We are delighted to welcome Mitchell Conway onto the Merlin Team. Mitchell & his fiancé Rachel relocated to Helena, MT earlier this year! We are so glad they did and grateful to Sara Casey Taleff & Christopher Taleff for connecting us! Mitchell is a branch facilitator/educator at Cottonwood ALC and serves on the education committee for The Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization. He’ll be adding an additional “hat to his collection” by joining our crew here at Merlin CCC as a Community Philosopher & our Youth Programs Advisor.
A student of philosophy, a theater maker, and a teacher who cares ardently about empowering young learners, his work has often been an interweaving of education, story, and inquiry.
At the BIRD Theatre in Tottori, Japan, among other productions, he collaborated with Korean group TUIDA to create The Poetry Class about the colonial period and Pacific war; he also directed students at Kei Ai High School in Romeo & Juliet. Using applied theater, he performed with Village Playback Theatre creating improvisations from audience members’ personal stories, and for a three-month residency he taught embodied methods of community dialogue through the Colombo Americano in Medellin, Colombia. He has also taught theater to elementary school students at 82nd St. Academics & middle school students at Summer Institute for the Gifted.
For a year, Mitchell taught at the English Immersion Program in Umphium Mai refugee camp on the Thailand-Myanmar border using a curriculum based in literature and critical thinking. With the New York Foundling at Queens College, he supervised the academic component of The Dorm Project, a program supporting youth in foster care through college.
Mitchell has a Bachelor’s degree in Theater from Skidmore College and a Master’s degree in Philosophy & Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Mitch has recently presented at the North Eastern Philosophy of Education Society (NEPES) and Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO) conferences. He also relishes walking in the forest.
Mitchell will be helping to facilitate & design several of our philosophy in the community programs, including programs for youth. He can be reached at [email protected].
