Keep Calm and STEAM Ahead

I’m proud to be mentoring Natasha Maria Gomes through UNESCO’s Open Education for a Better World project. One of the projects she’s leading reminds me why this work matters and why I got involved with OE4BW in the first place. Her work places drawing, music, and theatre at the heart of learning, not as enrichment, but as essential ways of knowing. These creative tools support engagement, build understanding, and offer learners multiple ways to express what they know. It’s a powerful example of how open education can center diverse voices, talents, and experiences. I’m honored to support this kind of work, even in a small way. This is her post from LinkedIn:  

It’s incredibly rewarding to see ideas from my doctoral research on textbooks come to life in practice. I’m thrilled to share the public release of an Open Educational Resource (OER) titled ‘Keep Calm and STEAM Ahead’, a Handbook on Social Emotional Learning (SEL) for educators.

This handbook is developed as part of the 2025 Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) program and is made available in multiple formats. It offers educators ideas, practical strategies, activity templates on integrating UNESCO MGIEP’s SEL framework with creative approaches like doodling, music, and dramatisation into everyday teaching across subjects.

I am deeply grateful to my mentor Geoff Cain, hub coordinator of the OE4BW program Ajita Deshmukh, Sushumna Rao Tadinada CEO of JustWrite Pressbooks, reviewers whose guidance and feedback shaped this work. In addition, I would like to also acknowledge the advice on accessible OER provided by my last year’s OE4BW mentor Jenni Hayman, EdD, that has guided the conceptualisation of my work. This handbook was adapted from an online course that I had the privilege of co-developing some years back with Ajita Deshmukh, Daisy Wadhwa, Ilavenil Karunakaran.

You can explore further details related to the handbook and next phase of this project here: https://lnkd.in/dDRz-ma6 and https://lnkd.in/dXtAmHWk