Our Why
Latina students and youth of color continue to navigate learning environments that too often overlook their cultural knowledge, creative force, and emotional well-being. Experiences of isolation, disconnection, and diminished confidence—shaped by cultural stressors, systemic inequities, and a lack of affirming learning spaces—impact not only students’ sense of self, but also their engagement, leadership development, and long-term well-being.
Educators and program leaders want their students to thrive. Yet many are working within systems that leave little room for culturally sustaining, creative, and relational approaches to wellness and learning. Sentipensante Connections exists to interrupt these patterns by supporting learning spaces where creativity, care, and culture are not treated as extras, but as essential.
Our Method
Sentipensante Connections is an educational consulting and creative wellness practice rooted in creativity, joy, cultura, and reciprocity. Our work is guided by the Magic • Play • Love Framework, which draws from liberatory pedagogy, arts-based healing practices, and a sociocultural approach to language and learning.
Through professional learning for educators and student-facing creative wellness workshops, we support individuals and communities in reconnecting with their creative force as a pathway to confidence, connection, and well-being. Our approach honors a sentipensante way of knowing—integrating mind, body, and spirit—so that learning spaces become sites of reflection, imagination, and collective care.
Rather than offering one-size-fits-all solutions, we meet each context with intention, designing experiences that are culturally sustaining, relational, and grounded in lived practice. This work invites both educators and students to experience magic, play, and love not as abstractions, but as conditions that make learning and healing possible.
Our Founder
Dr. Vianney A. Gavilanes is an educator, scholar, and creative practitioner with over a decade of experience designing and facilitating culturally sustaining, arts-based learning spaces across secondary and higher education. As the founder of Sentipensante Connections, she brings together research, lived experience, and creative practice to support learning environments where Latina students and youth of color feel seen, heard, and loved.
Her work builds on years of teaching, curriculum design, and program leadership, including the creation and direction of Liberando Nuestras Voces, a creative writing and confidence-building initiative for Latina middle school students. Through this work, Dr. Gavilanes developed and refined the Magic • Play • Love Framework—an approach grounded in real-world practice and sustained engagement with students and educators.
Dr. Gavilanes bridges research and practice with a scholar’s mind and a corazón de poeta, guiding educators and leaders in developing the sentipensante mindset—sensibilities and predispositions—needed to engage in this transformational work. She weaves together critical pedagogy, creativity, and wellness to support educators and institutions in cultivating learning spaces rooted in reflection, imagination, and relational care.
She partners with educators and organizations as a thought partner, facilitator, and guide—supporting them in implementing creative wellness practices that affirm students’ identities and nurture collective thriving.
If you are seeking to co-create learning spaces where culture, creativity, and care lead the way, Sentipensante Connections offers a grounded, intentional approach shaped by years of practice and a deep belief in the transformative power of creative expression.