April Sessions

We are not teaching educators to become improvisers on a theatrical stage, we're teaching the skills of an improviser to put into practice on your stage: in meetings with parents, in the classroom, anywhere you need to operate at peak performance. Improvisational skill is the ability to adapt and excel in communication, collaboration, leadership, change readiness - all with boundless resilience to weather what's new and changing and unexpected. These are the skills for the world we work and live in now and for the future. Together we’ll make this an unforgettable experience!

Sponsored by: Scholastic Education Solutions
Dr. Hiebert will share her research-based strategies for educators to help students make connections that will allow them to not only understand the text at hand, but also to build the capacity to understand more texts at a deeper level.

Sponsored by: Scholastic Education Solutions

Join our summer learning session for school leaders on how to us kindness to connect communities and propel student achievement.
Leading literacy creator, Pam Allyn, has created an inclusive learning environment built around Scholastic’s authentic books that address and focus on togetherness through social-emotional learning and kindness. With inspiration coming by way of students engaging in reading and writing, school officials should ask “What are we doing to influence kindness in our district at large?”
Pam Allyn will be joined by Kelli Cedo, Senior Director of Early Learning and Title I in Norfolk Public Schools and Brandon White, Assistant Superintendent of Academics, with South Bend Community Schools Corporation. Our kindness panel will be moderated by Jimmy Brehm, VP of Academic Planning and Solution Development at Scholastic Education Solutions.
Tune in to hear how our panelists have successfully implemented kindness and built community within their school districts.

• How can we create a coherent K-12 curriculum and assessment system that integrates 21st Century Skills/Portrait of a Graduate Outcomes with Academic content?
• How can we develop a curriculum that “spirals” around the big ideas and essential questions?
• Are we assessing everything we claim to value (or only those things that are easiest to test and grade)?
• What evidence should we be collecting?

"Inequities can't be changed with emotions, we must have actionable plans.” In this session Dominique and Basil will explore the understanding of equity through the Equity Taxonomy from the book: Building Equity. They will dive deep with teacher, leaders, counselors, and parents to understand where equity lives within their district and schools. They will breakdown the inequities and look at how to build actionable plans for success. In this session participants will build their understanding around the five levels of the Equity Taxonomy: Physical Integration, Social Emotional Engagement, Opportunity to Learn, Instructional Excellence and Engaged and Inspired Learners. Dominique and Basil are passionate for the fight and understanding of equity, join them as they share their vision, research and stories around equity as active leaders in schools.

Participants in this session will:

• Practice using strategies that elevate students’ voices and provide all students with opportunities to be leaders, problem-solvers, and decision-makers

• Use discussion protocols to establish and reinforce clear collaborative learning guidelines in which ideas and opinions are shared frequently

• Learn processes for maintaining an efficient classroom learning community and making it more engaging, organized, equitable, and academically challenging.

For more than 25 years, Jim Knight and his colleagues have been developing, refining, and studying instructional coaching. In his new book, The Definitive Guide to Instructional Coaching, Jim has summarized that research in seven success factors that need be a part of any successful coaching program. In this session, Jim will discuss each factor, explain why it essential for success, and explain how it can be implemented. Anyone who is interested in coaching or coaching programs should find this session very useful. Participants will also receive many free tools and forms they can use to ensure that coaching flourishes in their organization.

This session is for teachers struggling with explicit direct instruction, principals primed to speak at their next staff meeting, district personnel preparing to present in front of the school board...literally anyone, who speaks in any capacity, and wants to engage, educate, and resonate in order to meet his/her desired outcome. There’s a fundamental difference between speaking and being heard; between being taught and being told. The difference lives in a person’s ability to engage and resonate. Engagement and resonance are words we throw around all the time without stopping to consider how those who actually do it well, are able to do it in the first place. Can we distill resonance? Absolutely. Can we deconstruct, teach, and replicate engagement? Most certainly. Join Weston as he takes participants on an engaging and highly participatory session focused on creating engaging learning experiences via, the ATLAS Protocol, for students of all ages. Participants will leave with tools and strategies for immediate implementation.

For a variety of reasons, most of us enter our first classrooms with little meaningful understanding of what good teaching looks like, why those attributes matter, and how to make them a reality in our classrooms. If we are lucky, we find colleagues who are somehow teaching with clarity about those things and translating that clarity into practice which, to a novice teacher, can seem like magic. Or perhaps, we find just the right book at just the right time by an author who seems to be speaking directly to us. Or we happen to be in a school where professional growth opportunities are generous, grounded in the wisdom of our profession and yet tailored to the specific needs of the varied developmental stages of the teachers. We are less likely to consult a fourth source that can profoundly influence our development as teachers and as human beings—the students we teach. In this luncheon keynote, we’ll take a bit of time to listen to what the kids have to say to us. Sometimes their words make us smile or laugh. Sometimes they evoke tears. Always they are real and worthy of our attention. Come hear what a young person just might have to say to you.

Sponsored by Turnitin

Michael Jr. proposes that life is more similar to comedy than we know. Rather than assuming that our days are random, and obstacles are unfortunate, Michael Jr. encourages attendees to strategically embrace each life event as part of a setup, leading to their punchline.

As educational leaders, our North Star should be to ensure all young people have the opportunity to live a free and full life. However, we know that reality is often out of reach for far too many. What can happen when we decide to challenge the institutions and systems that stand in the way of justice, equity, and freedom for all young people? Join former Chicago Public Schools high school principal and Founder & CEO of Chicago Beyond, Liz Dozier, to hear her own story about how disrupting the culture at one school led to her to defy barriers in order to create healthier ecosystems for youth to thrive in one city and beyond.

Is there any part of our lives that COVID-19 hasn’t touched? Whether it’s the way we learn, work, connect with each other, even spend our leisure time—it’s clear that pretty much everything has been transformed in the wake of this pandemic. But the thing that interests performance coach and positive psychologist Dan Lerner the most is the way it’s changing our perspective on something essential: our wellbeing. Drawing on real-life stories and examples that come from his class ‘The Science of Happiness’ at New York University, Lerner explores how we can address the unique challenges of the coronavirus—isolation, low mood, collective loss, financial hardship—while also making room for new opportunities to thrive in this environment. With his signature high-energy brand of storytelling, Lerner offers us simple yet powerful insights as to how we can make sense of this tragedy, maintain hope, and care for ourselves and each other.