Cultivating Resilience and 'Stick-to-itiveness' in Students (All)

Tenacity is a virtue, but the personal fortitude to stick with an arduous task takes time and experience to mature. Many students grow impatient with content not parsed into sound-bytes, and reading extended, logical rhetoric through each argument to its ultimate conclusion is almost unheard of. On the other hand, If the story is good, students will read books of over 700 pages. They play on-line games working their way through 12 levels of difficulty for six hours, and they stay after school into the evening to practice for theater productions, get ready for sports tournaments, and conduct fun science experiments for the public. Join us for a compelling session on how to help students find the reserves to stick with projects and tasks, be they physical or intellectual. We'll look at elements in three areas: interpersonal relationships, lesson design, and assessment/grading, that cultivate resilience in students. There is no such thing as laziness; our students want to do demanding, complex learning, they want to persevere! To this, our students aspire; with this, our world was built. In our classrooms right now, there is an eager William Wilberforce, Malala Yousafzai, and younger versions of J.K. Rowling and Theodore Seuss Geisel (both turned down repeatedly for their manuscripts) looking for inspiration. This generation is more than ready for what it takes to make the world their own. Let's light this rocket!

One of the first Nationally Board Certified teachers in America, Rick Wormeli brings innovation, energy, validity and high standards to both his presentations and his instructional practice, which include 39 years teaching math, science, English, physical education, health, and history, as well as coaching teachers and principals. Rick's work has been reported in numerous media, including ABC's Good Morning America, Hardball with Chris Matthews, National Geographic and Good Housekeeping magazines, What Matters Most: Teaching for the 21st Century, and the Washington Post. He is a columnist for AMLE Magazine and a frequent contributor to ASCD's Education Leadership magazine. He is the author of the award-winning book Meet Me in the Middle as well as the best-selling books Day One and Beyond, Fair Isn't Always Equal: Assessment and Grading in the Differentiated Classroom (Second Edition), Differentiation: From Planning to Practice and Metaphors & Analogies: Power Tools for Teaching any Subject, all five from Stenhouse Publishers, as well as Summarization in any Subject: 60 Innovative and Tech-Infused Strategies for Deeper Student Learning (releasing in fall 2018) published by ASCD. His book, The Collected Writings (So Far) of Rick Wormeli: Crazy Good Stuff I Learned about Teaching Along the Way, is collection of his published articles, guest blogs and more through 2013. His classroom practice is a showcase for ASCD's best-selling series, At Work in the Differentiated Classroom.

With his substantive presentations, sense of humor and unconventional approaches, he has been asked to present to teachers and administrators in all 50 states, Canada, China, Europe, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, Australia the Middle East, and at the White House. He is a seasoned veteran of many international webcasts, and he is Disney's American Teacher Awards 1996 Outstanding English Teacher of the Nation. He won the 2008 James P. Garvin award from the New England League of Middle Schools for Teaching Excellence, Service and Leadership, and he has been a consultant for National Public Radio, USA Today, Court TV and the Smithsonian Institution's Natural Partners Program and their search for the giant squid. Rick lives in Herndon, Virginia, with his wife, Kelly, and both are proud of recently launching the last of their children into adulthood. With the kids' college years now behind them, Rick and Kelly are now eagerly spending their children's inheritance while Rick works on his first young adult fiction novel and a new book on changing the culture of a school for ethical grading practices.