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).
In this conversation, we will be thinking about how to establish a self-sustaining culture of student driven inquiry in middle age students and/or students who are new to project based learning. In our first (half!) a year, Science Leadership Academy Middle School (SLA-MS) we’ve worked to lay the groundwork for students to ask and explore meaningful questions in a variety of thought strains. As is to be expected, some students are catching the “inquiry bug” and are eagerly following their interests. For others, though, this is significantly challenging due to a variety of factors including age, developmental level, current stamina and skill level, and a generally slow adjustment to our “unschooling.” By looking at a few case studies from our school, and learning about experiences in your school settings, we’re eager to think together about how we help students to become more independent and self-sustaining learners. How do we find and ask follow up questions? How do we stick with a line of thinking long enough to reap its benefits? How do we utilize our peers rather than funneling our work through the teacher? And, perhaps most importantly, how do we transfer what we learn from one exploration into a new, or novel, situation?
Teachers will discuss how to thoughtfully build a classroom community where students feel safe taking conversational risks.
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.
This session is collaborative inquiry into a tension of teaching: building structures that support students’ growth with flexibility to accommodate diverse perspectives, interests, and needs in the curriculum. We will explore this dynamic in the context of a Humanities program at The U School, a Philadelphia public high school.
Drawing on his book "Education and the Commercial Mindset" (Harvard University Press, 2016), Samuel E. Abrams will discuss the growing role of commercial firms and concepts in public education.
This will be a conversation about incorporating racial literacy into curriculum regardless of students' ages or content area. We will discuss the successes and struggles of implementing a racial literacy curriculum into a project-based science class.
We all love our kids. Let's talk honestly about how hard it can be to keep loving our kids who frustrate the heck out of us. In this conversation, explore the challenge and the joy of being in relationship with behaviorally challenging students. We'll start with awareness and move to setting concrete intentions for better serving all of our kids.
Are you looking for ideas to personalize project-based learning activities? How do you bring in voice and choice so your kids take responsibility for their learning? Let's have a conversation on how to make PBL personal.
It is estimated that 1 in 5 learners have learning and attention issues. How did we get to that number? What are the solutions and instructional practices that support all learners? What are the things we know and the things we can do to support the 1 in 5?
The skill of effective communication has powerful influence in shaping school culture. Teachers, students and leadership are surrounded by feedback on a daily basis from the classroom to meetings to the playing field. Understanding how to communicate can be the difference between listening to react and listening to understand. How one hears, processes and delivers feedback can be powerful in shaping the tone of personal and professional relationships. In this workshop theory, practice and your experiences will be used to examine what it takes to host effective and productive conversations with colleagues and students.
Students from Macomb Community College examined the problematic status of privacy in post-secondary education. They identified standardized curricula, assessments, academic advising, and other forms of digital redlining that emphasize training over critical thinking. These findings are developing into a set of student-centered privacy principles that they will refine at Educon.
It's said history is told by the victors. For educators, victories are tied up in privilege and tradition, resulting in a history that is half muddled myth and half urban legend. We’ll chat, compare notes, and untangle who gets to tell the story of our profession.
EduCon 2.9
