During each of the six breakout sessions throughout the weekend, a large number of conversations will take place. This site will help you organize your plan for the weekend and provide the relevant information for each conversation. After signing in, search through the conversations below and mark the sessions you are interested in to populate your personal schedule on the right (or below if on your mobile phone).
What does it mean to dream and work toward love-filled liberation in our schools and communities? How do we involve our students, colleagues, and families in the processes of disrupting inequitable systems and co-creating learning spaces that are revolutionary and liberatory?
Unless we actively guard against implicit bias in our grading practices, assessment outcomes become inauthentic as they can promote racial inequity. It is only through transparent assessment systems and culturally relevant pedagogy, that we can better prepare our students to be independent learners and assess them fairly. In this session, participants will be guided through a series of interactions around assessment and bias.
Help your students explore human impacts on the planet including population growth, rising global temperature, threats to biodiversity, and compromised ecosystems through experiential and inquiry-based activities. In this conversation, we’ll discuss interdisciplinary strategies for applying learning in several disciplines to authentic problems.
With few authentic experiences and limited technology, school is increasingly detached from the real world (technology is everywhere - except schools and airplanes). At SBC, our Deeper Learning challenges position students to deliver for authentic audiences. Come see how we design original Boogie Down productions.
In this conversation, participants, with us, will compare and contrast the roles of curricular and contextual learning to hopefully gain a better understanding of how to leverage both types of learning to integrate content with experience. We will introduce folks to our (Wildwood's) developing educational model that, unlike other approaches that we are aware of, situates experiences in a broader context and encourages transfer between experiential learning and content knowledge.
School redesign requires a serious amount of tenacity, vision and persistence. The factors that add to success and factors that contribute to struggles are numerous. Join Diana in a conversation about what works, how and why it works - what doesn't work, how and why it doesn't. Specific suggestions and examples will be highlighted in this conversation.
How are teachers guiding students through project-based teaching methods?
Join a SLA teacher and SLA students as we explore ways to change the experience of school for students. We will discuss opportunities for students to use inquiry and project-based learning to produce complex work, reconfiguring understandings of themselves, their capabilities, and their roles in the world. Ideas in this session relate to the book Teaching for a Living Democracy, forthcoming from Teachers College Press.
Join a grade school and a high school teacher as they facilitate conversation on how to use best practices to teach soft skills through STEM content and activities. Attendees will walk away with examples, ideas, and an implementation plan for their classroom!
A conversation with students representing the Women of the Workshop School, female-identifying students from The Workshop School (Philadelphia, PA) talking about how they bring their race, class, gender, and other parts of their identities into the classroom.
Mindset matters in the science classroom. How can we acknowledge the importance of social-emotional teaching and mental health when it comes to strengthening classroom culture and growing resilient students?
Let’s talk about making PD more human-centered to give participants ideas for plans that are personalized, choice-based, and equitable for everyone. By introducing attendees to Oakridge’s pathways-based approach, we’ll facilitate conversation about designing learning opportunities that mirror what’s demanded of students: to make choices, take risks, reiterate, and own the learning.
It’s ok to not be ok. Yet, we rarely say these things in professional settings, especially in education. This session aims to provide the space to engage in an honest conversation about educator wellness. Participants will discuss self-care strategies, discover helpful resources, and create a plan to incorporate self-care practices.
In this conversation, participants will problematize the possibility of being objective in the humanities classroom, consider what their spaces would look like if they removed the illusion of being unbiased, and develop a vision for a truly authentic space for students to question the world around them effectively.
In an era of public mistakes that are amplified by shaming culture, many ideas and voices are being left on the sideline without hope to return to the conversation. How can we, in our spheres of influence, help to craft a path that brings individuals back from mistakes, errors, and lapses in judgment into the greater conversation for the great good.
Want your students to do authentic work? Want them to focus on learning rather than grades? Join us in a workshop that will help you re-imagine your assessments and grading practices at both the individual and school level. We’re going to start from scratch: if we were designing these systems for the first time, what would we do?
Join us for a conversation about student-led conferences with students and staff members from LaBrum Middle School in Northeast Philadelphia. Explore the possibilities student-led conferences offer for students to advocate for their own learning in a way that empowers them and gives them authentic ownership of their progress.
This action-oriented conversation aims to provide educators who wish to better engage with and support their LGBTQ students with the tools, knowledge, and resources to do so. Participants will have the chance to explore and challenge best practices for navigating queerness and allyship in the classroom.
Any look at the history of education will show a frustrating landscape of good ideas and fast starts that slowly degraded over time. How do good ideas in education survive in a world where regression to the mean is real?
Educators are becoming increasingly aware of their central role in addressing the impact of climate change. How can this call-to-action be married with expectations in the Next Generation Science Standards? Join two engineering teachers and their students to look at their active project that aims to address this real world problem through action.
What are best practices for improving the things you’ll teach again? What’s the role of student feedback for re-teaching? What happens when we shift our time to intentionally improving our curriculum and practice as opposed to building new, again. What happens when students engage meaningfully in the design of curriculum and practice? How can shared reflection of past and upcoming curriculum foster student ownership of their learning? How does if foster collaboration?
As HS instructors, our challenge is not distracted students, nor is it getting them motivated; our challenge is cultivating authentic engagement in curriculum. Students are focused and motivated - the evidence being their gaming practices, meaning the principles of good game design have lots to teach us as educators.
In our classroom, reading becomes an expression of our authentic self. What books we choose to read can help us work through challenges or highlight interests. What books we choose to share with others can become a sincere and meaningful form of communication and community building between sometimes awkward pre-adolescents. We emphasize self-direction and self-actualization in our book choices and our reading styles.
This workshop will provide the space for educators to reflect on their own identities and how those identities show up in the classroom, impacting teaching and learning. Participants will gain valuable tools and strategies for curriculum development, classroom management, and family engagement with a culturally responsive lens. This conversation will be engaging, interactive, hands-on and fun!
This hands-on conversation centers on our 18-year development of low-cost, non-proprietary Physical Computing & Robotics courses. Ideal for new and experienced tech educators, successes and failures will be discussed. You’ll have access to all our curricular materials – including textbooks developed for the course – and have time to code Arduino-compatible robotics platforms.
Children dream big. Adults dream small, narrowing bandwidths of opportunity in front of children. Learning should widen bandwidth. Let’s talk children’s’ hands-to-mind learning, adolescents’ social learning, and the affirmation learning of teens transitioning to adulthood. Rad the room with imagination, inspiration, and insight. Push thinking. Let’s emancipate thinking and design.
No subject creates more anxiety for more students than mathematics. But why do so many kids of all ages have such an aversion to math, and what can we do about it? Let’s collaborate to identify common causes of students' strained relationship with math, and brainstorm solutions.
Passion based STEAM projects revolving around global and timely problems proved as a huge motivation factor, which brought authenticity into learning, and drove students’ curiosity in directions we never anticipated. Similarly, focusing on teachers’ passion and strength, resulted in a unique interdisciplinary science course taught by 3 different science teachers.
In this workshop, students and graduates from Jubilee School will present stories and illustrations from the textbook they have written, called "Journey to the Core of the Twentieth Century". They will discuss the learning process behind their work, and for the alumni, what it means to them years later. Workshop participants will discuss paths to discover under-told stories from their local and global communities, and will work together to find ways to make the stories known through writing and the arts.
NOW IN ROOM 1169 Explore ways to help your students maximized their learning for Science Leadership Academy Middle School’s (SLAMS) very own Learning Maximizer, Erika Saunders!
Building an authentic community in your classroom or school is challenging, especially when members of that community have differing backgrounds, beliefs, and social-emotional skills. Further, traditional disciplinary methods often do not teach students about how their behavior impacts the learning and social-emotional health of the community. Let’s discuss how Restorative Practices address these pertinent issues.
Attendees will prototype a maker space after a short presentation and discussion by presenter. We’ll look at how to best design a maker space from scratch - a good fit for established makers and newbies alike.
Deep and authentic learning requires teachers to know their students’ interests and passions and customize learning experiences through real-world, relevant work. Join our conversation to engage in thinking routines, conversation prompts, and protocols to experience and plan for more authentic teaching and learning at your school.
Frustrated with the standard high school curriculum and siloed disciplines? Wondering how to connect your students more authentically to their city, challenge them to really engage with its history and people, unleash their voices and ignite their problem-solving and leadership skills? Want to get kids out of their bubbles and expose them to opportunities and others beyond their zip code or school zone?
How do our interpersonal communication skills impact classroom race discussions? How might we teachers become the best communicators that we can be, so that we don't get in our own way in classroom discussions about the toughest subjects?
How can teachers and schools reflect on their practices on recognizing and seeing students for what they are doing and who they are? Join a conversation that provides opportunities to share these practices and recognize how to make this visibility more frequent, authentic, and sustainable.
Gain awareness and understanding of our LGBTQ+ Community that will enable you to better support our students. Geared towards expanding our minds and increasing our knowledge through experiences and advice. Walk away with various resources to continue your pursuit for knowledgeable strategies on; Culture and Community, Preferred Pronouns and Trauma.
How do we use project-based learning to teach kids math? In this conversation, we'll share how we do it – and we want to hear how you do it (or want to do it), too!
A key element of authentic teaching and learning is supporting students in making connections between academic content, their personal lives, and the world. When that happens, things can get real. What are the social and emotional demands of student-centered learning, and what can educators do to support students in meeting those demands?
What is an ally? What is an accomplice? Come to this session where we discuss social justice and equity work from the lens of how to intercede and actively work daily to eradicate injustice and inequity in our schools.
The presenters have created a media-rich resource manual for this purpose, serving as an essential toolkit for TESOL educators and field practitioners to assist students in creating their own comic books for learning and promoting English language learning through visual literacy.
Recognize restorative as an approach to full organization culture building; Understand the importance of relationships and authentic feedback; Create restorative programs that support the growth and leadership; Learn strategies for building culture, giving and providing feedback, restorative group facilitation/circles and restorative as a response to conflict.
Schools have always searched for relevance and the authentic connections that make learning meaningful. In this conversation, we’ll discuss a set of critical questions that can lead to a broader understanding of the challenges associated with developing authentic landscapes for learning. Our goal for the session will be to catalyze thinking by challenging the assumptions and reality of school while uncovering potential solutions that lead to a future-focused school experience grounded by authenticity.
When teachers lead professional learning communities (PLCs), their learning experience is more authentic, relevant, and impactful. This session will share resources from work in five School District of Philadelphia schools that empower teachers to run PLCs, and then facilitate a discussion for participants to explore teacher leadership in their contexts.
NOW IN ROOM 1169 Our students are living in a world that many of us did not grow up in. Learn from SLA Beeber students about their experiences growing up in a digital world and using social media while also discussing the bright and dark sides of social media.
We experience Moments that shape us from our birth until we soar. It is how we live and reflect on these Moments that will shape us, our connections and our Ideas. The mastery of this process will give learners the confidence to create the future.
When students enter the classroom, they expect that their privacy will be protected. Students trust their teachers, but the ubiquitous influx of technology changes the privacy concerns. Leveraging Common Sense’s years of privacy experience, We’ll have a conversation about personalizing your choices about privacy for edtech.
A student enters class bouncing off the walls. Another slumps down on the table, asleep before the second bell. A third sits stiffly, afraid to move for fear of social ridicule. Learn how Crefeld instituted a daily morning vigorous activity period for middle schoolers and how it’s changed the school day.
This conversation is meant for K-12 science educators who want to discuss the interplay between Next Generation Science Standards, state standards, and backwards planning (Understanding by Design).
How did Airbnb become one of the largest accommodation providers without owning a single property? How did Uber become a leader in transportation industry without owning a single car? Design Thinking! In this session, educators will discuss how to cultivate a mindset of “design inspired leadership” to transform our schools into “cultures of change”
Does your vision for courageous teaching match the reality that you face day to day? What stands in the way? In this conversation, we will discuss the complex personal and environmental challenges facing educators, and craft the tools with which to navigate them. Join us to map your guiding star: defining the tactics, practices, and supports that will lead you to thrive amidst struggle.
School leaders from urban and suburban, charter and public networks will lead a discussion on finding a balance among school systems often stuck in the past, the pressures of present day leadership, and authentically supporting future-ready initiatives coupled with the ever-increasing realities of school dependency.
Our new class, inNOVAtion Lab, is designed to offer students the resources they need to pursue their ideas/projects. Join students and their teacher as they discuss their first-year experience in self-determined, purpose-driven learning.
Let’s explore ways of bringing authentic community engagement into Middle School. We’ll share strategies from a Philadelphia advisory class where a student-centered, inquiry-driven service project provides a yearlong framework for building classroom community, exploring and addressing social issues and creating space for empathy and problem-solving skills to emerge.
EduCon 2020