A Brief Biography

Dr. Virginia Dearani is the Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Thomas College in Waterville, ME. She has her Doctorate in Literacy/Curriculum Design at University of Maine, Orono.  As a multi-dimensional woman, she has learned to navigate the world of teaching and learning with a perspective of pluralism, honoring the "both/and" in all her relations. 

Throughout the past 25+ years, Virginia has centered her life’s work in the areas of Whole Teacher/Whole Child; Peace-Healing Education; and Cross-Cultural Pedagogy for children 3 years through adulthood.  She defines her teaching and learning approach as Embodied Wholeness and is an Interdisciplinary Curriculum Designer for Early Childhood through 8th-grade classrooms.   Her research interests and areas of expertise are in the development of the “Whole Teacher” to teach to the “Whole Child,” acknowledging the education field’s cross-discipline with psychology, philosophy, history, theology, and women’s studies.  She has developed a teaching methodology focused on embodied wholeness called “Roots & Fruits,” and has spent many years implementing this with children and practicing teachers. Her doctoral studies in literacy centered on narrative and arts-based research, designing curricula to deepen this methodology for not only educators, but also other professional communities including, i.e. social services, healthcare, families, etc.                                                                                                                                

Prior to teaching at Thomas College, Virginia taught Diversity and Social Justice topics, as well as curriculum design courses, within the Early Childhood/Elementary Education programs at a variety of colleges/institutions, including the University of Maine in Farmington, Central Maine Community College, Southern Maine Community College and Maine Roads to Quality Initiative at USM.  She has traveled Statewide, Nationally, and Internationally training educators and administrators on topics of innovative education curriculum design, social comprehension in the classroom, mindfulness and healing pedagogy in education, and the complexity of identity and embodied social justice teaching within the system of education.
 
Her 20+ professional years have been a balance of both teaching and leading within educational institutions, while also working on the ground doing grassroots community education and organizing through the fields of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and International Violence.  She took my research studies of feminism, race and gender identity, and the intersectionality of oppression and applied it directly into the field of education, receiving a MA in Education, with a concentration in Partnership, and ended with her Doctorate in Literacy. She has worked as a Crisis Advocate Trainer, Violence Prevention School Educator, and was the Founder/Chief Executive Officer of an educational nonprofit called One Tree Center, whose mission was to promote peace, pluralism, and partnership starting with America’s youngest children. 

One Tree Center’s programs, specifically the Roots & Fruits Program, received Statewide recognition, as she worked with the Department of Education as their Cultural Responsive Educator. She provided a critical lens on issues of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and other aspects of difference and its impact on children within the classroom.  She also supported the designers of the Statewide MELDS for early childhood classrooms, providing a critical lens in the areas of culturally responsive curriculum and assessment.  As an Education leader in Maine, She partnered with the NAACP, coordinating an annual children’s program across Cumberland County for MLK Day.  She currently continues her service within her local and statewide community, serving on Lewiston/Auburn’s City Spirit Task Force, whose mission is to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion across the twin cities’ social and political systems; as well as on the board of directors for Maine's Association for the Education of Young Children. 

In addition to her teaching and leading, she has been actively engaged in interdisciplinary research across the fields of education, psychology, philosophy, and women’s studies.  Expanding upon the work of bell hooks, Karen Murris, Paulo Freire, Rhonda Magee, Peter Levine, Bree Picower, Sherri Mitchell, Robert Atkinson, and many others; her research has focused on this topic of Whole Identity, integrating one’s historical and ancestral narratives and the concept of place identity on one’s Whole Identity Development.  She has examined the power of language in how she defines the term, Wholeness, as it relates to the topic of Whole Child in the field of education, raising the veil on the aspects of one’s identity made invisible within America’s public school system.  She has activated a Post-Humanist perspective on the term, Whole Child, and has refined her Roots & Fruits methodology to integrate this philosophical view of wholeness, where nature and humans are one, woven by creation into one fabric of life. She is most interested in the practice of teaching as healing, professed by Thich Nhat Hanh and has written papers on the topics of Whole Teacher Identity and Teacher as Healer, presenting them at local and national conferences. She has published in the Bank Street Journal of Education and has spoken on a variety of podcasts discussing the intersectionality of teaching, wholeness and healing in our world today.  

In 2014, she was chosen to be a member of the Phi Class of Leadership Maine, a Leadership Institute of the Maine Development Foundation to collaborate with Statewide Leaders across many disciplines: Education, Business, Healthcare, Criminal Justice and Statewide Politics to address critical collective problems currently facing Maine Residents.  These experiences provided her with significant leadership training as well as opportunities to interact across systems to problem solve on vital issues, including limited literacy and math skills based on Maine’s third-grade test scores, climate change, equity in education, workforce demands, and refugee resettlement. 

Virginia is a passionate teacher, researcher, mother and husband who resides in Auburn, ME with her two boys, partner, and pup named Shadow.