Joeritta de Almeida

Assistant Professor of Elementary Education
Email: jdealmeida@wheelock.edu
Phone: 617-879-2363
Office: ACE 223G

Educational Degrees

B.A. 1966, State University of New York at Fredonia
M.Ed. 1968, Boston College
Instructor-Director 1984, Rio Abierto Institute, Buenos Aires, Argentina
M.Ed. 2000, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Ed.D. 2005, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Joeritta Jones de Almeida received her M.Ed and Ed.D. from Harvard Graduate School of Education. She also has an M.Ed. in Urban Education from Boston College, and holds teaching certificates in Elementary Education and Secondary Social Studies. She completed a course as instructor-director of a comprehensive system of Harmonious Human Development that uses body-mind techniques at the Rio Abierto (Open River) institute in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In Boston, she is the founding Director of the Open River/Rio Abierto System in the USA. While living in Brazil, she started a "school without walls" project that consisted of educational activities in public spaces such as parks and museums. This eventually led to the formation and construction of the Center for Educational Research and Study (CEPE), a small private school with five other educators in the small town of Miguel Pereira, in the mountains outside of Rio de Janeiro. The school named the library "Joeritta de Almeida" in her honor as a co-founder. CEPE is now over 32 years old and includes grades K-12.

She completed a study for her dissertation on what activists in a grassroots organization, Sista II Sista (SIIS), mean when they use the term "empowerment," and how does the meaning relate to how they see themselves, others, and their organization.

Currently, her research interests focus on the implications of body-mind orientation of self-development for teacher education and how the self-development of the teacher informs his/her pedagogy. There is a recent publication from this dissertation, "How Empowered Am I? Is There a Match Between My Perception of Self-Empowerment and Empowerment Measures? in the Fall 2010 edition of The Researcher, An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jackson State University.