{"success":true,"data":[{"ID":1575,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790790301,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"A Sleep and A Forgetting:  The Kinds of Kids We Need?  We've Always Known.","Handle":"a_sleep_and_a_forgetting--the_kinds_of_kids_we_need-we-ve_always_known.","ShortDescription":"Using a simulation based on mechanics from Buckminster Fuller\u2019s \u201cWorld Game,\u201d attendees will create \u201cthe Tuesday Afternoon Teenager of 2040.\u201d  Conversations about the game awaken us to what we already knew about the kinds of kids we need.  Participants will leave with a tool to use on Monday with staff or students.","Description":"If we are anything as learners, we are forgetting machines, and one of the primary things many of us forget after even just five years of teaching?   We have already answered many of the questions we currently face.  Is it any wonder, then, that we become so tired of having to reimagine ourselves and our teaching in the face of the latest administrative push to make kids \u201cfuture ready?\u201d  \r\n\r\nRather than trying to predict the future barreling toward us and reacting by inoculating kids with the things they need to survive it, this session asks us to become futures thinkers, reexamining what we think about the futures our kids are entering into, and working with them to create more preferable futures.\r\n\r\nWe will use a Futures Thinking simulation with game play inspired by Buckminster Fuller's World Game. During our 45-minute simulation you will practice a condensed version of futures thinking using \u201csignal recognition\u201d and \u201chorizon scanning.\u201d   Gameplay is driven by table groups trading for limited resources like \u201cadult attention,\u201d \u201cschedule time,\u201d \u201clearning space,\u201d and \u201ccommunity partners.\u201d  The goal?  A vision of the \"Tuesday Afternoon Teenager of 2040.\"  \r\n\r\nYou\u2019ll leave this session with the digital files to run your own Futures Thinking simulation and information on how to learn more.\r\n\r\nThe session seeks to make us \"good ancestors,\" remembering that we already have what we need to shape preferable futures populated by the kinds of kids we will need. We just fell asleep.","Link":["https:\/\/www.onlyconnects.wordpress.com","https:\/\/garrethheidt.com","https:\/\/pvhsnovalab.com"],"Audience":["High School","Middle School"],"Practice":"Futures Thinking Simulation\r\nChalk Talk\r\nFinal Word","Presenter":["Garreth Heidt"],"PresenterAffiliation":["NOVA Lab Foresights"],"PresenterEmail":["garreth@garrethheidt.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"Attendees:  \r\n\r\nPlease read this blog post before attending:\r\nhttps:\/\/pvhsnovalab.com\/2024\/10\/26\/future-deja-vu\/\r\n\r\nDigital Versions of Simulation Kit:   https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/y6bcpmxr","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1590,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790897626,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"AI Fuels My Imagination and the Same Should be True for All Students","Handle":"ai_fuels_my_imagination_and_the_same_should_be_true_for_all_students","ShortDescription":"As politicians and many educators are engaged in a collective freakout about AI and education, I cannot believe how my creativity, thinking, productivity, and achievements have been supercharged by the affordances of this computational miracle. This incredibly positive and optimistic session, rooted in timeless progressive traditions, a humane vision of AI, the Reggio Emilia approach, and personal experience is intended to inspire dialogue and consideration of exciting new learning adventures in a world of computational abundance.","Description":"Collaborating with generative AI changes what learners can achieve. Computational making with AI supercharges the breadth, depth, and range of possible projects. The seemingly impossible becomes possible\u2014for adults and even young children. In this session, I'll show you how I use chatbots as collaborator, researcher, illustrator, and apprentice across ELA, science, math, and the arts. We\u2019ll walk through recent projects\u2014software brought back from the dead, databases built for an audience of one, publishing and research workflows\u2014and unpack what each reveals about learning. Together we'll examine work that reframes what \"developmentally appropriate\" really means and consider entry points for learners of every age, built upon progressive traditions. \r\n\r\nObjectives: \r\n\u2022 Stop viewing AI as cheating and start appreciating it as a creative material\r\n\u2022 Expand your sense of what kids can make, and leave with your imagination on fire.\r\n\u2022 Learn how you and learners of all ages can use AI as a learner's apprentice to solve problems that perhaps only you have.\r\n\u2022 Chatbots and the writing process.\r\n\u2022\u00a0Why I would not accept a piece of student writing untouched by AI.\r\n\u2022 Designing software for one and once.\r\n\u2022 If you make simple things easy, you make complexity possible.","Link":["https:\/\/reggio.constructingmodernknowledge.com\/fuel","https:\/\/dailypapert.com\/the-new-improved-daily-papert\/","https:\/\/reggio.constructingmodernknowledge.com\/field-tripping-with-ai"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Half of the session will be dedicated to making the case, sharing of examples of compelling projects, and discussion of pedagogical strategies. \r\n\r\nThe other half will be spent inventing and designing software with chatbots to solve problems and supercharge learning.","Presenter":["Gary Stager"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Constructing Modern Knowledge"],"PresenterEmail":["gary@stager.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1582,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790869857,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Applications of the Arts in Academia","Handle":"applications_of_the_arts_in_academia","ShortDescription":"This session will be a discussion of bringing creative approaches into the classroom.\r\nSome of the points we will address:\r\nWhat is the benefit of having kids think more abstractly in STEM? \r\nHow does AI, and the need for productive struggling, play a role in the creative classroom?\r\nHow can we leverage abstract thinking to support development of soft skills?","Description":"Science Leadership Academy incorporates open-ended assignments and projects across subjects. This might look like political elections, map-making, and zine-writing, among many other examples. How do we come up with assignments and projects that enhance curriculum and draw students into a topic? How do we give students agency and guidance while tackling challenging ideas?\r\nYadierys Angeles teaches art at SLA and is an alumna of the school. While the basics of drawing, sculpture and art history are touched on in her Art classes, students are encouraged to explore creativity and the ways they may personally encounter it beyond high school. Whether or not students are looking to Art in the professional field, art and creativity is all around them! Students embrace this theme through personalized courses and free-choice projects.\r\nSerenity Baruzzini teaches the Career and Technical Education Engineering program and is also an alumna of SLA. While covering topics including tool training, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and aerospace, students interact with the human-relationships involved. Engineers are tasked as problem-solvers and need the skillsets to communicate and empathize with people they intend to help. \r\nSergio Stryker is the CTE internship coordinator and drama teacher at Science Leadership Academy. Sergio has taught photography workshops in New Mexico, Washington DC, Maryland and Chicago. Sergio incorporates image making and visual literacy in all of his curriculum. This year, he aspires to build a photographic darkroom with his student club at SLA.","Link":[],"Audience":["High School"],"Practice":"This session will largely be a discussion amongst educators about creative practices they have tried or want to try in their own spaces. As a group, we will develop a shared document that houses these ideas across subjects.","Presenter":["Yadierys Angeles","Serenity Baruzzini","Sergio Stryker"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Science Leadership Academy"],"PresenterEmail":["yangeles@scienceleadership.org","sbaruzzini@scienceleadership.org","sstryker@scienceleadership.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1602,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1791163164,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Beyond the Diploma: Do the Skills We Assess Prepare Students to Persist in College?","Handle":"beyond_the_diploma--do_the_skills_we_assess_prepare_students_to_persist_in_college","ShortDescription":"Our competency-based system tracks SEL skills like self-advocacy and collaboration alongside academics. But do those skills prepare students for college? We'll share what we found linking our competency data to National Student Clearinghouse persistence records and invite participants to question what we measure, and why.","Description":"Schools are judged by graduation and college acceptance. Our alumni tell us the harder test comes later: the second semester, the first financial aid snag, the first time no one checks in. The kids the world will need are the ones who persist. So we asked whether our own system sees that coming.\r\nAt South Bronx Community, students earn credit by showing mastery of competencies, including social-emotional skills such as self advocacy, planning and organizing time effectively, and reflectiveness . For this session, we analyzed National Student Clearinghouse data on college enrollment and persistence for SBC students as compared to peers. \r\nWe'll be candid about what the data does and doesn't show. Some of what we include in our competencies may matter a great deal. Some may not matter at all, or may reflect our biases more than students' skills. Persistence is also affected by money, family, and campus support, which no high school rubric captures.\r\nOur College and Youth Development teams will explain how they are using the findings to inform advisory, postsecondary planning, and alumni support. Then we'll turn the question to the room: if you could only assess three non-academic skills, which would you choose, and how would you know you were right?","Link":["https:\/\/southbronxcommunity.org\/"],"Audience":["High School"],"Practice":"1. Predict, then reveal (10 min): Participants rank our SEL competencies by how well they think each one impacts persistence, then share their thinking.\r\n2. Data walk (15 min): Small groups rotate through charts and student profiles, leaving sticky-note questions and noticings at each station.\r\n3. Alumni voice (10 min): A live video call or recorded clips with SBC alumni in college describing what actually kept them enrolled.\r\n4. Design table (15 min): Groups map their own schools' competencies or graduate profiles against what they've seen, then share one thing they'd keep, cut, or add.\r\n5. Shared takeaway (5 min): We add questions and ideas to a shared doc that becomes a resource for schools doing similar analysis.","Presenter":["Natalie Ferrell","Angie Aponte","Yanil Martinez","Jamir Mallory"],"PresenterAffiliation":[],"PresenterEmail":["natalie.ferrell@southbronxcommunity.org","angela.aponte@southbronxcommunity.org","yanil.martinez@southbronxcommunity.org","jamir.mallory@southbronxcommunity.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1580,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790858412,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Centering the Future of Education on Human Thriving","Handle":"centering_the_future_of_education_on_human_thriving-2","ShortDescription":"Imagine a school where the academic and social focus is exclusively human thriving. What if thriving in relationships, material well-being, physical well-being, social-emotional well-being, mental well-being, and purpose formed the curricular inquiry of a students K-12 school career. What are the possibilities for creating a different kind of educational delivery system to achieve this vision?","Description":"In this conversation, we will focus our discussion on the Social-Emotional well-being of students, in particular, boys. We will look to begin to answer the questions of how can we design an environment and system that safely explores the context of a student's social-emotional life; how can we cultivate the experiences that promote a healthy lifelong relationship with oneself and others; and how can we cultivate continual transformation of the student to be the very best version of themselves.","Link":[],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"The conversation will be organized around NSRF's \"What If, What's Next, Then What?\" Collaborative Protocol Framework.","Presenter":["Russell E Washington"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Thriving School Communities Institute and the School District of Philadelphia"],"PresenterEmail":["ruwashington@philasd.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1603,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1791164379,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Connecting the Dots: From Service Trip to Internship to Purpose","Handle":"connecting_the_dots--from_service_trip_to_internship_to_purpose","ShortDescription":"International service trips, local service, and internships often live in separate silos. At South Bronx Community, we're weaving them into one pathway where students serve, work, and reflect. Join us to examine what students learn beyond the classroom and how to make those experiences count toward who they become.","Description":"The kids the world will need know how to show up: for a community, for a team, for work that matters to someone other than themselves. Those habits are hard to teach inside four walls. They grow when young people take on real responsibility in real places, then make sense of it with adults who know them.\r\nThe kids the world will need know how to show up: for a community, for a team, for work that matters to someone other than themselves. Those habits are hard to teach inside four walls. They grow when young people take on real responsibility in real places, then make sense of it with adults who know them.\r\nAt South Bronx Community, students learn beyond the building in three ways. They travel on international service learning trips to places like Oaxaca, Quito and Manchester (Jamaica). They take part in domestic service projects in the Bronx and beyond. And they complete internships with community based organizations and Fortune 500 companies alike. We emphasize skill building through these experiences so that students make explicit connections between what they are doing and how it is preparing them for the future.\r\nIn this conversation, the staff who lead each strand will share what's working and where the seams still show. We'll look at student reflections, partner feedback, and the structures that hold it together, such as reflection protocols, competencies and credit, and advisory connections. \r\nParticipants will leave with a framework for linking their own out-of-school experiences to assessable skills and a coherent arc.","Link":["https:\/\/southbronxcommunity.org\/"],"Audience":["High School"],"Practice":"1. Journey line (10 min): Participants sketch a learning experience outside school that shaped them, then share in pairs what made it stick.\r\n2. Three-strand panel (15 min): Gretchen, Jeannette, and Travis each share one student story from their strand, told in the student's words where possible.\r\n3. Student voice (10 min): A short video or live call with SBC students or alumni describing how one experience led to the next.\r\n4. Pathway mapping (15 min): Small groups map the service and work-based opportunities at their own schools and draw the connections to skills.\r\n5. Gallery and harvest (5 min): Groups post their maps; we capture shared strategies and  questions in a shared doc.","Presenter":["John Clemente","Jeannette Bautista","Travis Delancey-Goodman","Gretchen Upton"],"PresenterAffiliation":[],"PresenterEmail":["john.clemente@southbronxcommunity.org","jeannette.bautista@southbronxcommunity.org","travis.delanceygoodman@southbronxcommunity.org","gretchen.upton@southbronxcommunity.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1570,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790641601,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Creating a Community Learning Glossary","Handle":"creating_a_community_learning_glossary","ShortDescription":"This conversation began with the work of volunteers at the Institute for Infrastructure and Interoperable Data in Learning coming up with a community-based and research-backed Glossary of Digital Learning. It's expanded into a conversation about the words we use and share to describe what we do in education, technology, and the work of learning.","Description":"I2IDL's Glossary of Digital Learning <https:\/\/www.i2idl.org\/glossary> started out as an attempt to find commonality among authoritative sources regarding the ways that we define terminology in the learning space. It's led to something perhaps more interesting. Namely, conversations about the power of linked and machine-readable glossaries as shared community resources that can provide not just canonical definitions, but the opportunity for reflection about where agreed upon (or debated) definitions come from.","Link":["https:\/\/www.i2idl.org\/glossary"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"I'd like us to identify the sources needed to build a glossary specific to the culture of SLA and the extended community of EduCon. We'll have a conversation about what matters, why it matters, debate whether any of that matters, and nail down the sources that we can use to create a living glossary. A work product that will come out of the session is the source code of an EduCon glossary.","Presenter":["Shelly Blake-Plock"],"PresenterAffiliation":["I2IDL \/ Yet Analytics"],"PresenterEmail":["shelly@i2idl.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"If we do this, I'd love to have someone from SLA in the room who can speak to the types of resources available locally as sources of documentation that we could include and adapt in the glossary.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1581,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790865823,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Creating third spaces to empower high school student leadership","Handle":"creating_third_spaces_to_empower_high_school_student_leadership","ShortDescription":"This conversation seeks to reimagine what third spaces for high school students look, sound and feel like, and how these spaces can be used to empower authentic student leadership. We will also explore the lessons third spaces can teach us about student voice and leadership during the school day.","Description":"High school student participation lags behind elementary school student participation in town-run out of school time programs but giving high school students more autonomy in OST programs increased participation from 0% to 12% of overall registrations. How can educators capitalize on this growth in creating a \u201cthird space\u201d for teens?\r\n\r\nThe Mayor\u2019s Office of Children, Youth and Learning (OCYL) is a town department located in Cumberland, RI which runs out of school time (OST) programming for students ages K-12. Our STEAM and youth empowerment programs are purposefully designed to go beyond \u201cenrichment.\u201d While Cumberland High School offers a wide range of extracurricular activities, a gap still exists between what is offered and what makes high school students feel their voices are heard in an impactful way.\r\n\r\nHigh school student participation in a new volunteer program at OCYL this summer was so positive that we invited our 17 volunteers to become commissioners on the town\u2019s newly reconstituted Youth Commission. Eleven responded to the invitation and have begun attending monthly meetings. Additionally, students from a nearby Massachusetts high school have begun coaching our new robotics team.\r\n\r\nAt OCYL, we are discovering that the road to high school student participation in our programming is through autonomy. Rather than registering for programs as students, high schoolers are finding meaning first in offering and refining their services to younger students, and now in developing their voice and leadership to create meaningful experiences for others.","Link":["https:\/\/www.cumberlandri.gov\/183\/OCYL-The-Mayors-Office-of-Children-Youth","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/jennifer-geller-4b92b5322\/?isSelfProfile=true"],"Audience":["High School"],"Practice":"Participants will engage in a mashup of the vision of the graduate and exquisite corpse protocols to define what third spaces for high school students look like, sound like and feel like. These can either be third spaces that exist in participants\u2019 worlds, or they can be a vision for what could be. Participants will have time to create their exquisite corpses, gallery walk, provide feedback and debrief the process. Additionally, participants will participate in a fishbowl to discuss how lessons learned from third spaces can be applied to empowering student voice and leadership in schools during the school day.","Presenter":["Jennifer Geller"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Mayor's Office of Children","Youth and Learning","Cumberland","RI"],"PresenterEmail":["jgeller@cumberlandri.gov"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1563,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790168370,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Democratic Schools Matter","Handle":"democratic_schools_matter","ShortDescription":"Democratic classroom practices can exist in many forms. This session will examine multiple, less frequently utilized avenues for democratic experiences within classrooms. The session will explore the five pillars of Democratic Education and use content adapted from the recently published book, Democratic Schools Matter.","Description":"Five Pillars of Democratic Education:\r\nOpen discourse \u2013 creating classrooms and school communities where young people learn to speak honestly, listen deeply, argue passionately, and stay in the room with disagreement instead of shutting it down.\r\nRigorous equity \u2013 treating equity not as a slogan or a set of accommodations, but as the painstaking redesign of rules, norms, and curricula so that all students- regardless of culture, language, background and prior experience, can get what they need and fully participate in shaping school life.\r\nThe common good \u2013 helping students and adults alike see themselves as stewards of shared spaces, resources, and futures, not just individual achievers competing for scarce rewards.\r\nCollective decision-making \u2013 building structures where students, families, and educators share real power over how classrooms and schools are run, from restorative discipline practices to curriculum choices and school design.\r\nSustained resilience and resistance \u2013 acknowledging that any attempt to build democratic schools will encounter resistance from entrenched systems, and persistent pull toward more traditional and hierarchical models of education.","Link":["https:\/\/mrjblock.com","https:\/\/lindanathan.com"],"Audience":["High School"],"Practice":"Students and conversation.","Presenter":["Joshua Block","Linda Nathan","SLA Students"],"PresenterAffiliation":["SLA","Harvard GSE"],"PresenterEmail":["jblock@scienceleadership.org","lfnathan@gmail.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"We will need to present on Saturday -- not is not available on Sunday. Thanks.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1599,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1791147722,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Dreaming New Worlds: (Re)Imagining Imagination as a Literacy Practice","Handle":"dreaming_new_worlds--re-imagining_imagination_as_a_literacy_practice","ShortDescription":"What if imagination were treated as a literacy practice? Grounded in imahinasyon as literacy, a framework developed from my research alongside queer Filipinx youth, this conversation invites educators to reconsider how imagination lives in our schools and explore how young people might understand themselves, question the world, and envision new worlds.","Description":"We often encourage young people to \"use their imagination,\u201d but what do we mean by that? In schools, imagination is often associated with creativity, play, the arts, or dreaming about the future. What might change if we understood imagination not as an occasional activity, but as literacy practice young people use to make meaning of themselves, their experiences, and the world around them? \r\n\r\nThis conversation begins with imahinasyon as literacy, a framework developed through my research along queer Filipinx youth. Their brilliance, knowledge, and experiences pushed me to reconsider imagination beyond an individual creative act. Instead, it helped me consider it as a cultural, critical, relational, and collective practice connected to thinking about identities, possibility, our becoming, and futurity. \r\n\r\nInstead of positioning imahinasyon as literacy as a universal, static framework, I offer it as an entry point for collective inquiry. Together, we will examine where imagination currently lives in our classrooms and schools, where it may be constrained, and what becomes possible when we intentionally create conditions for young people to imagine. \r\n\r\nThis conversation is threaded by Educon\u2019s question: \u201cWho are the kids the world will need?\u201d We add on to this question by considering: What if the responsibility of imagination is to not just prepare young people for the world they will inherit, but to cultivate their capacity to question it, imagine beyond what currently exists, and create new and better worlds?","Link":[],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"This conversation will invite participants to experience imagination through multimodal and collective practice. We will start by an interactive mapping activity that asks us all to consider: Where does imagination currently live in our classrooms and schools? Where is it encouraged, constrained, or absent?\r\n\r\nAfter a brief introduction to imahinasyon as literacy and the queer Filipinx youth whose knowledge informed the framework, participants will engage in a multimodal imagination experience. Using writing, drawing, collage, or mapping, participants will respond to this inquiry: if imagination was treated as seriously as reading, writing, and math, what might school look, sound, and feel like?\r\n\r\nParticipants will share their creations in small groups, identifying patterns, tensions, possibilities, and questions across their imagined schools. These artifacts will be used as texts for dialogue and conversation. What did we imagine? What made those possibilities difficult to imagine within current educational structures? Whose imagines are currently nurtured, and whose are constrained?\r\n\r\nWe will close by co-creating a collective \u201cimagination map\u201d that includes ideas, questions, and possibilities for cultivating imagination across aspects of schools including curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, relationships, and school structures. Participants will leave with one possibility they might want to experiment within their own educational community.","Presenter":["Dr. Andre Zarate"],"PresenterAffiliation":["titodredreaming","LLC"],"PresenterEmail":["anthony.andre.zarate@gmail.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1622,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1792368522,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Dungeons, Dragons & Deeper Learning","Handle":"dungeons-dragons-deeper_learning-3","ShortDescription":"How might we use dice rolls and storytelling to transform classroom and professional learning experiences through the lens of tabletop roleplaying games?  Let's build some worlds, write some rules, and toss some dice together.","Description":"During this game-based conversation, we'll explore the potential possibilities tabletop roleplaying games such as Dungeons and Dragons and its less fantastical contemporaries have for our learning spaces.  How might we develop our capacity for empathy by taking on the perspectives of characters?  How might we improve our problem solving abilities through collaborative storytelling?  And how might we explore fairness, bias, and balance through rules making and game play?  These are just a few of the questions we hope to discuss in a highly interactive experience intended to provide an introduction for the uninitiated and a call to action for the experienced players in attendance.","Link":["https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/danryder207","https:\/\/www.jacquiegardy.com"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Participants will  start this conversation by participating in a brief roleplaying game designed especially for EduCon; they will create characters and guide them through an interactive problem solving story experience.  After this quick game, we will debrief, deconstruct, and then design new games by remixing and reconfiguring the one played in the room.   Depending on the number of participants, this may be done as a whole group or in smaller teams.  The ultimate goal remains the same: create roleplaying game experiences that we might try with our learners and colleagues sooner rather than later.","Presenter":["Dan Ryder","Jacquie Gardy"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Regional Community Charter School","Gardy Learning Design Studio"],"PresenterEmail":["danryder207@gmail.com","hello@jacquiegardy.com","jacquiegardy@gmail.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"EDU.CON.is.all.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1583,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790876567,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Has school always been this complex?","Handle":"has_school_always_been_this_complex","ShortDescription":"Grounded in Angelo Patri\u2019s 1917 vision in A Schoolmaster of the Great City that schools must integrate deeply with their communities, this session explores modern educational ecosystems. Participants will discuss the operational and relational challenges educators face when building, sustaining, and managing employer and community partnerships to expand high-quality experiential learning.","Description":"Grounded in Angelo Patri\u2019s seminal 1917 vision in A Schoolmaster of the Great City\u2014which insisted that urban schools must weave themselves into the social fabric of their surrounding communities\u2014this workshop examines the modern challenge of building school-community ecosystems. Today\u2019s educators face increasing demands to connect students to rich webs of relationships, yet managing sustainable employer partnerships for experiential and work-based learning remains an operational and relational bottleneck.\r\n\r\nDrawing on the practical leadership of PENCIL in New York City, this session explores how intermediary organizations engage business communities to unlock hands-on opportunities for public school students. Participants will apply principles of complexity science to analyze how organic, localized school-employer relationships can evolve into scalable systems without losing their adaptive responsiveness.\r\n\r\nCrucially, the conversation incorporates Alvin Roth\u2019s economic descriptions of preference-based matching markets to interrogate the dynamics that ultimately dictate who gets what opportunities and why. By framing work-based learning as a matching market rife with search frictions, information asymmetries, and congestion, we will examine how market design influences access, equity, and student mobility.","Link":["http:\/\/www.pencil.org","https:\/\/www.expandedschools.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Toward-Career-Connected-Learning-Recommendations-for-Systems-Building-Coordination-and-Improvement-2-20-24-edit.pdf"],"Audience":["High School","Middle School"],"Practice":"Through collaborative dialogue, participants will confront key structural dilemmas: How do we balance central coordination with school autonomy? How can matching mechanisms prevent opportunity hoarding and ensure equitable access? Attendees will leave with a fresh conceptual framework for navigating employer networks, leveraging complexity theory to scale promising practices, and designing market structures that connect urban youth directly to the city\u2019s economic vitality.","Presenter":["Gregg Betheil"],"PresenterAffiliation":["CEO","PENCIL","Inc."],"PresenterEmail":["gbetheil@pencil.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"Growing from conversations with Chris Lehmann (Sorry it took me so long to get the proposal together. ;-)","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1558,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1789406965,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Leading the Adults Who Lead Our Children","Handle":"leading_the_adults_who_lead_our_children","ShortDescription":"When students struggle, how often do we examine adult practices before adding another intervention? This conversation challenges educators and leaders to explore how instruction, expectations, communication, collaboration, and school culture influence student outcomes\u2014and how strengthening adult practice can remove barriers and create conditions where every student can thrive.","Description":"When students struggle academically, behaviorally, or socially, schools often respond by asking what additional support the student needs. But what happens when we turn the lens toward ourselves and ask: What adult practices, instructional decisions, or systems may be contributing to the challenge?\r\n\r\nThis conversation invites educators and school leaders to examine the connection between adult practice and student outcomes. Together, participants will explore how the quality and consistency of Tier 1 instruction, professional expectations, communication, family engagement, collaboration, intervention practices, and school culture can either remove barriers for students or unintentionally create them.\r\n\r\nRather than approaching this as a conversation about blame, participants will consider how schools can create cultures of collective responsibility in which adults feel supported while also being accountable for examining and strengthening their practice. Participants from different roles and school levels will be encouraged to share experiences, identify common systemic challenges, and learn from one another.\r\n\r\nThe conversation will challenge us to shift from simply asking, \u201cWhat is wrong with this student?\u201d to also asking, \u201cWhat can we change about the environment, instruction, support, or adult practice surrounding this student?\u201d\r\n\r\nParticipants will leave with practical strategies for strengthening adult collaboration, examining instructional and systemic barriers, engaging in difficult professional conversations, and keeping student needs at the center of decision-making.","Link":["https:\/\/btg2005.org"],"Audience":["High School","Middle School","Elementary School","All School Levels"],"Practice":"Participants will engage in a facilitated conversation using reflection prompts, small-group dialogue, real-world scenarios, and a \u201cStudent Lens\/Adult Lens\u201d protocol. Groups will examine common student challenges first through the traditional student-focused lens and then through an adult-practice and systems lens. Participants will identify what adults can control, change, or strengthen before immediately adding another intervention. Whole-group discussion will allow participants across grade levels and roles to share perspectives and practices. Each participant will conclude by identifying one adult practice or system they can examine or strengthen in their own setting.","Presenter":["LaShondra Rice"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Bridging The Gap Foundation"],"PresenterEmail":["lrice@btg2005.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"With nearly three decades of experience spanning classroom teaching across multiple grade levels, intervention, school administration, higher education, and district-level leadership, I bring a systems-level perspective grounded in the realities of both classrooms and leadership. I am committed to creating an inclusive, reflective conversation where educators can challenge assumptions, learn from one another, and leave with practical ideas they can apply immediately.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1596,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790956437,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Leverage Leaders: Student Mentors as Change Agents for a Positive School Culture","Handle":"leverage_leaders--student_mentors_as_change_agents_for_a_positive_school_culture","ShortDescription":"We are a community with a deeply ingrained commitment to relationship building, socio-emotional learning and restorative practices. These characteristics are intertwined with our Portrait of a Graduate, focused on finding passion, building agency, using power and making an impact. This year, we have added a Mentor Advisory to our toolkit to empower 12th grade students to build a legacy of displaying these characteristics by mentoring incoming freshmen in need of additional peer support.","Description":"Through years of observation, we identified a critical area for growth in our school culture: empowering students to use their leadership skills to uplift their peers. To meet this need, we established our Mentor Advisory program.\r\nThis year, a select cohort of 12th-grade students is exploring and developing their leadership capacity using The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens as a foundational text. Their primary mission is to support 9th-grade students navigating the academic and social transitions of high school. Mentors work one-on-one with mentees and facilitate community-building activities across 9th-grade advisory spaces, extending peer-led support across our entire school community, giving students a support that helps navigate the differences in a competency based system. \r\nThroughout this experience, senior mentors examine their own leadership styles, strengthen critical thinking skills, and contribute directly to building a curriculum that will serve as their lasting high school legacy. A key focus of their challenge is supporting students who often go unnoticed\u2014those who may not demand attention in classroom settings or community spaces. Mentors aim to provide these students with the tools and encouragement needed to thrive as their best selves.\r\nSpecifically, senior mentors coach freshmen in developing strong work habits, navigating our competency-based learning system, accessing additional academic support, and finding their voice during challenging conversations with peers and adults. By fostering peer-driven agency and belonging, our program strives to ensure that every student feels seen, supported, and equipped for high school and beyond.","Link":[],"Audience":["High School"],"Practice":"Mentors will introduce a video showing what their week entails. This will walk the audience through how the students facilitate community building activities in 9th grade advisories, how they mentor students 1:1 and in small groups, and how they conclude the week with a reflection of their learnings from the scope of the week including their study of the 7 Habits for Teens book and a Problem of Practice Protocol. Upon the conclusion of the video, students with engage in a Q&A session with the audience.","Presenter":["Ben Koch","Jill Thomas","James Murray and students"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Building 21 High School","School District of Philadelphia"],"PresenterEmail":["bkoch@philasd.org","jthomas2@philasd.org","jmurray5@philasd.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1604,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1791164391,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Making Our Praxis Multimodal: A Living Archive of Black Philadelphia","Handle":"making_our_praxis_multimodal--a_living_archive_of_black_philadelphia","ShortDescription":"Teachers, youth, university researchers, and a museum partner explored how Black Philadelphian histories go unrecognized in schools and museums. Grounded in Black feminisms and participatory research, we center Black youth in connecting past, present, and future through a living archive and \u201cpraxhibition\u201d that makes our collective praxis and Black Philadelphia histories visible.","Description":"Teachers, youth, university researchers, and a museum partner in this research-practice partnership, convened by a U.S. writing project site, explored tensions around how Black histories are told in and about Philadelphia, often going unrecognized in our schools and museums. We challenge inequitable racial narratives by centering Black youth as they draw links between past, present, and future and become researchers and storytellers of Black Philadelphian histories.\r\nGrounded in Black feminisms and using practitioner research and participatory design-based methods, we advanced the notion of a living archive, which brings together archival and artistic literacies to generate, preserve, and share histories. We make this work visible through a \u201cpraxhibition\u201d (Rosser, 2026)\u2014an experience that brings praxis, theory and practice, to life through exhibition.\r\nDuring this conversation, participants will experience pieces of our living archive through music, storytelling, poetry, photographs, interviews, and other artifacts created through teacher and youth inquiry. Together, we will consider: What happens when young people and teachers become researchers of the Black histories their schools and communities have overlooked? Whose histories remain hidden in our own communities? And how might we create opportunities for young people to research, (re)story, preserve, and share them?\r\nParticipants will leave having considered possibilities for creating living archives in their own classrooms, schools, and communities","Link":["https:\/\/livingarchive.philwp.org"],"Audience":["High School","Middle School"],"Practice":"Participants will experience our \u201cpraxibition\u201d (Author 1, 2026), which blends music, storytelling, poetry, photography, interviews, essays, and other modalities to make visible the praxis and co-constructed knowledge of our community.\r\nWe will host a listening party featuring selections from our multimodal Living Archive album that tell the story of our project, including how we worked in collaborative inquiry; how learning about U.S. history influenced teaching practices and advanced youth literacies; and the socio-historical narratives that emerged as youth and teachers engaged with archival documents. Participants will also hear tracks featuring the lines of inquiry of 10 teacher and youth researcher teams, as well as the perspectives of our museum and community partners.\r\nThroughout the listening party, we will pause for conversation, inviting participants to respond to what they hear, ask questions, make connections, and engage directly with teacher-researchers about the possibilities and tensions of this work.\r\nAfter listening, participants will be invited to add to the Living Archive and consider what histories, people, places, or stories need to be remembered in their own communities. Together, we will consider how living archives and praxibitions might transcend the boundaries of literacy research and advance teaching, learning, and inquiry in participants\u2019 own contexts.","Presenter":["Barrett Rosser","Kyra Williams","Njemele Anderson","Antoine Stroman","Jenee Lee","Denzel Murdaugh"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Morgan State University","Philadelphia Writing Project (PhilWP)"],"PresenterEmail":["barrett.rosser@morgan.edu"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1608,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1791321250,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Noticing Growth, Not Grading It: Human Skills for an AI Age","Handle":"noticing_growth-not_grading_it--human_skills_for_an_ai_age","ShortDescription":"As AI absorbs routine cognitive work, which human skills should schools grow on purpose, and how? ADAPTABLE is a nine-skill K-12 framework still in progress, meant to help teachers notice and support each child's growth, not grade it. Let's review, challenge and reshape it together.","Description":"Schools have long claimed to teach collaboration, resilience and judgment, then organized the day around content coverage and test scores. Generative AI makes that gap harder to ignore: if a chatbot can draft the essay and solve the problem set, what is school uniquely for?\r\n\r\nADAPTABLE is my attempt at an answer, still a work in progress and not yet implemented. It names nine human skills, from attention and self-direction to systems thinking, perseverance, collaboration, AI fluency, making, learning agility, and emotional and ethical intelligence, each with observable growth from kindergarten through twelfth grade. The aspiration is something concrete for classroom teachers: not a one-off digital literacy lesson, but a way of noticing each child's growth over years and supporting it on purpose. Observation to assist growth, not to grade it.\r\n\r\nI'll take ten minutes on what it is and why it exists. Then I'll open it up, because the assumptions behind it keep shifting as AI changes what students do and what schools are for. I see ADAPTABLE as something that should evolve as our experiences change, which is why I bring it as a conversation.\r\n\r\nTogether we'll ask: Where in a school's day do these skills actually grow? How can teachers observe growth without turning it into another grade? Is AI fluency one skill among nine, or the context that changes all the others?\r\n\r\nMy hope is that we review, ideate and arrive at answers that hold something new for everyone, the framework included.","Link":[],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"The session runs 90 minutes. Only the first ten are mine: a one-page overview of the nine skills, the problem they respond to, and where the framework stands as a draft.\r\n\r\nMapping (30 min). Small groups get a large-format \"school day\" map with lanes for core subjects, advisory\/SEL time, specials, unstructured time, assessment and reporting, and school culture. Groups place cards for the nine skills where they actually grow in their own schools today, not where they should. A short gallery walk compares patterns across grade levels and school types.\r\n\r\nObserving growth, not grading it (30 min). Groups work with a sample of draft classroom observation indicators for one skill, such as perseverance, and test them against their own students. What would a teacher actually notice in a normal week? What makes an observation helpful to a child, and what turns it into a label? A fishbowl conversation with an open chair follows, where we try to name design principles for an observation system that serves growth.\r\n\r\nBuilding it together (20 min). Everything goes into a shared, openly editable document linked from the EduCon conversation page: maps, revised indicators, open questions, and proposed changes to the framework. I'll publish an updated version afterward that credits contributors and shows what the room changed.","Presenter":["Alexander Demushkane"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Katherine Delmar Burke School"],"PresenterEmail":["alexander.demushkane@burkes.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"Thank you for considering my late submission.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1578,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790820296,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Pause Before You Respond: Digital Discernment and Dialogue Across Difference","Handle":"pause_before_you_respond--digital_discernment_and_dialogue_across_difference","ShortDescription":"What helps students pause, question, and stay in conversation when a polarizing video hits their feed? Using a social media clip and tools from the Or Initiative's Digital Discernment and Civil Discourse Toolbox, we'll experience these discussions ourselves, then talk through what it takes to facilitate them with students.","Description":"Students meet polarizing issues through fast, algorithm-driven feeds, and they bring those issues into classrooms every day. Teachers are expected to facilitate these conversations with little support.\r\n\r\nThe Or Initiative at Chapman University partners with teachers and students to study and support these conversations. Our framework centers four competencies: digital discernment, civil discourse, civic and social identity navigation, and intellectual humility. Digital discernment comes first, because students can't discuss an issue productively until they understand how the content reached them and what it is designed to do.\r\n\r\nThis conversation starts with experience, not explanation. Participants will watch a real social media video together and use toolbox protocols as themselves, not role-playing students. We'll then compare how different tools shaped the discussion and connect those observations to the four competencies.\r\n\r\nFrom there, the conversation turns to questions we are still working on with teachers, including:\r\n\r\nHow do you choose content that feels relevant to students without derailing the curriculum?\r\nWhen does a topic feel too risky to discuss, and with which students?\r\nWhat does intellectual humility look like in a teenager, and how do we recognize it?\r\nHow can these tools fit into content-heavy courses like literature-based English classes?\r\n\r\nWe'll share what we've heard from teachers and students piloting the toolbox, including student journalists at Yorba Linda High School, but participants' experiences will drive the second half. Everyone leaves with access to the tools and ideas from colleagues facing the same challenges.","Link":["https:\/\/orinitiative.org\/"],"Audience":["High School","Middle School"],"Practice":"he session is built around participation, with very little time spent presenting.\r\n\r\nExperience first: Participants watch a short social media video together, then break into small groups. Each group uses a different toolbox protocol to discuss it on chart paper, engaging as themselves.\r\nCompare and connect: Groups share how their protocol changed the conversation. We build the framework from their observations rather than presenting it up front.\r\nOpen questions: Pairs, then the full room, take on the questions above. We capture ideas on a shared document participants keep after the session.\r\nAnalog exit: Index cards capture one idea to try, one remaining question, and one colleague to share it with. We use the questions to shape our ongoing work with teachers.","Presenter":["Jamie Gravell"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Or Initiative","Chapman University"],"PresenterEmail":["jgravell@chapman.edu"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"We would love to bring the student co-editors-in-chief and the teacher who is part of our national Educator Community, but they may not be able to travel to Philly. We have teachers in CT and NYC who might be more likely to be able to attend & would love to have them participate if the conversation submission is accepted.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1560,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790085151,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Rethinking the Systems We Ask Students with Learning Differences to Navigate","Handle":"rethinking_the_systems_we_ask_students_with_learning_differences_to_navigate","ShortDescription":"What happens when we stop asking students to fit the systems we have built and start asking whether those systems fit the learners in front of us? Using students with learning differences as a lens, this conversation will challenge participants to examine the structures schools often treat as fixed\u2014from pacing, schedules, and assessment to intervention, executive-function expectations, and definitions of independence. Together, we will explore where student support ends and system redesign begins, asking a bigger question: What could school look like if we intentionally designed it around how students learn?","Description":"Schools often devote significant time and resources to helping students become more successful within existing educational systems. We teach students to organize more effectively, work independently, manage time, read increasingly complex texts, communicate their thinking, meet deadlines, and navigate established schedules and expectations. But what happens when we turn the question around? Instead of continually asking how students can better navigate school, what might we learn by asking how school could be better designed for the students actually sitting in our classrooms?\r\n\r\nThis conversation draws from the experience of a K\u20138 school intentionally designed for students with learning differences, including dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, ADHD, and executive-function challenges. Working with learners who have often struggled within traditional educational structures provides a unique opportunity to reconsider assumptions about pacing, intervention, assessment, independence, instructional design, scheduling, and academic rigor.\r\n\r\nParticipants will examine common school structures and identify which elements we tend to treat as fixed\u2014and why. Small-group conversations will invite participants to take familiar student challenges and \u201cflip the problem,\u201d shifting from \u201cHow do we help this student fit the system?\u201d to \u201cWhat could we change about the system or learning environment?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe conversation will also explore an important tension: If we design schools to be increasingly responsive to individual learners, how do we simultaneously prepare young people to navigate a world that will not always adapt to them?\r\n\r\nIn connection with EduCon\u2019s question, \u201cWho are the kids the world will need?\u201d, participants will consider whether independence should mean doing everything without support\u2014or developing the self-awareness, agency, strategies, and ability to advocate for the conditions needed to succeed.\r\n\r\nRather than leaving with a prescribed model for redesigning school, participants will collaboratively identify principles of learner-centered design and one assumption within their own educational setting that may be worth challenging.","Link":["https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/julie-harakal-7a992a238\/"],"Audience":["Middle School","Elementary School"],"Practice":"This session will be structured as a facilitated conversation rather than a traditional presentation. After a brief introduction and learner-profile provocation, participants will be asked, \u201cWhere is the problem located\u2014the learner, the instruction, the environment, or the system?\u201d Their responses will establish the starting point for our conversation.\r\n\r\nParticipants will then engage in a \u201cWhat Do We Treat as Fixed?\u201d protocol, collaboratively identifying school structures and expectations that are rarely questioned, such as schedules, pacing, deadlines, assessment formats, intervention structures, and definitions of independence.\r\n\r\nIn small groups, participants will use a \u201cFlip the Problem\u201d protocol. Each group will examine a familiar student challenge, but instead of asking, \u201cHow do we fix or support this student?\u201d they will ask, \u201cWhat could we redesign in the instruction, environment, or system?\u201d Groups will share their thinking and identify common themes.\r\n\r\nWe will then facilitate a whole-group dialogue around a productive tension: Where is the line between designing responsive environments for learners and preparing students to navigate a world that will not always adapt to them?\r\n\r\nRather than providing participants with predetermined conclusions, the group will collaboratively develop a set of learner-centered design principles based on the conversation. Participants will close by responding to one final question: \u201cWhat is one thing your school treats as fixed that might not actually need to be?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe facilitator\u2019s role throughout will be to pose questions, surface differing perspectives, connect ideas across groups, and create space for participants to challenge both existing systems and one another\u2019s assumptions.","Presenter":["Julie Harakal"],"PresenterAffiliation":["The Hillside School"],"PresenterEmail":["jharakal@hillsideschool.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1606,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1791165329,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Rooted and Rising: Students, Alumni, and Community Members as Our Future Faculty","Handle":"rooted_and_rising--students-alumni-and_community_members_as_our_future_faculty","ShortDescription":"What if the teachers our students need are in our hallways? South Bronx Community is growing its own: students in education internships, alumni returning as staff, community members stepping into classrooms, and teachers becoming leaders. We'll explore how a school builds its future faculty from the community it serves.","Description":"This fall, Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in The New York Times Magazine about enrolling her daughter in a segregated, high-poverty New York City public school, and about what that choice cost her child. The essay reopened a painful national debate. Should families committed to public schools serving Black and Latino children have to choose between their values and their own kids? We think part of the answer lies in who teaches in those schools, and what they believe students can do.\r\nAt South Bronx Community, we are building a pipeline with four stages:\r\n\u2022 Students explore teaching through a new NYC Public Schools initiative. Students take an exposure course for careers in education and are also placed into education related internships by our Career Team.\r\n\u2022 Alumni return as interns, tutors, and staff while in college.\r\n\u2022 Community beacons from the neighborhood step into classroom and youth development roles.\r\n\u2022 School leaders grow from within our own teaching staff.\r\nEducators who come from the community bring deep knowledge of students' lives. Just as important, they hold high expectations because they know firsthand what our students can do. \r\nIn this conversation, we'll share how each stage works, and what support keeps them in. The kids the world will need include the adults who will one day teach the next generation.","Link":["https:\/\/southbronxcommunity.org\/"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"1. Opening question (5 min): Participants talk in pairs about who first made them think they could teach, and whether that person came from their own community.\r\n2. Pipeline stories (15 min): Gaylene, Asia, Dena and McKenzie each tell the story of one person moving through a stage, ideally with that person present or on a video call.\r\n3. Fishbowl on the hard question (15 min): Using the Hannah-Jones essay as a text, an inner circle discusses whether grow-your-own pipelines can deliver both community connection and the academic rigor families demand.\r\n4. Pipeline audit (15 min): Small groups map their own schools' pathways into teaching, marking where candidates are lost and one support that could hold them.\r\n5. Harvest (5 min): We collect strategies, partner programs, and open questions in a shared doc.","Presenter":["Gaylene Alexis","Asia Cruz","Dena Ferreira","Mckenzie Samuels"],"PresenterAffiliation":[],"PresenterEmail":["gaylene.alexis@southbronxcommunity.org","asia.cruz@southbronxcommunity.org","dena.ferreira@southbronxcommunity.org","mckenzie.samuels@southbronxcommunity.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1614,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1792066694,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Small is All: Transforming Equity Facilitator Development through Deeper Learning","Handle":"small_is_all--transforming_equity_facilitator_development_through_deeper_learning","ShortDescription":"In this interactive session, leaders from the Office of Professional Learning within SDP share the evolution of School Leader Equity Pathways PD \u2014 and how we transformed professional learning by developing our own Equity Facilitators: a purposeful community of committed, equity-centered school leaders.\r\nGrounded in \u201csmall is all\u201d from Holding Change by adrienne maree brown and deeper learning, this work reimagines adult learning as deep, relational, and transformative. Rather than delivering traditional, one-off PD, we invested in growing facilitators who could cultivate transferable, participant and equity-centered leadership practices across the system.","Description":"In this session, representatives from the Office of Professional Learning within the School District of Philadelphia will tell the story of the evolution of School Leader Equity Pathways PD through the intentional development of our Equity Facilitators, composed of a group of committed, equity-centered school and central office leaders. Our Equity PD Pathways  represent an innovative approach to adult professional learning centering deeper learning practices, and is guided by adrienne maree brown\u2019s (amb) book, Holding Change. The book\u2019s mantra that \u201csmall is all\u201d motivated a shift to enhance participants\u2019 learning experiences by developing 60+ equity PD facilitators to impart deep and transferable learning. The \u201csmall is all\u201d approach is a model for leaders to take back to their schools, reverberating the benefits to their own teachers and students. Moreover, this model of facilitator development and professional learning, also informed by the National SEED Project, counters more traditional PD commonly experienced by teachers and leaders.","Link":["http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/katie-culver-9289706"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Outcomes \u2013 \r\nParticipants can expect to experience and\/or take back to their schools\/organizations: \r\nSupport and practices to develop and sustain systemwide equity-centered leadership \r\nUnderstand the explicit connection revealing facilitator development as a transformational approach to leadership development \r\nExperience strategies to elevate and innovate professional learning including high leverage engagement strategies and deeper learning\r\nThis will be accomplished through: \r\n1. Introduction & Inclusive Welcome: Name Stories\r\n2. Surveying the room: What is your experience with Professional Learning? Share a time when you experienced transformative Professional Learning & why. Do you have access to equity centered professional learning or other PD that supports your role, identities, and experiences? Do you have access to development to help you advance your career?\r\n3. Brief overview of the history and logistics of School Leader Equity Pathways PD \r\n4. Describe how our facilitator development has evolved to focus on \u201csmall is all\u201d and deeper learning\r\n5. Participant reflection\/share out of what\u2019s something new\/different they\u2019d want to do \r\n--What is one small thing that you heard that will shift the way you think about and implement professional development? \r\n--Design thinking activity - take the one small thing and use the Crazy 8\u2019s activity to dream up ways to design and iterate upon this practice \r\n--IQI \u2013 Insight, question, idea\r\nQuestion: Consider what change in participants' behavior or opinion would indicate you have been successful in your goals. There may be multiple indicators for each of your goals.","Presenter":["Dr. Katie Culver"],"PresenterAffiliation":["The School District of Philadelphia"],"PresenterEmail":["kculver@philasd.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"I will recruit one of our equity facilitators to present with me!","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1605,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1791164838,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Social-Emotional Learning is Not an Add On","Handle":"social-emotional_learning_is_not_an_add_on","ShortDescription":"Many schools purchase programs or build curriculums for social-emotional learning. Teachers often then struggle with implementation because their time is overloaded. Also, treating SEL as an add on makes it less meaningful. SEL instruction is at its best when it's integrated with ongoing instruction.  How can that be done?","Description":"In this session we will explore common classroom challenges (such as disengagement, failed conversations, poor group dynamics) and identify missing or underdeveloped skills that could be impacting that challenge. We will then discuss ways those skills could be taught in tandem with content instruction as well as possibilities for creating living anchor charts with students.","Link":["http:\/\/jenorr.com"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Project Zero thinking routines","Presenter":["Jennifer Orr"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Alice West Fleet Elementary School"],"PresenterEmail":["jenorr@gmail.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1569,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790603103,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Soft Skills Matter- How To Develop With Today's Youth","Handle":"soft_skills_matter-_how_to_develop_with_today-s_youth","ShortDescription":"What soft skills will the next generation need-how do we help?","Description":"Social Emotional Learning (SEL), Soft Skills, Life Skills-whatever label you put on them-how do actually engage students in wanting to learn them?   We know these skills can lead not only to career success but more importantly a better life.   We also know the world needs the next generation more than ever before.   What are the specific skills the do we need to help them develop and how?  How do teach without it feeling like a lecture from an adult?","Link":["http:\/\/www.boostprogram.com"],"Audience":["High School"],"Practice":"This is an open discussion about the skills today's students will need in the future and how we can actually engage and develop them","Presenter":["Rob Heller"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Rob teaches a mini course on Boost at SLA"],"PresenterEmail":["rheller@boostprogram.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"My idea would be for Jeremy or Chris to participate and maybe try and bring a few students that did the mini course to talk about what stood out in the Boos t program","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1607,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1791238798,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Step 0 - Are students ready for what's next?","Handle":"step_0_-_are_students_ready_for_what-s_next","ShortDescription":"We ask eighteen-year-olds to make one of the biggest decisions of their lives before many of them are really ready to. What would it look like to give them time to choose, and what can we do to start building it?","Description":"Every spring we ask eighteen-year-olds to make one of the biggest decisions of their lives: where to go, what to study, how much debt to take on. The developmental science says most of them are not ready. The National Academies place the end of adolescence in the mid-twenties, when identity, planning, and the capacity to hold to a hard decision are still forming. Young people with means get extra time anyway, through gap years, family networks, and room to change course. Most of our students do not. By age 24, about 16 percent of young people from the lowest-income families hold a bachelor's degree, against 58 percent from the highest.\r\n\r\nWorkshop U is a free, nine-month bridge year in Philadelphia built on an idea we call Step 0: give young adults time to build a vision they are actually attached to, the skills to create opportunity, and people in their corner, before asking them to commit. Three cohorts in, much of what we have learned points back to high school.\r\n\r\nThis conversation is less about our program than the question underneath it. What are we asking seniors to decide, and what have we given them to decide with? What would change if we measured success differently, not just where they were accepted? We will bring what we have learned, and we want to hear what you are seeing through your experience.","Link":["https:\/\/www.workshopu.org"],"Audience":["High School"],"Practice":"We open by asking everyone to think back to the decision they made at eighteen: how sure were they, who helped, and what made it stick or come apart. Pairs share, then the room names the patterns.\r\n\r\nNext, a short framing from us (Workshop U) on Step 0 and what three cohorts have taught us.\r\n\r\nThen participants try a compressed version of a tool our students use. In small groups, they sketch two or three different possible futures for a senior they know, and talk through what it would take to make each one feel real and what a high school could build toward it before graduation.\r\n\r\nWe close by building a shared document together: concrete things high schools can do to give seniors more of what Step 0 gives our students.","Presenter":["Simon Hauger"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Workshop U","Workshop School"],"PresenterEmail":["shauger@workshopu.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1593,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790903847,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Student Advocacy: How teaching students about civil rights can develop critical thinking","Handle":"student_advocacy--how_teaching_students_about_civil_rights_can_develop_critical_thinking","ShortDescription":"This conversation explores our student advocacy program in schools. Currently, we have a student advocacy program in several districts across Pennsylvania including Philadelphia, Norristown, Lancaster and Reading. We will explore topics from our core curriculum.","Description":"This multi week program engages youth in exploring social justice \r\nadvocacy, civil rights history, and relevant issues facing society today. Through interactive discussions, historical examples, real-world applications, and advocacy exercises, participants will develop a strong understanding of social justice and learn how to be effective advocates for positive change. Each week will include a 1-hour interactive \r\nsession, designed to be dynamic, informative, and motivating.","Link":[],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Our conversation will require participants to engage in small group discussions and stations focused on the topics in the curriculum we teach. The conversation will be broken up into 10 stations. Each station will be a topic explored in the curriculum. The following are topics: Introduction to Social Justice and Advocacy, The History of Civil Rights & Icons, Understanding and Challenging Bias and Discrimination, Intersectionality and Gender Equity, Culture, Pride and Appropriation, Building a Just Future: Your Role as an Advocate, Environmental Justice and Activism, School-to-Prison Pipeline, Conflict Resolution and Exploring the Intersection of Discrimination and Trauma. Participants at each station will be given information on the topics and discuss it as a group. The primary questions at each station will be: What are the prior knowledge will students need to explore this topic? How does this topic help expand critical thinking? Is this a topic that you explore in your classroom or school? What teaching strategies could we use to get students engaged in this topic? Each station will share the answers to these questions with the whole group. I will give direct instruction and facilitate the discussion on how we build critical thinking in students through these topics. At the end of the conversation, participants will leave with a clear vision on chart paper of what they learned  and how to facilitate these kinds of topics.","Presenter":["Fatim Byrd"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission"],"PresenterEmail":["fbyrd@pa.gov"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1617,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1792241899,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Supporting the Work of Teaching Now","Handle":"supporting_the_work_of_teaching_now-2","ShortDescription":"What does meaningful support for the work of teaching look like today? Participants will examine changing demands, explore the difference between helpful support and additional work, and identify shared responsibilities and practical changes that create more room for teaching, learning, and human connection.","Description":"When we say the work of teaching needs support, what do we mean\u2014and whose perspectives shape that support?\r\n\r\nTeaching involves instructional decisions, relationships, communication, new tools, and changing expectations. Some demands are visible; others are understood only by the people carrying them. This conversation invites participants to examine the work as it is experienced today and consider what meaningful support requires.\r\n\r\nWe will ask: What has changed about the work? Which expectations strengthen learning, and which compete for limited time? When does an offer of support become another task? What conditions allow people to respond well to the needs of their learning communities?\r\n\r\nParticipants will contribute experiences from their settings, examine assumptions, and consider how different roles influence the support people need and can provide.\r\n\r\nUsing shared scenarios and structured dialogue, we will develop strategies that address time, communication, resources, relationships, and professional learning. We will consider immediate actions alongside changes that require sustained collaboration.\r\n\r\nParticipants will leave with a clearer understanding of meaningful support and one concrete commitment within their influence to improve the conditions for teaching and learning.","Link":[],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Participants will privately reflect on the prompt, \u201cA part of the work I wish others understood is\u2026\u201d Small groups will use equal speaking turns to share perspectives, followed by clarifying questions.\r\n\r\nGroups will examine a realistic school scenario, identify the needs of those involved, and propose practical support actions. Participants will test each suggestion by asking: Who benefits? Who carries the work? What would make this support useful?\r\n\r\nA whole-group exchange will surface agreements and unresolved tensions. Participants will close with a commitment within their influence. Shared scenarios and an option to pass will allow participation without requiring personal disclosure.","Presenter":["Knikole Taylor"],"PresenterAffiliation":[],"PresenterEmail":["knikole.taylor@gmail.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"Seating that supports small-group conversation is requested. Participants are welcome to bring a question or challenge related to supporting the work of teaching. No advance preparation is required.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1600,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1791162032,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Talk Is the New Text? Orality, Literacy, and Assessment in the Age of AI","Handle":"talk_is_the_new_text-orality-literacy-and_assessment_in_the_age_of_ai","ShortDescription":"When AI can write the essay, what does it mean to know something? Drawing on South Bronx Community's discussion-centered mid-year PBATs, we'll look at the shifting balance between orality and literacy. Together we'll ask how assessment can prepare students to think, speak, and write in their own voices.","Description":"In many ways our students live in an oral world again. Video, voice notes, livestreams, and podcasts shape how they learn and argue. Meanwhile, generative AI has made polished writing almost effortless to produce. Walter Ong called this \"secondary orality,\" and it raises hard questions for schools built around the written word. If a machine can draft the essay, where does the evidence of a student's thinking live?\r\nThis year at South Bronx Community, our mid-year PBATs used discussion-based protocols as the anchor for assessment. Students showed what they knew by building on, challenging, and pulling together each other's ideas in real time. Several teachers also paired these discussions with written performance tasks. [Insert a real observation, e.g., which students surprised you in discussion versus on paper, and what writing still did that talk couldn't.]\r\nIn this conversation, SBC leaders and teachers will share student work and the protocols behind it. Then we'll open the floor to the questions we're still working through. What does speaking reveal that writing hides, and the reverse? Should an oral defense count for more when writing can be outsourced? How do we keep writing a tool for thinking, not just a product?\r\nThe kids the world will need can think out loud with others and write with clarity and voice. Let's work out together how to assess both.","Link":["https:\/\/southbronxcommunity.org\/"],"Audience":["High School"],"Practice":"We'll run the session with the same kind of protocol our students used in their PBATs, so participants experience it rather than hear about it.\r\n1. Opening (10 min): Chris and Rob frame the orality\/literacy tension. Two teachers share short clips or excerpts of PBAT discussions next to the matching student writing.\r\n2. Fishbowl seminar (25 min): An inner circle of presenters and volunteers discusses a provocation, such as \"In an AI world, the oral defense matters more than the paper.\" Open seats let outer-circle participants rotate in.\r\n3. Talk-to-text reflection (10 min): Participants write for five minutes about what shifted in their thinking, then discuss what the writing captured that the talk didn't.\r\n4. Harvest (10 min): We co-build a shared doc of protocols, rubric language, and open questions for participants to take home.","Presenter":["Christipher Fleming","Robert Gulya","Ramon Razon","Sarah Popa"],"PresenterAffiliation":[],"PresenterEmail":["christipher.fleming@southbronxcommunity.org","robert.gulya@southbronxcommunity.org","ramon.razon@southbronxcommunity.org","sarah.popa@southbronxcommunity.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1601,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1791162151,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Talk Is the New Text? Orality, Literacy, and Assessment in the Age of AI","Handle":"talk_is_the_new_text-orality-literacy-and_assessment_in_the_age_of_ai-2","ShortDescription":"When AI can write the essay, what does it mean to know something? Drawing on South Bronx Community's discussion-centered mid-year PBATs, we'll look at the shifting balance between orality and literacy. Together we'll ask how assessment can prepare students to think, speak, and write in their own voices.","Description":"In many ways our students live in an oral world again. Video, voice notes, livestreams, and podcasts shape how they learn and argue. Meanwhile, generative AI has made polished writing almost effortless to produce. Walter Ong called this \"secondary orality,\" and it raises hard questions for schools built around the written word. If a machine can draft the essay, where does the evidence of a student's thinking live?\r\nThis year at South Bronx Community, our mid-year PBATs used discussion-based protocols as the anchor for assessment. Students showed what they knew by building on, challenging, and pulling together each other's ideas in real time. Several teachers also paired these discussions with written performance tasks. [Insert a real observation, e.g., which students surprised you in discussion versus on paper, and what writing still did that talk couldn't.]\r\nIn this conversation, SBC leaders and teachers will share student work and the protocols behind it. Then we'll open the floor to the questions we're still working through. What does speaking reveal that writing hides, and the reverse? Should an oral defense count for more when writing can be outsourced? How do we keep writing a tool for thinking, not just a product?\r\nThe kids the world will need can think out loud with others and write with clarity and voice. Let's work out together how to assess both.","Link":["https:\/\/southbronxcommunity.org\/"],"Audience":["High School"],"Practice":"We'll run the session with the same kind of protocol our students used in their PBATs, so participants experience it rather than hear about it.\r\n1. Opening (10 min): Chris and Rob frame the orality\/literacy tension. Two teachers share short clips or excerpts of PBAT discussions next to the matching student writing.\r\n2. Fishbowl seminar (25 min): An inner circle of presenters and volunteers discusses a provocation, such as \"In an AI world, the oral defense matters more than the paper.\" Open seats let outer-circle participants rotate in.\r\n3. Talk-to-text reflection (10 min): Participants write for five minutes about what shifted in their thinking, then discuss what the writing captured that the talk didn't.\r\n4. Harvest (10 min): We co-build a shared doc of protocols, rubric language, and open questions for participants to take home.","Presenter":["Christipher Fleming","Robert Gulya","Ramon Razon","Sarah Popa"],"PresenterAffiliation":[],"PresenterEmail":["christipher.fleming@southbronxcommunity.org","robert.gulya@southbronxcommunity.org","ramon.razon@southbronxcommunity.org","sarah.popa@southbronxcommunity.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1556,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1788475529,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"The Agency Gap: Creating Space for Becoming","Handle":"the_agency_gap--creating_space_for_becoming","ShortDescription":"The world is changing faster than any curriculum can predict. School is still designed around arrival: arrive at the right answer, the standard, the grade, etc. What if our job is not to prepare children to arrive, but to help them become people capable of navigating, and shaping, what's next?","Description":"What if the problem isn\u2019t that students no longer want to play the game of school, but that they\u2019ve begun to recognize that the game itself is built around a fallacy: the fallacy of arrival?\r\n\r\nSchool has traditionally promised students that if they learn the right things, earn the right grades, and accumulate the right credentials, they will eventually arrive at some fixed destination: success, college, a career, adulthood, readiness. But in a chaotic and constantly changing world, there may be no such destination. The future will demand not just what students know, but their capacity to adapt, imagine, create, navigate uncertainty, and shape what comes next.\r\n\r\nThis workshop explores what it might mean to reimagine school as a site of becoming rather than a pathway to arrival.\r\nTogether, we will explore three interconnected ideas: becoming, micro-agency, and thinking like an artist.\r\n\r\nBecoming shifts our focus from what students have achieved to who they are becoming and what possibilities they are learning to imagine. Micro-agency asks how small, meaningful experiences of choice, action, experimentation, and influence can help students see themselves as people who can shape their learning and their world. Thinking like an artist offers a mindset for uncertainty: noticing closely, asking questions, experimenting, making, revising, and embracing ambiguity.\r\n\r\nThe goal is not to make school more engaging within the existing game, but to ask a more fundamental question: What if we redesigned the game around becoming?","Link":["https:\/\/www.growcreativethinkers.com\/"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"-Interactive experiences to process and reflect on\r\n-Variety of thinking routines","Presenter":["Jason Blair"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Dublin City Schools"],"PresenterEmail":["blair_jason@dublinschools.net"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"Looking forward to this. Attended and presented at my first one last year and loved it!\r\n\r\nCan't wait!","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1623,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1792370746,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"The Compass & The Canvas: ReHumanizing Innovation","Handle":"the_compass-the_canvas--rehumanizing_innovation","ShortDescription":"How might we design spaces that help learners, educators, families, and communities alike?  How might these spaces support those who need guidance and direction, calm and focus, while also empowering building and making, designing and creating?  Explore the Success & Innovation Center model with an eye toward remixing, renovating, and reimagining what innovation means in 2026.","Description":"Innovation has long been shorthand for technology.   In most recent years, it has become synonymous with artificial intelligence.  Why have these associations taken root? To what extent do these understandings align with the textbook definitions of innovation?  How might we foster innovative thinking in our schools and leverage that energy for authentic growth and changemaking  These are just a few of the questions we hope to discuss in a highly interactive experience.","Link":["https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/danryder207"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Participants will  start this conversation by participating in a brief design challenging, creating learning spaces mashed-up from other spaces.  These rapid-fire prototypes will lead into conversations about innovation and change making in a \"learner congress\" model -- a representative from each smaller design group attending a discussion in the middle .. the rest listening before the representative returns to the group to guide the discussion among their team before redesinging their spaces based on the conversation in the room.  The ultimate goal: to design spaces in our schools and communities that support human-centered empathy-fueled problem solving.","Presenter":["Dan Ryder"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Community Regional Charter School"],"PresenterEmail":["danryder207@gmail.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"we.are.EDU.CON.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1565,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790195262,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Walking Our Way into Curiosity","Handle":"walking_our_way_into_curiosity","ShortDescription":"Inquiry stands at the heart of 'progressive' and 'learner-centered' education, yet Curiosity as practice can still feel elusive. We typically ask how we might create conditions for students to become more curious. But what if we first began with ourselves, intentionally practicing Curiosity together as human beings, not simply as educators?","Description":"Inquiry stands at the heart of 'progressive' and 'learner-centered' education, yet Curiosity as practice can still feel elusive. We typically ask how we might create conditions for students to become more curious. But what if we first began with ourselves, intentionally practicing Curiosity together as human beings, not simply as educators?","Link":["https:\/\/www.bonfire-workshop.com\/"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Inquiry stands at the heart of 'progressive' and 'learner-centered' education, yet Curiosity as practice can still feel elusive. We typically ask how we might create conditions for students to become more curious. But what if we first began with ourselves, intentionally practicing Curiosity together as human beings, not simply as educators? \r\n\r\nWHAT WE'LL DO: We'll begin this conversation by getting out of our seats. And by going for a walk. Outside. Yes, we'll literally go for a walk together outside on the sidewalk. No matter the weather or temperature. For the entire session. \r\n\r\nHOW WILL WE EXPERIENCE THIS? Ultimately, we'll walk and talk. Specifically, we'll gather as a group outside SLA to hear the 'prompt' and 'protocol'. You'll then walk 'shoulder-to-shoulder' with 3 different partners, all reflecting upon the same question as you walk a set route. After your walk, we'll gather as a group to share reflections. \r\n\r\nWHY DOES THIS MATTER? First, we will all get to meet new colleagues in an unexpected way. Second, we'll let (urban) nature and a bit of exercise spark our curiosity muscles and stretch our assumptions. Third, instead of discussing inquiry and curiosity as concepts, we'll be invited to experience them in real time. Fourth, we'll be challenged to assume less and explore more; similarly, we'll be challenged to share our real selves, not just our professional personas. Fifth, we'll learn techniques we can 'bring back' to the classroom'; better, we'll consider 'who we are' no matter where we are.","Presenter":["Christian Long"],"PresenterAffiliation":[],"PresenterEmail":["christian@bonfire-workshop.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"If possible, can you schedule this session a) right before lunch on Day 2 or 3 OR b) at the end of the day on Day 2?\r\n\r\nAlso, with the session being entirely outdoors, it'll be important:\r\n\r\n- to have everyone meet at a ground floor exit door rather than in a classroom -- OR to have the classroom be right next to a similar ground floor exit\r\n- to 'advertise' that everyone needs to wear appropriate clothing to be outside for the entire session\r\n\r\nNOTE: In 'dangerous' winter weather, this can all be done inside the building -- using the halls (etc) as the 'sidewalk'. BUT every effort will be made to have this take place entirely outside.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1566,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790442067,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Want to Know Who Rules the World in 2056?","Handle":"want_to_know_who_rules_the_world_in_2056","ShortDescription":"K-12 is debating screen time. I believe we're starting that conversation too late. I'm an edtech executive with a PhD who has spent my career advocating for the effective use of tech for teaching and learning. The first five years, before kids ever enter our classrooms, are when we build the leaders who will face adulthood in a world increasingly shaped by AI. If kids under two average an hour of screens a day, who will be leading the world in 2056?","Description":"In the first five years, a child's brain forms more than one million neural connections every second. The ones that get used stay. The rest get pruned.\r\nI was an elementary teacher when my school did intensive professional development on brain-based research. I treated my own kids' childhood like a lesson plan, anchored to science, not guesswork. Portable screens didn't exist. Thirty years later, I get to watch how it played out.\r\nHere's what I keep noticing: the conditions that build an AI-ready adult are the same ones that build a toddler who can read a room, hold a conversation, and pay attention to another human being. None of that starts with a screen. All of it starts with us.\r\nWhen I talk with early childhood directors and principals, I hear growing concern about the needs kids bring with them to kindergarten roundup. Those needs follow children through K-12. We're seeing kids who struggle to sit with discomfort, kids with more behavioral challenges, and kids who spent their first years on screens more than any generation before them. PreK is expected to course correct. When it can't, kindergarten inherits the gap, and the cycle starts again.\r\nThat idea became The First Five: Before Screens, a newsletter building toward a book. Each chapter is anchored to a skill I believe our children will need in a future defined by AI:\r\nTalk to Her: conversation and connection\r\nBa Dum Dee Dum: rhythm, attention, and taking turns\r\nChase the Butterfly: curiosity and asking good questions\r\nAll She Wants to Do is Read: deep, sustained focus\r\nBuild Me a Rocketship: spatial reasoning and stubborn problem solving\r\nMake a Mess: unstructured discovery and creation\r\nRunning the Wrong Way Around the Bases: gross motor skills, collaboration, and emotional resilience\r\nBaking Cookies for Alene and Arthur: compassion and empathy\r\nI'll Have What She's Having: making choices and communicating them\r\nThe Puppet Show: wonder and the ability to focus\r\nShh. They Think I'm Sleeping: boredom and the ability to sit with yourself\r\nFinish the Season: follow-through when things get hard\r\nMy children are two data points. The research behind these skills is built on thousands of children.\r\nHere's the question I can't stop asking. Children under two now average about an hour of screen time a day. The World Health Organization recommends zero. If we play that map forward, who is running the world in 2056? Do we end up with world leaders, business owners, doctors, and teachers who can navigate disagreement, adapt when plans fall apart, stay curious, and show compassion? Or are we wiring something else?\r\nIn this session, let's debate and discuss. Is this the right list? What's missing? What happens to kids who didn't get these five years, and what can school do about it? And what are we doing in classrooms that quietly wears down the very skills we say the world will need?","Link":["https:\/\/drkaristubbs.substack.com\/","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/drkaristubbs\/"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Opening and the thread (12 min). I start with a challenge: are we debating screen time too late? Children under two average about an hour of screens a day. The World Health Organization recommends zero. Play that forward thirty years. Who are the leaders, business owners, doctors, and teachers of 2056? Can they disagree well, adapt, stay curious, and show compassion? I've spent my career putting technology in classrooms, and I'm here to ask us to wait. I share the brain research on why the first five years are a window that never opens again, and the story behind The First Five, with a focus on the AI-proof skills I believe kids will need. Then I ask everyone to think about the young children in their own lives: their kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews, neighbors.\r\nChalk Talk (30 min). Twelve chapter skills go on chart paper around the room, plus a thirteenth poster that asks two questions: \"What's missing?\" and \"What would a parent of a 2-year-old need to hear to actually put the phone down?\" People move silently between the posters and answer three prompts on each skill: What does this skill look like at 2? At 12? At 22? Then everyone picks a poster, stands with that group, and talks through two more questions: What do we do in school that builds this skill, and what wears it down? What can families and caregivers do in the first five years to lay the foundation?\r\nPushback round (20 min). Four Corners. I read statements like \"The kids who spent their first two years on screens will still grow up to be the leaders we need,\" \"School can't make up for the first five years,\" \"Screen-free early childhood is a privilege, not a choice,\" \"Parents already know screens are bad. They need permission, not research,\" and \"This list is missing the most important skill.\" People move to Agree, Disagree, It Depends, or Wrong Question, and each corner makes its case. I want to be argued with here. I'm writing a book on this, and I'd rather hear the hard questions from this room than from a reviewer.\r\nStop and start (15 min). If we believe these skills matter, what are we willing to change? Each person adds one thing to stop and one thing to start in a shared doc (QR code provided) that stays open after EduCon. Parents, early childhood educators, and K-12 educators each get their own column, so we can see where we agree and where we don't.\r\nClose (13 min). A few volunteers read what they added. No summary from me. The room gets the last word. Before leaving, everyone answers a three-question exit ticket about what parents need to hear, and those answers will shape the book.","Presenter":["Dr. Kari Stubbs"],"PresenterAffiliation":["The FirstFive"],"PresenterEmail":["kstubbs4@gmail.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"I raised my kids like a lesson plan, anchored to brain science, before smartphones. Thirty years later, I'm watching the results. The skills AI can't replace (conversation, curiosity, attention, reading a room) start forming at birth. Let's argue about what that means for the kids walking into our classrooms.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1585,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790887965,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"We Need to Talk About the Boys","Handle":"we_need_to_talk_about_the_boys","ShortDescription":"Boys as a group hold tremendous privilege. They are also far behind in reading, writing, graduation, mental health, social, and long-term outcomes. Our labeling of boys is often a good\/bad binary; most are complicated, sensitive, and missing something essential in their lives. Let's talk about what we can offer them.","Description":"Start with an average boy you know as a student. Most of us probably have one in mind already: bright enough (or at least clearly interested in one thing), not quite always doing the work, funny in the hallway, silent in class, and generally an emotional and academic puzzle box. Not a leader among their peers; not a destructive force. Just there, and doing\u2026. fine? \r\nWe work in a world where male privilege is real and structural, and we also work in buildings where boys are falling behind in reading and writing, graduating less prepared, lonelier than they feel comfortable admitting, and in a growing genuine mental health crisis. The privilege is real; the challenges and at-risk status of boys and young men as a group is real. In mixed-gender schools the data that paint this picture are often hidden behind collective averages girls are lifting academically, or ameliorating behaviorally. Saying the second thing out loud feels risky, so often we don't, and the silence helps nobody, least of all the boys, who have found plenty of other people online happy to explain versions of manhood to them in ways that further depress long-term prospects for healthy outcomes. \r\nThis is not a session about boys deserving more. We have been handed plenty. This conversation aims to offer a space to explore the vast space between the limiting, binary superlative positive (leader, hero, champion) and negative (toxic, incel, failure) labels we often apply to boys and young men. Teenage boys may be among the most complex, sensitive, and easily misunderstood animals on the planet, and we often lack the vocabulary, cultural permission, and strategies to normalize their challenges, and invite them to talk about them openly and with compassion. \r\nWe'll borrow provocations from Richard Reeves, Adam Price, and Scott Galloway, but the real material is us: educators from all sorts of schools in many different regions, all watching different versions of the same thing. Come with a dilemma from your own building. Leave with a few new moves and better questions to take back home.","Link":["https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/connollyjp\/"],"Audience":["High School","Middle School","Elementary School","All School Levels"],"Practice":"I'll talk for maybe twelve of the ninety minutes, and I'd like someone to hold me to that.\r\n\r\nWe each start with a boy (10 min). Everyone writes silently about one boy they are worried about and what exactly the worry is. Pairs, then a handful of shares for the whole group. Abstractions about \"boys\" can get negative fast, which is why we\u2019re staring with a specific student - keeps us honest.\r\n\r\nChalk talk (15 min). Four provocations on chart paper around the room: a data set or claim from one of our anchor texts (Reeves, Price, Galloway). Starting with a blank sheet that just says what are you seeing? People walk, write, and argue with each other in the margins. No talking!\r\n\r\nStand somewhere (20 min). A deliberately contestable statement: \"our school should run programming specifically for boys\" and everyone physically places themselves along a line. That statement is open to interpretation. We hear from several points on it. People are invited to move, and asked what moved them. Nobody has to defend where they started.\r\n\r\nDilemma groups (25 min). Groups of 4-5, each taking a lens: literacy and engagement, discipline and referral patterns, advisory and relationships, how school staffing supports our boys, and what we say to families. We\u2019ll use a consultancy protocol: one person brings a live problem, the group asks clarifying and then probing questions before anyone is allowed to offer advice. \r\n\r\nShare & Capture (15 min). Each group puts two things worth stealing and one unresolved question into a shared doc that's open all session. We read it together and name what we still disagree about, because we will.\r\n\r\nClose (5 min). One sentence each: what you'll actually try before March.\r\n\r\nNorms will go up at the start next to the EduCon Code of Conduct. I\u2019m aware this session can go sideways, and it's kinder to say so in minute one. The shared doc stays open afterward, and I'll keep adding to it.","Presenter":["JP Connolly"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Avenues New York"],"PresenterEmail":["jp.connolly@avenues-ny.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"If you have feedback on any of this language please let me know. This is a tricky one to phrase well. I did my best!","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1611,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1791488387,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"What can you make?","Handle":"what_can_you_make-2","ShortDescription":"The question, \u201cWhat can you make?\u201d centers the student and their expertise.  Making something is a powerful, personal expression of intellect.  Students welcome and embrace complexity when challenged to make something.   When we remove the distinction between vocational and academic education we mirror the complexity of our intriguing world.","Description":"Problem or project based work provides the basis for students to learn through making. The ideas in this session are largely taken from \u201cInvent to Learn\u201d by Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary S. Stager.  The question ,  How do I set up my classroom as makerspace and course learning cycles to give students the guidance, time, and space to learn through creation and iteration?  At the heart of this work is also reimagining spaces where and students learn.  A space that looks and operates differently from traditional classroom also facilitates learning differently.\r\n\r\nIf my admin approves, I will bring up to 6 current Physics students to be part of this conversation as they are my co-creators of space and learning specifically over the last 3 years.  They can speak directly to their experiences in my classes.  These students are juniors that have experienced 2-4 classes with me during their high school years.  They have been in Drawing & Design for Production class, Technical Math, Physics 1, and this year in Physics 2 classes.  They are best able to talk about what makes the learning through making harder\/easier, deeper, etc.  They can also discuss where they think it may fall short of their learning expectations and their wishes for future. All of my students are what the world needs, I offer up a few to be with us in this session. :-)","Link":["https:\/\/www.tstboces.org\/page\/p-tech-academy-overview\/"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"I will have my students co-plan sprcifics with me.  I imagine the structure of the conversation time to have 2 main parts.  The first is to start with a making session. Participants will be given a short design\/build task.  The second half is something like a panel discussion with students as panelists where I start with questions.  Q's would range from questions about the physical spaces and logistics of resources and materials all the way to projects, processes and products themselves based on individual student experiences.  After 2 or 3 warm-up questions, panelists will open it up to answer audience questions that can be facilitated into a whole group discussion once connection and collegiality are built to allow for free exchange of ideas and experiences.  A google sheet can be shared for participants to share project resources, classroom makeover resources, etc.","Presenter":["Crystal Theesfeld"],"PresenterAffiliation":["TST PTECH ACADEMY"],"PresenterEmail":["ctheesfeld@tstboces.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"If this idea is accepted, I'd be willing to write a more polished blurb.  I'm writing this in haste as I finally got up the nerve and made the time to write this proposal. I've been thinking about and attempting to do this work since I became a teacher 14 years ago.  I've never talked formally about it before.  \r\nTST PTECH is a STEAM focused early college high school in upstate New York.  The PTECH school model is grant funded by New York State.  It allows students to complete their high school requirements and take up to 6 years to also complete an associates degree.  Upon complete of PTECH, students may enter the workforce, or they may transfer to complete a 4 year degree.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1586,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790892083,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"What Does It Mean to Know Something?","Handle":"what_does_it_mean_to_know_something","ShortDescription":"If AI can give students information, explanations, and interpretations instantly, what happens to the value of building knowledge for themselves? We\u2019ve spent decades teaching and researching reading comprehension, grounded in the building of background knowledge in students. We still believe it matters. But AI forces us to ask: What is the value in the process to get to know something and how is it changing?","Description":"What happens to students when some of the work of learning can be handed to a machine?\r\n\r\nFor educators, some of the most meaningful evidence of learning isn\u2019t a test score or completed assignment. It\u2019s the moment a student makes a connection they couldn\u2019t make before. The sudden \u201caha.\u201d The first time a student realizes they have something to say. The growing confidence that comes from knowing something well enough to explain it, question it, expand on it, or use it in a new way. Not because the facts were impressive, but because the student built them, piece by piece.\r\n\r\nThose moments are often the result of knowledge accumulated, many times slowly and imperfectly. ReadWorks has spent two decades operating on the premise that background knowledge is essential to reading comprehension, and we still believe it matters. But AI is creating a live tension in that work as teachers and students increasingly encounter AI-generated texts and answers.\r\n\r\nWe\u2019ll explore what happens to those moments when AI can provide information, explanations, connections, and interpretations almost immediately. How is faster access to knowledge changing the experience of reading and learning? What happens to the growth in confidence that we\u2019ve traditionally seen? And as we remove work that may be busywork, what else might we accidentally lose, and what might we do as educators to preserve students\u2019 joy in discovering something new for themselves?","Link":["https:\/\/about.readworks.org\/"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"How We'll Make This a Conversation\r\nNo slides beyond a single opening provocation. The room does the thinking.\r\n\r\nOpen (8 min): We'll share the live version of this tension \u2014 including a real, unresolved moment from our own work where we weren't sure what to tell a teacher who asked this question point-blank. Then one prompt to the room: What's something you know that you'd be genuinely sad if a kid never bothered to know, even though a machine could tell them? No discussion yet \u2014 just everyone jots one thing down.\r\n\r\nSmall groups (20 min): Groups of 4\u20135, organized loosely by role (so a classroom teacher, a librarian, a counselor, and a parent or student end up in the same group where possible) to compare what people wrote and push on each other's answers. Guiding sub-questions on cards: Is that thing valuable because of what it is, or because of what knowing it does to how your brain works? Would your answer change for a six-year-old versus a sixteen-year-old?\r\n\r\nCross-pollination (10 min): Groups post their sharpest disagreement \u2014 not their conclusion, their disagreement \u2014 on chart paper. Everyone adds a sticky-note reaction.\r\n\r\nReframe (10 min): We'll introduce the counter-pressure we keep running into: that \"just look it up\" assumes equal, reliable access to the looking-up tools, and that knowledge is also about belonging, culture, and shared reference points, not just retrieval speed. Does that change anyone's answer?\r\n\r\nTrust protocol (15 min): In the same small groups, we'll hand out a real AI-generated answer to a genuine, slightly loaded question (something with a contested history or an underrepresented perspective at stake). Groups apply three questions we originally built for evaluating whether a printed nonfiction text was trustworthy enough for a classroom: What signals trustworthiness here? What raises a flag? Whose voice is centered \u2014 and whose is missing? The exercise is the point, not the specific answer \u2014 we want the room to feel, hands-on, whether those same questions still work when there's no author or publisher to interrogate, only a model.\r\n\r\nWhole-group conversation (20 min): Open floor, fishbowl-style if the room is large. We'll ask people to argue from where they actually land, not where they think they're supposed to land \u2014 including on whether the trust protocol changed anything for them.\r\n\r\nClose (7 min): Everyone writes one sentence: the thing I'm no longer sure about or the thing I'm more sure about than I was 90 minutes ago \u2014 and we read a few aloud before we go.","Presenter":["Dr. Susanne Nobles","Melissa Calder"],"PresenterAffiliation":["ReadWorks"],"PresenterEmail":["susanne@readworks.org","melissa@readworks.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"We are an edtech, but we are a nonprofit that provides resources for free. This would be a conversation about background knowledge and the research and science behind it. This will not be a sales pitch whatsoever. We are both local regional residents and have worked with the Philadelphia School District.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1577,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790802556,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"What Should Students Still Own in the Age of AI?","Handle":"what_should_students_still_own_in_the_age_of_ai","ShortDescription":"AI can produce more student work than ever, but what thinking, struggle, creativity, and decision-making should students still own? Participants will examine classroom scenarios and co-create a practical framework for deciding when AI supports learning and when it quietly replaces it.","Description":"Generative AI has made an old educational question newly urgent: what parts of learning should remain unmistakably the student\u2019s?\r\n\r\nThis conversation will not begin with a list of AI tools or policies. Instead, participants will examine classroom scenarios in which AI can brainstorm, explain, revise, code, calculate, research, or produce polished work. For each scenario, we will ask: What is the learning we actually value here? What should the learner still wrestle with? When does AI expand access or creativity, and when does it remove the intellectual work that produces growth?\r\n\r\nParticipants will bring perspectives from their own classrooms and schools. Small groups will sort scenarios along a continuum from \u201cAI strengthens the learning\u201d to \u201cAI replaces the learning,\u201d then challenge one another\u2019s assumptions. We will identify tensions around feedback, student agency, assessment, accessibility, creativity, and academic integrity.\r\n\r\nThe group will then co-create a simple student ownership framework educators can adapt when designing assignments or talking with students about AI. The goal is not one universal rule. It is to leave with better questions, shared vocabulary, and a practical process for thoughtful decisions.","Link":["https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/brettmichaelhannan","https:\/\/neiacademy.org\/team\/pietro-valastro\/"],"Audience":["High School","Middle School"],"Practice":"This session will be structured as a facilitated conversation rather than a lecture.\r\n\r\nParticipants will begin with a quick individual response to the question, \u201cWhat should a student never outsource to AI?\u201d Small groups will then receive classroom scenarios involving writing, research, mathematics, coding, feedback, brainstorming, and assessment. Groups will place each scenario along a continuum from \u201cAI strengthens learning\u201d to \u201cAI replaces learning\u201d and defend their decisions.\r\n\r\nGroups will rotate and challenge another group\u2019s conclusions. We will then identify areas of agreement, disagreement, and uncertainty. During the final portion, participants will collaboratively build a Student Ownership Framework containing questions educators and students can use when deciding whether and how AI belongs in a learning experience. The finished framework will be shared after the session so the conversation produces a resource that can continue evolving beyond EduCon.","Presenter":["Brett Michael Hannan","Peter Valastro"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Ursuline Academy","Dedham","Massachusetts; New England Innovation Academy","Marlborough","Massachusetts"],"PresenterEmail":["bhannan@ursulineacademy.net","pietro.valastro@neiacademy.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"The session is intentionally tool-agnostic and non-commercial. Its focus is the learning decisions educators and students make around AI rather than the promotion of any platform. Participants will leave with the collaboratively developed Student Ownership Framework and the classroom scenarios used during the conversation.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1584,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790882107,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"When and How Does the Balance Shift? AI, Convenience, and Human Agency","Handle":"when_and_how_does_the_balance_shift-ai-convenience-and_human_agency","ShortDescription":"As AI becomes more useful, when does help begin to become something else? Together, we\u2019ll explore what young people seek from digital systems, how educators can recognize and critically assess when benefit starts to erode agency, and what we can do without simply taking useful technology away.","Description":"I keep coming back to a question: as AI and digital tools become more useful, how do we know when they are helping young people do more\u2014and when that benefit begins to shift into something less helpful?\r\n\r\nStudents turn to these systems for good reasons. They may be looking for information, help, reassurance, connection, efficiency, creativity, entertainment, or simply an easier way to get something done. Often, the technology gives them exactly what they need.\r\n\r\nBut something useful can change over time. Convenience can become reliance. Support can begin to replace effort, initiative, judgment, help-seeking, or human interaction. The change may be gradual enough that we do not notice it until a pattern is already established.\r\n\r\nThese are questions I have been thinking about, talking about with others, and connecting to my work in school counseling, youth development, trauma-informed practice, and education. I do not think the answers are simple or settled.\r\n\r\nThis conversation is an invitation to look closely at that shift together. How do we recognize when benefit is becoming something else? How do we critically assess what we are seeing before deciding that it represents a problem? Can we name concerns without overreacting or pathologizing normal technology use? And once concern is warranted, what can educators actually do?\r\n\r\nIf our discussion gives us enough to work with, we will begin building something practical: signs worth noticing, questions that help us assess what may be happening, language for naming concerns, and ways educators can respond while preserving the real benefits these technologies provide.","Link":["https:\/\/www.citrs.org\/","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/nichelleahmaddiya\/"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"This session will begin with a short framing of human agency and it's connection to technology use.\r\n\r\nWe will use short situations involving young people using AI and other digital systems. In small groups and as a whole room, we will ask what the young person is seeking, what the technology is providing, where we see benefit and agency, and where we begin to notice that something may be changing.\r\n\r\nAfter each part of the conversation, we will pause and ask: What did we learn here that is worth carrying forward? Participants will build a shared Google Doc throughout the session.\r\nA major part of the conversation will focus on the turning point: when does something that was useful begin to reduce initiative, independence, judgment, connection, or willingness to tolerate effort? Are there signs educators can realistically recognize? What else could those signs mean? How can we critically assess what we are seeing rather than jumping from observation to judgment?\r\n\r\nThen we will ask the practical question: What can we do about it? Participants will revisit the emerging ideas and consider what educators might do to strengthen agency, interrupt unhealthy patterns, rebuild capacity, or help students use the same tools differently.\r\n\r\nI will facilitate the conversation and contribute perspectives from school counseling, trauma-informed practice, youth development, and education, while drawing on the knowledge and experiences participants bring. After each discussion segment, groups will add what they believe is worth carrying forward. In the second half, we will return to those contributions and begin organizing them into a practical working tool focused on what educators can recognize, critically assess, name, and respond to.\r\n\r\nThe goal is not to leave with a finished framework. It is to leave better able to recognize, critically assess, name, and respond when helpful technology may be becoming something else\u2014and, if possible, with the beginnings of a useful resource educators can continue to develop and use.","Presenter":["Nichelle Davis Ahmaddiya"],"PresenterAffiliation":["CITRS","Inc"],"PresenterEmail":["nldahmaddiya@gmail.com","Nahmaddiya@citrs.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"I plan to use a shared Google Doc as a living workspace for the conversation. Participants will add ideas throughout the session, and we will return to those contributions in the second half to begin shaping a practical resource.\r\n\r\nThe working questions will include: What are young people seeking from these systems? What are the systems providing? Where do we see human agency? When might benefit be shifting into something less helpful? What else could explain what we are noticing? And what can educators recognize, critically assess, name, and respond to in ways that strengthen agency without simply removing useful technology?","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14},{"ID":1576,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1790794789,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Who Owns the Question? AI, Curiosity, and Student Agency","Handle":"who_owns_the_question-ai-curiosity-and_student_agency","ShortDescription":"AI can answer almost any question, but what happens when we stop asking what AI can answer and start asking what learners want to discover? Through stories, reflection, and conversation, we\u2019ll explore how curiosity, lived experience, and AI can help students take greater ownership of their learning.","Description":"We are entering a time when answers are increasingly easy to generate. But if AI can answer almost anything, perhaps the more important educational question is: Who owns the question?\r\n\r\nI\u2019ll begin with a personal story about a moment when someone else\u2019s words shaped what I believed I could do, and how, decades later, listening to the stories behind our experiences helped me reclaim my own voice and sense of possibility.\r\n\r\nFrom there, we\u2019ll explore what this means for students growing up with AI. What happens when we shift from giving students questions to helping them discover questions worth pursuing? \r\n\r\nHow might stories, lived experiences, interests, images, and AI become pathways for students to uncover their own \u201cSpark Points\u201d as the moments that reveal what makes them curious, what they value, and what they want to explore?\r\n\r\nThe focus isn't on using AI to replace thinking. It is on using AI as a mirror, a thinking partner, and a pathway for exploration while keeping human curiosity, judgment, choice, and agency at the center.\r\n\r\nTogether, we'll wrestle with the possibilities and tensions: \r\n\r\nHow do we create learning environments where AI expands agency rather than quietly taking it away? \r\n\r\nWhat should remain deeply human? \r\n\r\nHow might we help students become authors and architects of their learning rather than simply consumers of answers?","Link":["https:\/\/barbarabray.net"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"I will begin with a short personal story and one question: \u201cWho owns the question?\u201d \r\n\r\nParticipants will first have a few moments of individual reflection before turning to a partner or small group to explore their responses.\r\n\r\nWe will then use a shared Google Doc as a collective thinking space. Participants will add questions, tensions, examples, and possibilities under three headings:\r\n\r\n1. What should AI help us discover?\r\n2. What should remain deeply human?\r\n3. How do we protect and grow student agency?\r\n\r\nRather than presenting a prescribed framework, I will use the stories and ideas in the room to shape the conversation. I\u2019ll periodically pause to surface patterns, contradictions, and questions emerging from the group. We will use another Google Doc or a Padlet to collect any stories and ideas from participants.\r\n\r\nWe will close by returning to the opening question: \u201cWho owns the question?\u201d and ask participants to identify one shift they might make in their own learning environment.","Presenter":["Barbara Bray"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Grow Your WHY"],"PresenterEmail":["barbara.bray@gmail.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":null,"ScheduleLocationID":null,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"I was a presenter and attendee at EduCon several times. I learned so much from the deep conversations.\r\n\r\nThrough my work as a coach, writer, speaker, and podcast host, I enjoy the stories people share with me about living on purpose and empowering learners of all ages to develop agency. \r\n\r\nI am the co-author of two books on personalized learning and the author of two books: Define Your WHY and Grow Your WHY. I am the podcast host of the Grow Your WHY Podcast (previously the Rethinking Learning Podcast).  I have almost 200 episodes and am a founding member of the Human Intelligence Movement.  \r\n\r\nI hope I get accepted to lead this conversation because AI is my thought partner. I discovered firsthand how easy it was to become reliant on AI's support and how important it is to keep the human in the mix.\r\n\r\nWhen AI makes answers easier, our job may be less about teaching students how to find answers, and more about helping them discover which questions are worth pursuing.","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":14}],"conditions":{"Status":"Accepted","ConferenceID":14},"total":37,"limit":false,"offset":false}