Strand Overviews

Empowering Student Voices

The “Empowering Student Voices” strand will facilitate sessions that bring student voice to the forefront. These sessions will highlight ways for educators to provide and strengthen opportunities for hands-on investigations, discovery-based learning, student collaboration, and student choice in order to develop young leaders inside their classrooms, schools and community.

The content of these sessions will focus on:

  • Sparking student interest in learning
  • Igniting student’ curiosity through investigation, discovery and research
  • Cultivating student-led thinking and opportunities to engage with others’ ideas
  • Empowering students to be leaders by contributing to their school community through positive cultural and social interactions

From the Field: Ideas that Work

Tried and True: Newark educators know what works! The “From the Field” strand will facilitate sessions in which educators share anything that has produced positive outcomes. T his strand will cover topics relevant to all age groups and student populations.

The content of these presentations will empower participants to:

  • Learn strategies that they can implement immediately in their positions.
  • Leverage resources and/or tools that have been proven to support students, families and/or educators.


Giving Every Newark Student a Chance: Equity, Equality, and Closing the Opportunity Gap

The “Giving Every Newark Student a Chance” strand will explore the ways in which race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, language proficiency, community wealth, familial situations, or other factors contribute to or perpetuate lower educational aspirations, achievement, and attainment for certain groups of students.

The content of these presentations will focus on:

  • Practices to restore and enhance education quality for ALL students.
  • Methods of making a broad and rich curriculum accessible to all learners.
  • Inclusiveness in behavior management and social emotional learning.
  • Professional development practices that help ensure high-quality teachers for all students.
  • Building on the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of students.
  • Reflecting on students’ cultural diversity.

Research to Practice: Studying our Field, Analyzing our Practice, Understanding our Students

The “Research to Practice” strand will facilitate sessions that encourage educators to actively engage in academic research. These sessions will highlight intellectual rigor and metacognitive practices in both educators and students.


The content of these presentations will empower:

  • Educators to apply research in their field to improve student outcomes
  • Educators or students to become researchers of their own practice in order to grow over time.