About Abby
As teachers, our potential for healing or harming is great. Imagine what schools and workplaces could be if we interacted from a place of embodied liberation.
Hello.
My mission is to transform the culture of schools and other institutions by building, strengthening, and repairing relationships using restorative practices and somatic experiencing.
My Approach
Why are so many educators exhausted by Friday? Why do we stagger to winter break and utterly collapse at the end of the year? These are the impacts of an unsustainable system.
To change the educational landscape, we start by changing our internal landscapes. We must learn to internalize the framework of restorative justice in education by being in community to revitalize systems together and in the context of place.
I combine the most powerful forces I’ve encountered:
The millennia-brewed teachings of restorative justice
Neuroscience research validating the body’s somatic wisdom and how to cultivate it
Practices that support our connection to the land
And the magical elixir of poetry
I foster youth leadership and healing and lean into the wisdom of older adults as we relearn to trust ourselves and our young.
My approach is compatible with the Inner Development Goals (IDGs), generated to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which help us humanize K-12 education.
“Abby brings a centered and joyful energy to everything to which she gives her attention. ”
“The best way I can describe time with Abby is like taking a walk in the deep woods for the day and experiencing the awe of discovery of the lush external and internal life that is ever present and sometimes goes unnoticed.”
Abby’s Bio
Abby Karos is an educational changemaker and entrepreneur. She has founded two education-impact businesses:
Compass Centre for Self-Directed Learning, a learning centre for teens that was a member of the Liberated Learners network.
And Education Liberation, a consultancy rooted in global Indigenous restorative justice beliefs and practices.
The latter is designed for educational mavericks and changemakers to lay the groundwork for system transformation, starting from within ourselves. Abby has decades of experience working both within and adjacent to school settings. Her training includes: Non-Violent Communication (NVC), Healing-Centred Education, embodied racial healing work, Restorative and Transformative Justice, Ember Circle and Ember Council coaching program, and Roadmap to Liberation. She holds a Master’s in Educational Philosophy, which explored the role of authenticity and interconnectedness in adult learners.
“What mosaic do I hold? What’s the piece that is mine? How can I hold it up in the name of community?”
— Terry Tempest-Williams