adapt, ponder, grow, laugh, question, pause, connect, listen, participate, interact, respond, contribute, present, experiment, succeed, and fail.&nbsp; It is in classrooms where I have grown as a student, as a faculty member, and as a person.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;I have deep reverence for the classroom and all that takes place there.&nbsp; I love the community college classroom in particular &#8211; it is a sacred&nbsp; place of diversity of age, race, ethnicity, backgrounds, lived experiences, points of view, skills, interests, and knowledge.&nbsp; What is more fun than a community college classroom?&nbsp; What has more promise than a community college classroom?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let us take a moment to pause and reflect on the sacredness of our classrooms.&nbsp; Let us continue to honor our mission and our sacred duty to support learning for all who walk through our doors.&nbsp; Let us treat the classroom with reverence and respect and remember that it is a sacred space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently sold my parents\u2019 house.&nbsp; They built it, and it had sheltered the Scott family (and only the Scott family) for over 60 years.&nbsp; A friend of mine referred to that house as a sacred space, and it got me thinking about sacred spaces. What are your sacred spaces?&nbsp; Is it a house? A [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}