Conference Sessions

The pandemic catapulted teachers and learners into an unprecedented change of instruction with an increase in the use of edtech. To support educators in this shift, educators should not only receive guidance on operating various tools, but also on how technology can support pedagogical and content goals. In this session, participants will hear how ISTE has partnered with school districts across the country to provide staff with professional learning opportunities to help elevate their new “pandemic skills” and what the outcomes were. Participants will also get a hands-on opportunity to explore ISTE’s Standards and PD opportunities.

State and local partners from Ohio will share strategies for implementing a whole-child approach to education. Panelists will share experiences in establishing Ohio's Whole Child Framework and Ohio's Whole Child Network, fostering a community of practice and leveraging partnerships and resources to increase capacity for meeting the needs of the whole child.

How does a district system as large as the School District of Philadelphia, which employs nearly 500 principals and assistant principals, provide an infrastructure that differentially supports all school leaders in growing and sustaining their knowledge, skills, and mindsets associated with equity-centered leadership? This session will describe the successes, tensions, and lessons learned while implementing the third year of this work. The session will be organized into three parts: (1) the structure associated with the systemic approach of requiring all school leaders to engage in a racial equity PD pathway of their choice; (2) the content-driven PD pathways that focus on critical self-reflection, school level inequities, and system level inequities; and (3) the PD pathways designed as leader-driven "think tanks" that focus on leaders' racial and gender identities. 

In part 1, attendees will hear how leaders were asked to self-select into a year-long learning pathway with the same cohort of leaders (out of 13 options) that met their readiness levels and goals around equity-centered leadership. We know that sustained, cohort-based professional learning opportunities provide leaders with the time and mental capacity to focus on the continuum of their equity-oriented learning goals, as well as the formation of trusting professional support networks to maintain group accountability towards goals (Darling-Hammond et al., 2007). Not only do these networks promote resource sharing, they also help reduce the sense of isolation and burnout often felt by education leaders in demanding situations (Peterson, 2002). In parts 2 and 3, attendees will hear the different learning styles that the various pathways cater to. Four of the learning pathways incorporate the problem-based learning approach that leads to greater problem-framing abilities (i.e. the ability to suspend judgment and inquire into the nature of a problem before jumping to solutions) (Copland, 2000), where leaders approach these problems through the explicit centering of their social identities. Three of the other pathways are more focused on content and developing transformative leadership knowledge, skills, and mindsets to support (a) increasing self-awareness of systems of oppression, (b) disrupting inequities related to teaching and learning as well as school climate, and (c) disrupting systemic inequities (Pak & Ravitch, 2021).
 

Every child must have automaticity with basic facts, but traditional drill and memorizing just doesn't work for many students. A better game plan builds on students' strengths, using interesting stories and strategic visuals to support student number sense and then games to provide meaningful and enjoyable practice. In this session, participants will explore how to ensure the games are connected to strategies and how to ultimately create a game plan through which every student learns their facts, learns reasoning strategies, and feels confident about themselves as a learner of mathematics.

The spirit of aloha is alive and well at Kahului Elementary School! The teachers are thriving and their students are achieving higher levels of academic proficiency than they were prior to the pandemic. How? Two years ago they took everything they knew about best practices in the classroom—like building positive relationships and differentiating instruction and support—and applied it to teachers. Regular check-ins through classroom visits, providing specific and timely feedback, and targeting support made all the difference: what they call their Classroom Visit > Feedback > Support cycle. This session is perfect for the administrator who is tired of doing classroom walkthroughs using checklists and look-fors that have minimal impact on instruction and achievement and want to truly connect with teachers and support their growth and learning. When teachers succeed, students succeed. In this session, come learn how to lead with aloha!
 

• How do we ensure we are focusing our leadership on the right work, ensuring the time we invest results in the outcomes we desire?
• How do we manage the ever-growing social and emotional well-being needs of our students, staff, and ourselves?
• How do we leverage our collaborative structures to generate positive culture, problem-solving, and collective efficacy?

Every school has teachers that are incredible educators. They are able to reach all students, have a positive attitude, and impact the entire school community. Yet, schools also have staff members who have not yet reached this standard. What is different about these staff members who are in the same school with similar students and resources? Is it possible for others in the same school to reach this level of success? In this session, participants will learn how to enable each teacher in their school to emulate the best teachers in their buildings. The no-cost approaches can be immediately implemented in all educational settings. Regardless of position, participants will leave this session knowing how to increase the effectiveness of all staff members and understand how to immediately implement each of these practices into their schools.

• the limitations of short-term memory and how to overcome them
• the "learning style" that works for every learner
• why fast learning leads to fast forgetting
• how to help students encode new learning into long-term memory
• how to make learning meaningful, joyful and "sticky"

• why your students' brains are designed to ignore you and what's going on in your classroom
• why curiosity is essential for learning
• proven strategies for sparking curiosity in the classroom
• why goal setting is essential for learning
• how to "flip the script" on learning objectives to tap into students' intrinsic motivation to learn

Classrooms that are "abundantly charged" respond to the human desire to learn and grow. These classrooms are rich in curiosity and wonder to elevate student voice and extend student autonomy. Participants will learn about the difference between curiosity and wonder, and will leave with three easy-to-implement instructional strategies for students to critically think about content that is interesting, challenging, and relevant to their life.

What equity problems do you face daily in your teaching or at the school level? In this session, participants will experience a new way to think about old problems using a Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) inquiry cycle, commonly used in systems-change practices. Attendees will be walked through how to think about and move through an equity problem by (1) identifying a problem of practice; (2) gathering information about the problem; (3) deciding on strategies to mitigate the problem; and (4) experimenting with strategies. Participants will leave with an understanding and a commitment to using rapid cycle testing for tackling equity problems.

Teachers do not need to be in administration to lead. Teachers lead from the classroom, in their school, district, community, and state. Colorado ASCD created teacher leadership micro-credentials to help teachers become recognized teacher leaders and to promote this as a viable career option. In this turbo talk, participants will review three teacher leadership micro-credentials series to understand how they support student learning and discuss the first steps in the foundational teacher leadership micro-credential. Attendees will leave with a new awareness of core values that drive teacher leadership.

The disruption of school operations and routines caused by the COVID-19 pandemic affected students’ physical and emotional well-being. Providing physical activity opportunities in schools can encourage students to connect and positively engage with each other, which improves relationships and promotes emotional well-being. During this session, participants will share the findings of a recent study examining the association between physical activity behaviors and levels of school connectedness. Specifically, being more physically active, attending physical education programs, and participating in team sports were all associated with higher levels of school connectedness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Presenters will discuss how school administrators and teachers can implement a framework called Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program (CSPAP) to ensure that students have ample opportunities to be physically active throughout the school day. Strategies from CSPAP can also be used to keep students more connected to physical activity and trusted adults at school, in case of short-term pivots to remote learning. Participants will explore how these physical activity opportunities provide numerous benefits such as increased ability to focus, strengthened interpersonal skills, and improved relationships with peers and trusted adults. These skills can enhance students’ connection to school while also improving their health and educational outcomes during and following the COVID-19 pandemic, which is a win-win for schools, students, and their families.

Years of central office deadlines, bake sales, state takeover threats, and disastrous personal relationships catapulted me into a wall of depression and doubt. When I decided to reclaim my joy and love for myself, my school community became award-winning, newsworthy, and the best in the city. In this session, participants will learn how a six foot three care bear and school leader led a self-care and wellness journey that inspired the masses. This session is for folks who are looking to reclaim the #magic they carried in leading their communities.

Supporting and supervising schools is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Support should:

• stem from where a school is in its development: contextually for the specific school setting, tied to personal and corporate goals, and linked to performance. 
• be timely: on-demand, scheduled, in-service, and tied to long and short-term goals. 
• be appropriate for the situation using coaching, accountable talk, and corrective action.

In this session, participants will learn how to apply a comprehensive leadership framework to effectively evaluate school performance and transform school leadership teams. Attendees will create a comprehensive school profile, examine how schools fail, and build a compelling vision for success. Immersed in an interactive session, participants will demonstrate how to best support leadership teams, reignite school leaders, improve overall leadership capacity, and reimagine accountability as an embedded aspect of school and leadership support. 
 
Schools consist of distinct components. Understanding the complex interactions between all the components (in real-time) and how to effectively assess strengths and weaknesses for the purpose of providing targeted support will revitalize school leaders and improve overall leadership capacity and school performance. Elevating accountability as an embedded aspect of leadership and school support will transform school leadership teams and help create a true learning institution from top to bottom.

When thinking about bringing technology into the classroom, it is easy to jump first to the technology tools, such as applications and devices. But if instructional goals needed to set students on the path to success aren’t established first, how can the tool that is the right fit be determined? In this session, participants will explore the integration of technology into classrooms from a pedagogy-first perspective, learning how to authentically integrate it into instruction. Educators will learn actionable steps they can take to make the best decisions about what technology will be most effective in supporting the classroom in any setting, i.e., blended, flipped, online, or hybrid. Participants will identify learning goals and student outcomes, then review takeaways that can be incorporated into instruction right away and used with new or already-introduced technology.

1. The first section will provide a practical look at the impact of life with limited resources and how that can impact the way the brain fires and wires. A quick look at how brains are wired will be provided to ensure that all attendees have the basic foundation for considering pedagogy that is informed by neuroscience.
2. The second section will emphasize the importance of understanding brain-based theory behind every best practice. An engaging group activity will illustrate the power of why to shift human behaviors.
3. Last, attendees will consider specific pedagogical practices through the lens of cognitive science, exploring these questions: Why does this practice matter for the brains of the students I teach? How will my responses impact student brains and, subsequently, student engagement?

• Continue building a sound understanding of the core principles and practices of quality differentiation 
• Reflect on the core principles and practices of leadership necessary for differentiation to flourish
• Explore the concept of adaptive leadership as it applies to leadership for differentiation 
• Analyze mini "case studies" of the work of educators who have successfully led schools to practice effective differentiation across a school 
• Self-assess growth toward quality differentiation and leadership for differentiation, as well as determine personal next steps in leadership for differentiation 

There is nothing more rewarding for us, as educators, than to see our students achieve success on complex, meaningful work. In this Learning Lab, participants collaborate to answer the following question: "How can I teach and assess the SEL skills of perseverance needed for student success in my classroom in ways that are manageable and logically connected to my academic curricular goals?" Participants will learn and practice specific strategies for teaching and assessing perseverance skills that can be applied to units, lessons, and daily routines. Finally, participants will get a chance to reflect upon how they might utilize these strategies in their own classroom contexts.

What do students want and need in a rapidly changing, post-pandemic world? Today's world is fraught with challenges. From climate change to divisive politics, to the myriad of ways technology is infiltrating and changing our lives, humans are navigating an unprecedented amount of change. How do students perceive the world today and what do they need and want from school? In this panel, student voice is at the center of the conversation. Participants will learn what a diverse body of students want from school and hear their perceptions of the challenges and opportunities these changes present in their lives.

When experienced teachers leave the profession, our children and society pay the price. Why are teachers leaving the profession and what can we do to retain them? In this panel, participants will hear directly from a diverse group of teachers about why they stay, why so many are leaving, and what we can do, as leaders, to attract new and retain our best educators. Participants will learn what leaders need to do to keep teachers, key issues that impact teachers wanting to stay or go, and why teachers choose to stay.

In this interactive workshop, participants will explore eight educator change archetypes*—the Diplomat, Guardian, Champion, Investigator, Storyteller, Sage, Creative, and Inventor—and spend time discussing their own change leadership profiles and practices. Participants will have opportunities to complete unique assessments and protocols tol help them explore how they best lead and create change, as well as how they can protect their own energy and create boundaries while doing so. Lastly, participants will have the opportunity to design a personal change story to own their expertise and start leading change based on who they are and how they best lead.

*This content is based upon the presenter's book From Underestimated to Unstoppable: 8 Educator Archetypes for Driving Change in the Classroom and Beyond which is forthcoming in 2022 with ASCD.

Through research of leaders of social movements, analyzing the experiences of K–12 equity officers, and personal experiences, the presenter of this session has developed 10 competencies that can be leaned on to be successful within white spaces and to dismantle those spaces to create a new system. The competencies are divided into three categories: individual, interpersonal, and institutional. They are distinct but interconnected. Leaders of color must recognize and take responsibility for navigating oppressions on these three levels. This workshop will unpack these competencies and give participants concrete strategies for implementing them into practice.

Calling on someone should be the last thing you do. Traditional teaching practices often serve to inadvertently stifle student participation and engagement. In this presentation, the Himmeles will focus on how these techniques can have unintentional  negative outcomes and will present participants with solutions that focus on formatively assessing students while they are engaged in meaningful learning practices. Participants will examine research on how to accelerate student learning and learn how to apply Total Participation Techniques and other formative assessment strategies, in literacy and content-area classrooms. Participants will walk away with practical applications and online tools that can be used as they are or tailored toward students' and schools' specific academic needs.

Leaders set the norms, guide the change process, and mobilize staff around the common pursuit of excellence. Arguably, of all the roles that school leaders are asked to play, instructional leadership is the most challenging. By focusing on the CRAFT of Leadership, it is easier to manage and lead for greatness. This session is designed to share key CRAFT practices to use in a school to move from the lower tier of performance to one of the best schools in the nation. More specifically, this session will show how to address the most critical challenges of instructional leadership so that all teachers grow and the entire staff comes together to improve student learning and achievement.

• Strategic Noticing: By using a variation of a simple phrase, educators will be able to consistently reinforce positive behaviors by thoughtfully and artfully giving 100x more attention to positive behaviors than to negative behaviors. 
• Gentle Guidance Interventions: Many educators believe that they have an impossible, binary choice. They can either 1.) make demands of students when they use low-level negative behaviors, which takes undue control away from students, which makes behaviors worse, or 2). ignore these behaviors, which also worsens behavior. Gentle Guidance Interventions offer a third and more effective option with 42 easy ways to gently guide students back toward more positive behaviors without having to stop instruction and giving only minimal attention to the student.
• Delayed Learning Opportunities: Learn how to delay, create, and calmly employ learning opportunities so that students can learn from their mistakes while building relationships with their teachers. Teach lessons about positive behavior during non-instructional time using logical Delayed Learning Opportunities that teach instead of punish.

This presentation will review a current pilot program that addresses the teacher shortage in the state of Michigan. Presenters will present an overview of an adapted residency model based on current cohort members' positions in schools (paraprofessionals, interventionists, building substitutes, etc.) and connect it to teacher certification requirements. Participants will explore the dynamic relationship between school administrators and higher-ed faculty to identify areas of success in meeting the needs of a diverse body of students-working adults.

In this session, participants will gain the skills necessary to walk the walk of conducting effective empathy interviews—that is, moving from having a philosophy of empathetic leadership to actually leading empathetic implementation. Participants who have attended Empathy Interviews 101 or have prior knowledge in using empathy interviews as a design thinking tool, will engage in hands-on training and action-planning in the use of the Empathy Interview Pathway^©. After participating in a trainer-led fishbowl demonstration of an empathy interview, attendees will conduct real empathy interviews with one another to capture genuine data. Each Interviewer's style and approach to conducting interviews will be critiqued to support productive results and to ensure, as best as possible, that an interviewer's biases are disrupted and positional authority does not impede the collection of data. Participants will leave with a practical action plan for next steps in implementation—having adequate individual and collaborative work time to flesh out a plan tailored to the communities they serve.

The most effective professional learning inspires and empowers educators to grow professionally and personally through relevant and meaningful work. However, much professional learning turns out to be simply a check-off item and fails to be this constructive. Enter the microcredential: a flexible and adaptable professional learning tool that, when used effectively, facilitates learning that is job-embedded, sustained, and relevant. Microcredentials are performance assessments focused on impacting students, rather than gathering points or accumulating professional development hours. Educators completing microcredentials are asked to forge their own learning paths while documenting evidence of proficiency in the context of their work. This interactive session will explore a variety of ideas and strategies related to the design, adoption, and implementation of these powerful tools for elevating professional learning.

A focus on 21st century skills, college/career readiness, and deeper learning signifies a shift away from standardized assessments and toward more authentic methods of assessing student learning, namely performance-based assessments. PBAs are not new to education, but the challenge of developing them within a standards-based curriculum is. This session provides teachers and instructional leaders a framework for designing and developing high-quality PBAs. While the design framework is applicable to any grade level or subject area, examples from PBAs targeting core subjects in upper-elementary and middle school will be featured.

One of the things that prevent districts from enjoying continuous success is a lack of leadership sustainability. Put simply, schools don't have a pipeline that will ensure that when one leader leaves, another is prepared to take their place. Discover how one district continuously prepares aspiring, new, and experienced leaders for their next step. Participants in this session will discover and experience how one district's leadership institute series invites, develops, and supports leaders to take on the next role. They will walk away with ideas for designing content, creating syllabi, and developing the next leader in the pipeline.

Regardless of school type, class size, student population, or learning culture, a universal challenge for educators is the desire for more time. The days never seem to have enough hours; the evenings and weekends never feel fully your own. While personal and professional boundaries blur across professions, this space appears particularly blended in education. When we examine self-management as an adult learner, the intent is not to find time but rather alignment. The discipline of alignment calls on educators to create congruence between purpose and practice. Everyone possesses the same 168 hours per week; it is how we choose to utilize them that makes the difference between goal setting and goal attaining, between operating in survival mode and the recovery zone, and between burnout and fulfillment. Educators do not have a time deficit but rather an alignment one. In this session, participants will be presented with strategies for aligning purpose with practice through structured time, disciplined action, and a cadence of accountability. Attendees will learn how to leverage fresh starts, chronotypes, time blocks, tuning techniques, and habit stacking (and sticking) to find time for recovery as well as feel an ongoing sense of fulfillment both personally and professionally.

• Setting BOLD GOALS can cause middle and high school educators to rethink their current school practices to achieve the goals.
• Designing pathway programs of study that connect rigorous CTE and academic studies can motivate students to prepare for both college and careers leading to advance credentials.
• Designing literacy-based assignments in all classes can advance students' literacy and content achievement while advancing their readiness for high school, college, career, and citizenship.
• Designing formative assessment math lessons that engage students in solving multi-step abstract and real-world problems can advance math readiness for college and career.
• Collaborating between middle and high school educators can accelerate literacy and mathematics achievement to have more students by end of grade 9 ready to complete a true college preparatory academic core.
• Creating rigorous project assignments in CTE classes can motivate students to learn a mix of high-level academic, technology, cognitive and personal skills to complete authentic tasks.
• Exploratory experiences, counseling, and advising, along with annual parent/guardian involvement, can result in students (beginning in grade 6) developing a vision for their future.
• Approaching each student with a belief in a growth mindset and the certainty that ability is not fixed can result in many more students exceeding at high levels.
• Engaging community and teacher leaders in setting bold goals and supporting them in implementing new strategies can prepare many more students for advanced studies and for life.

During this session, attendees will hear about how FlexPoint and Florida Virtual School have created training programs to continue developing talent internally, and offering pathways for teachers to learn and grow professionally. From shadowing opportunities, to a formal aspiring leaders program, setting up your teachers for success is key to retaining great talent. FlexPoint Education Cloud is a full-service Kindergarten—12th grade online education leader, and a part of Florida Virtual School, the state’s online public school district. With more than 2,500 online teachers serving more than 230,000 students, a key ingredient to the organization’s success is its teachers. 

Originally conceived along the lines of Deep Learning as promoted by the group New Pedagogies For Deep Learning (NPDL) (Fullan et al., 2018), the Oakland Youth Innovation Lab (OYIL) experience was built around four main outcomes: engagement, agency, joy, and authentic learning. It proved to have profound, long-lasting impacts on teacher professional learning, with teachers immediately implementing strategies and concepts into their classrooms the following school year. OYIL had several key elements to support students and teachers in reaching these outcomes. These elements included: the use of the guiding question "How can we amplify our voices to create a more just society," the use of the Design Cycle (An introduction to Design Thinking: A process guide, 2022), the creation of passion projects, teachers working together in a collaborative manner, the opportunity for students and teachers to participate in expert classes, and an emphasis on attending to social-emotional needs, sustaining relationships, and work on passion projects through a fall mentoring period. This session will showcase the process, from the creation of the innovation lab to post-implementation programming. Participants will understand the context in which this program was developed and hear about the challenges and successes of students and teachers. Participants will explore the meaningful, sustainable effects of this professional learning approach and discuss how it might be replicated in districts nationwide.

• How can we create a coherent K–12 curriculum and assessment system that integrates Portrait of a Graduate Competencies 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? 

• Ensuring greater curriculum alignment across the grades
• Crafting an assessment system for gathering evidence on all valued outcomes
• Enabling greater student personalization while still obtaining worthy evidence of valued learning

• Build and maintain relationships with students, families, and the community
• Cultivate community partnerships in order to provide resources and create equitable, effective learning environments
• Understand and respond to student and family trauma

Dr. Brandt and the Innocent Classroom team will discuss their vision for a culture and society liberated from racial bias and stereotypes. Presenters will focus on the power each of us has, in our schools and classrooms, to create spaces free of stereotypes—spaces of innocence—for all children and especially Black, brown, and Indigenous children. Participants will be introduced to Innocent Classroom's relationship-building methodology and will consider, reflect, and plan for the use and implications of this methodology in their role as classroom educators, building leadership or district-level leadership.

Have you ever been afraid to ask a question? Have you felt excluded in a social setting? Have you been punished for challenging the status quo? Psychological safety impacts learning, affects behaviors, and makes or breaks an environment where all thrive. In this session, participants will discover solutions to the challenges they are facing and learn how to create a place where all want to be!

In this session, participants will explore the Equity Leadership Framework and the essential leadership attributes for creating a culture centered around everyday equity actions that matter. Leaders will gain insight and learn strategies to effectively lead school-wide equity efforts. Start this journey of discovery about the importance of leveraging focus, competence, and passion to confidently forge an unconventional path that will authentically lead to equity.