Featured Speakers

Andrew Hallam's featured conference sessions to include:

Why Personal Finance Should Be A K-12 Subject (keynote)

When I taught high school personal finance I told my students, “This is the the second most important subject at school.” They asked, “What’s the most important?” I asked them to guess. They called out various subjects. Each time, I shook my head.

“Health and fitness,” I said. Every single day, we choose what to eat and drink. We choose how much we’re going to move or how to interact with other people. These choices strengthen or wreck the only vessel that we have.

Personal finance is a bit like that. Unless we live in a cave, we use our knowledge of money every single day. But the subject is rarely (if ever) taught in schools. In this talk, I’ll share why it’s so important and what we can do, as educators, to help the next generation.

Integrating Money Lessons Into The Classroom

You can’t cram a square peg into a round hole. We all know that. But that doesn’t stop well-meaning educators from trying. We face that risk when we try to push financial education across the curriculum. So let’s not push anything. Let’s create lessons that dovetail well with common core subjects or standards. If we’re going to teach about money, our odds might be best when integrating such lessons into Advisory, Mathematics, English Language Arts and Social Studies. In this session, we examine further examples of lessons that bridge money skills with core skills required in each of these subject areas.

Personal Investing to Work Less and Live More

What if Warren Buffett were your neighbor? The two of you see each other as you leave for work each morning. After a while, you build the courage to ask, “Mr. Buffett, how should I invest money for my future?” He knows that you’re a teacher. He knows that you don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about investing. He also knows a strategy that guarantees you’ll beat 90 percent of investment professionals. It takes less than 60 minutes a year.

It’s called “Index Fund Investing.” It’s supported by Warren Buffett and a league of Nobel Prize winning economists. They want you to give less to the financial services industry, so you can keep more for yourself. This session shows educators how to build a portfolio of index funds or how to hire the right kind of financial advisor (without a conflict of interest) who can do the same thing for you.

How To Retire In Style Without A Lot of Money

You might start to feel like the walls are closing in. You haven’t saved enough for your retirement. Perhaps you were late to the savings game. Perhaps a divorce, illness, or an exciting mid-life adventure cost more money than you thought.

Some of you might realize you could earn an 8 percent annual return on your money­–but you still won’t have enough to retire. If that’s you, let me offer an exciting hour of hope. After all, you might not need as much money as you think. Let me show you some of the world’s most desirable, low-cost retirement destinations. Even if you’re flush with cash, you’ll enjoy seeing some of these best-kept secrets.

Jean Kwok's featured conference sessions to include:

The Secrets Students Keep (keynote)

We all know the type: the kid who sits at the back and has no friends, avoids eye contact, and fails test after test without a valid excuse. Why? How can we connect? What could be going on in that person’s life? Even students who appear to be functioning smoothly may be hiding secrets that could completely change an educator’s approach. Jean offers a personal view from having been that student herself, from her own years as a teacher and from her talks with similar children across the world. She provides possible explanations, dispels common assumptions and talks about potential solutions for a meaningful connection.

Bridging the Gap: Workshop on Race, Culture and Language

How can we manage different races, cultures and native languages in the classroom in a competent, caring way? How can we best help students who come from vastly different backgrounds than our own? It is so easy to misunderstand and mishandle sensitive situations. Jean will first speak about her own background, then conduct a workshop on recognizing your own cultural lens, better understanding the cultural backgrounds of students, building a broader knowledge base and possible cultural management strategies. Please bring paper and a pen or pencil to this workshop. A laptop would also be fine. You will be asked to answer a few questions in writing and invited to share your thoughts as time permits. The purpose of this session is to develop each person’s individual cultural awareness for themselves, so the answers will not be collected.

Rosalind Wiseman's conference sessions to include:

Creating A Culture of Dignity (keynote)

Rosalind Wiseman’s presentation is a call to action to transform the way we understand youth culture. She exposes the complex challenges young people face with group dynamics, social media, interactions with adults, and adolescent identity development. She'll share how young people’s social dynamics influence their individual decision making interactions and offer step-by-step advice on how to teach young people to treat each other with dignity. Her classroom experience and collaboration with communities is the basis for her work and Rosalind recognizes that creating a culture of dignity in a school is challenging and ongoing work. With this in mind, Rosalind will illustrate how the social landscape of young people, cliques, bullying, and social hierarchies among children and adults can be placed into a larger context of social justice. All participants walk away from the presentation with positive ways to impact their community.

Selfies, Tardies, and Parties

What does a student’s selfie pose tell you about them? How can we enable students to manage the inevitable conflicts that go back and forth between their real lives and their lives on social media? Based on focus groups and interviews with young people around the country, Rosalind reveals critical insights on how they use social media. She tracks the new cultural landscape for both boy and girl worlds and its impact on their self-esteem, identity and decision making. In addition, she will highlight why adults efforts to communicate with young people about social media can be so challenging and provide participants with effective alternatives so young people don’t so easily shut down and disengage.

Paticia Reeder's featured conference sessions to include:

Essential MAP Reports for Administrators and Investigating Growth (double session)

In this session for school leaders, participants will learn to access, interpret, and apply Measures of Academic Progress (MAP®) data at the school level, and to support the interpretation and application of data across the organization.

We will also deepen participants’ assessment literacy through dialogue, discussion and application of common language focused on growth, growth data, and tools. The use of MAP growth data will be fostered through a variety of data conversation tools; identifying both strengths and areas for growth, and looking at patterns at various levels including student, classroom, grade/content, school, or district. The data conversation activities in this workshop support learners in the interpretation and application of MAP data when talking about student growth over time.

For the greatest impact, we recommend that participants include school leadership teams, teacher leaders, instructional coaches, and school-level administrators.

Eric Nelson' featured conference sessions to include:

Co-presenting with Pat Reeder for the NWEA MAP sessions

Using Data is Awesome. Stop feeling Awkward! co-presenting with Tami Canale

We know that data-driven instruction is key to helping our students succeed and for continuous improvement. We also know that getting teachers to review and use data can be a daunting task. Take a journey with us as we explore palatable ways to turn data into action. We will share some practical strategies to look at triangulated data for different levels and purposes: individual students, grade levels or subject areas, and wider curriculum decisions. Specific examples will be shared of school-made reports and NWEA’s MAP Growth reports.

Sarah Woods' featured conference sessions to include:

Assessment made easy - Classroom, Doctopus and Goobric

The combination of Classroom, Doctopus and Goobric allow you to view your students' work and a rubric at the same time. Seamless assessment and easy to add comments, voice comments and more! (intermediate level)

Work your Forms!

Forms has been exploding with new features! Turn your forms into quizzes! Password-protect your forms! Eliminate choices on your forms! Learn to use add-ons in forms to improve your data! Fall in love with forms all over again (intermediate level)

Getting to know Google photos as a learning tool + Top Tips for GSuite Success

Learn how to use the advanced features in Google photos. We will also make an animation - using simple tools to create learning experiences! If we have extra time, we’ll also run through a whole bunch of fun tips for using various Google product. (all levels)