Acosta Institute

S2 Ep 3: Wounded Healing with Maria Tan

Dr. Angel Acosta Season 2 Episode 3

Maria Tan is an educator and consultant who works with organizations, schools and individuals who are committed to serving communities through healing-centered work and education. She is a former Bronx high school science teacher where she helped lead a school-wide shift towards equitable practices including introducing restorative circles as an adult and student practice, facilitating racial affinity groups amongst staff, and teaching trauma-informed mindfulness daily to hundreds of students and adults. Maria’s direct experience of healing from teacher burnout through self-excavation inspired her to launch the Thriving Teacher Project in 2020 which created healing and restorative spaces for educators during the height of the pandemic. Through this work, she focused on mindfulness, social-emotional learning, and collective healing as tools to empower educators to show up authentically for themselves and their students. Maria is the founder and director of the House of Thriving where she works with healing-centered thought leaders and organizations to help nurture their vision and bring their ideas to life. Her experience includes designing and facilitating courses and summits, producing and hosting podcasts, creative and strategic visioning, and curriculum and program research, analysis and evaluation. As a passion project, she collaborates with her two older brothers to create workshops and guided meditations focused on intergenerational healing.

You can learn more about Maria's work here.


We want to thank Paper Monday for the interviews and portraits, Jo Barratt and Dike Godstime for the audio engineering and Maria Tan from House of Thriving for co-producing this podcast season.