EduCon 2020

Faculty in higher education regularly express their concern that incoming students are not adequately prepared for college learning, yet they rarely attempt to understand the current pressures and challenges that face K-12 educators. K-12 educators are increasingly pressured to prepare more and more students for higher education, yet they rarely have opportunities to engage in deeper conversations with college faculty about what college teaching and learning is like today.

We believe its time for us to understand one another, generally, as educators, with an overarching, shared goal of teaching todays students, from K-16. In order to empower our students to succeed at all levels, we need to engage in a continuous conversation about the pressures, challenges, and innovations that are occurring in our institutions. Furthermore, we need to be imagining ways in which educators at all levels can collaborate on shared projects and initiatives.

We will introduce this session by talking about existing models for K-16 collaboration and conversation, as well as the barriers to that collaboration. From there, we will work with the audience to brainstorm a range of approaches to fostering K-16 collaboration and conversation within our own communities. Attendees will leave with a list of practical approaches to address the challenge as well as a list of strategies for talking about this challenge with stakeholders in their own professional communities.