The Workshops

From the classroom to the corporate world, traditional assessments like papers and resumes often fail to capture all that students are capable of. This workshop is designed for educators who want to help their students showcase not just their final results but also their journey to those achievements. We’ll explore practical ways to build portfolios that reveal both the work and the creative processes behind it. You'll learn how these portfolios can highlight students' personal skills, strengths, and stories, elements that Google and ChatGPT can’t capture. Discover how to guide your students in presenting a comprehensive picture of their capabilities and creativity, truly standing out in both academic and professional arenas.

Dr. Sabba Quidwai is a speaker, author, and advisor who helps visionary leaders design human-centered systems that are technology-driven. As the CEO of Designing Schools and a lecturer at the University of California, Irvine, Sabba blends research-backed strategy with real-world application. A former high school educator, and Education Executive at Apple, Sabba has been researching the future of learning and AI since 2014. Her book and documentary Designing Schools explore how design thinking helps people lead through change with confidence and creativity. She believes cultures of innovation begin with cultures of empathy, where people feel seen, heard, and empowered to grow.

Sabba’s signature message? Innovation begins with empathy.

As generative AI reshapes what writing looks like and who gets to do it, writing instructors face a pressing question: how do we design assessments that prioritize critical thinking and over textual output? This workshop explores practical, equity-conscious approaches to writing instruction that center active cognition.

Drawing on frameworks from AI literacy, metacognition, and deeper learning research, participants will examine practices that apprentice students in scholarly thinking. We'll look at how organizing inquiry around contested concepts and disciplinary frameworks shifts authority away from “right” answers and toward interpretive judgment. And we’ll explore techniques that resist automation, including metacognitive prompting strategies, rubric language that makes thinking visible, and assignment design principles that build in productive friction and student voice. Participants will leave with classroom tools that reward interpretive risk-taking, evolving ideas, and reflexive thinking.

Dr. Eric Hengstebeck is an English educator with over ten years of teaching experience at the high school and college levels. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University and currently teaches at The Harker School in San Jose, where his work focuses on writing pedagogy, deeper learning, and teaching literature in the age of AI. His research and classroom practice explore how students develop durable understanding, intellectual agency, and ethical awareness, and how writing instruction can be reimagined to keep humanities thinking at the center of learning. He has published and presented on AI and the future of writing as well as on equity-conscious, AI-responsive pedagogy. A former yoga instructor, Eric believes that powerful learning attends to the whole person and that the habits of mind cultivated in a writing classroom — curiosity, reflection, revision, and care — are essential not just for academic success, but for democratic life.

Dr. Rachel A. Blumenthal is an English educator and scholar whose work sits at the intersection of literary studies, writing pedagogy, and emerging technology. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University and currently serves as Chair of the Upper School English Department at Menlo School, where she collaborates with faculty on making literary studies meaningful for students navigating a rapidly changing world. Her teaching philosophy centers students as recursive writers and dynamic thinkers, a framework she brings directly to questions about how AI is reshaping what it means to read, write, and think. She co-teaches an advanced seminar, Literature in the Age of AI, and has published on AI and the future of writing. She has also served as Co-Chair of Menlo School's AI Working Group and presented on AI and humanities pedagogy at professional development events. She is genuinely excited to meet educators ready to grapple with the big questions reshaping our field.

If students graduate knowing how to use AI but not how to think, lead, and adapt they’ll be ready for yesterday’s world. For education leaders, this is an opportunity to redefine how schools prepare students to navigate complexity, work alongside intelligent systems, and make meaningful contributions in a changing world.

Dr. Sabba Quidwai joins us to facilitate a conversation about how AI is reshaping what students need to know and who they need to become. As automation accelerates, success will depend less on routine skills and more on human strengths: critical thinking, ethical judgment, creative problem-solving, and the ability to work across differences.

We’ll examine three key mindset shifts every system must make:

• AI is not just a tool; it’s a teammate.

• It’s not a shortcut; it’s a skillset.

• It’s not just about rules; it’s about values.

In a time of growing concern around ethics, misinformation, and academic integrity, preparing students for an AI future requires more than policies and platforms it requires a renewed focus on agency, purpose, and trust. This session offers a framework for moving beyond compliance and toward cultures that empower students to lead with integrity in an AI-driven world.

Dr. Sabba Quidwai is a speaker, author, and advisor who helps visionary leaders design human-centered systems that are technology-driven. As the CEO of Designing Schools and a lecturer at the University of California, Irvine, Sabba blends research-backed strategy with real-world application. A former high school educator, and Education Executive at Apple, Sabba has been researching the future of learning and AI since 2014. Her book and documentary Designing Schools explore how design thinking helps people lead through change with confidence and creativity. She believes cultures of innovation begin with cultures of empathy, where people feel seen, heard, and empowered to grow.

Sabba’s signature message? Innovation begins with empathy.

This workshop explores a process-centered approach to writing instruction designed to deepen students' engagement with literature and their own ideas. Participants will develop practical tools and strategies that encourage students to think more carefully, critically, and creatively — building the confidence to express original ideas, take ownership of their work, and write with clear purpose and motive.

At the heart of this work is a commitment to becoming a more systematic writing instructor whose assessments more reliably support student growth. By developing a coherent, replicable framework for writing instruction, educators can move beyond one-off assignments toward a practice that builds skills intentionally over time. A key benefit of this approach is that it creates a natural disincentive to overdependence on AI tools: when students are genuinely invested in their thinking and writing process, they are less likely to outsource it.

This workshop is ideal for educators looking to reimagine writing assignments in ways that are more authentic, more resilient, and more meaningful for students.

Christopher Hurshman has been an English teacher at Harker since 2015. His teaching career spans more than two decades and includes seven years at South Kent School in Connecticut as well as four years of college-level instruction during his doctoral work at Yale University.

At Harker, he teaches 10th-grade British literature and an ever-evolving set of senior electives, including Literature into Film, Russian Literature, Great Novels, Creative Nonfiction, and the Bible as Literature. He values classroom environments that foster precise and independent thinking and sustained engagement with complex texts.

In addition to his classroom teaching, Mr. Hurshman has held a variety of student-facing leadership roles, including class dean, director of residential life, and chair of disciplinary committees and hearings. He has coached soccer, basketball, and lacrosse, and advised a variety of student organizations, such as film club, guitar club, and philosophy and ethics club.

He has participated in multiple National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars, including programs on Chaucer and on teaching literature through adaptation.

Forget "just memorize it" — what if your students could see why π shows up in the area of a circle? In this hands-on workshop, participants will bend Wikki Stix, peel oranges, and pour between cones and cylinders to rediscover the formulas for circumference, area, surface area, and volume — the same way their students can. From unrolling circles into triangles to proving SA = 4πr² with Cuties, you will leave with a toolkit of tactile, inquiry-based activities that make abstract formulas feel inevitable rather than arbitrary. Designed for gifted 5th, middle, and high school math educators, this session transforms geometric measurement from a list of rules to memorize into a series of "oh, that's why it works!" moments.

Eileen Schick is a passionate math educator with 34+ years of teaching experience spanning elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. In her 20+ years at The Harker School, she has taught the 4th grade honors math program, served as K–5 Math Department Chair, and founded the school's math lab, which she continues to direct and instruct today. Driven by a deep commitment to challenging and nurturing talented young mathematicians, Eileen has designed enriching learning experiences for students at every level. In addition, she has shared her expertise at numerous conferences, including CUE (Regional 2019), CAIS, the National Singapore Math Conference (SDE), the National Conference on Differentiated Instruction (SDE), Scholar Search, and The Harker Institute. Eileen holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.A. in Education, and is the proud mother of twins — both Harker and USC graduates.

Teachers wanted better guidelines for student AI use and relevant classroom examples. Students were navigating a different set of AI rules in every classroom. Everyone wanted clarity! If this sounds familiar, then learn how The Harker School developed its Student AI Acceptable Use Menu—a practical framework designed to give students and teachers shared language around when, how, and why AI tools are used in the learning process. 

Participants will hear about the collaborative process behind the menu's creation, including the conversations, considerations, and stakeholder input that shaped its categories. From there, the session will dive into concrete classroom activities for each category on the menu, illustrating what AI use looks like in practice across different subjects and grade levels. The workshop closes with structured time for educators to brainstorm with peers, exploring how the menu can be adapted and integrated into their own classroom contexts—whether that means designing new assignments, revisiting existing ones, or establishing shared norms with students. 

Participants will leave this workshop with an AI Acceptable Use Menu to adapt for their school or department and concrete examples of learning activities that leverage each menu category to make AI use intentional and transparent.

Lisa Diffenderfer brings over 30 years of teaching and leadership expertise to her role as TK-12 Director of Learning, Innovation, and Design at The Harker School in San Jose. A passionate advocate for meaningful learning experiences, she also co-leads the K-5 Sustainability Team and Tournament of Books Committees. In all of her roles, Lisa focuses on creating innovative pedagogy that engages and inspires students across all grade levels. She has shared much of her work at local and national conferences and is excited to bring her insights and collaborative spirit to this year's Harker Teacher Institute.