Conversations
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).
Inquiry and Self-Care: How do we build a community that cares for and takes care of children while taking care of ourselves? The Workshop School community has been grappling with this question for the past four years. Join the conversation about how we use professional support, safety plans, inquiry and mindfulness.
Classrooms in "progressive," "alternative," or "non-traditional" schools are often seen as magical spaces -- free of conflict and without any need for classroom management. But teachers in these spaces actually have many concrete, specific techniques. What do they do? Come discuss and discover.
President Obama recently proclaimed a goal of computer science education for every student. Progressive educators should lead such a movement. This session will explore the mutually supportive nature of making, progressive ideals, and computer science education, while cutting through the confusion associated with the hype.
The most important thing anyone can do to improve what they do is to become more capable of generating ideas. In this conversation, we’ll explore the role that ideas have in catalyzing innovative practice, and how you can become more conversant in ideation. Join us for a provocative conversation about how you, and your organization, can nurture, curate, incubate, grow, extend, and remix ideas to create the raw material for innovation that can lead to new conditions for student learning.
A discussion of the productive tensions facing innovators at all levels of leadership, formal to informal, classroom to central office, as they dare to advance new ideas and transform professional practices.
In the spirit of this year's theme, I'd like to spend some time investigating the role of civility and citizenry as it contributes to the sustainability of a learning community. We are, as a society, ever more connected and informed. That connection and information seems, though, to be having an interesting impact on our ability to civilly interact with other citizens. What role does a learning community play in developing these skills? What projects, programs and school norms are successfully infusing civility and citizenry into the school experience? How does technology both hinder and help the situation?