Tuesday, July 21st

Have you taken a moment to reflect on how the last quarter of the school year went for you and your students? Still unsure and worried about what next school year will look like?

Join us for an interactive reflective forum. Taking the time for reflection gives you the opportunity to look at the ‘why’, identify opportunities for improvement, consider theories and the impact of our decisions, and a chance to hear different perspectives. This forum is not about being told what you should do, it’s time to think, connect with others, and make decisions about how you can start to prepare for the upcoming school year regardless of final decisions for how it will look.

Most know about strategies for verifying sources. Some apply them, some don’t, and some just ‘like’, ‘retweet’ and ‘reshare’ content without even reading past the title. Even if information is factual, the inherent bias of those reports, images, and videos are seeping their ways into becoming our beliefs, which in turn lead us to behave and act in certain ways. So the important question you should be asking is, “am I living in a filter bubble?”

During this session, we’ll cover ways to customize your settings, curate lists for news sources and social accounts, and how to be more cognizant of messaging that affects your conscious and feeds your unconscious bias.

Do your students have writing identities in your class? Do they know how to lift their voices as a historian, mathematician, or scientist? Do they see themselves as writers in your discipline? This session will help them do all these things, and more. Learn practical ways to build a writing culture in your classroom, while embedding cognitive routines that grow students as critical and creative thinkers. Leave this session with the resources needed to transform the writing community in your classroom.

During this global pandemic, school and district leaders have been forced to make myriad difficult decisions, often without the luxury of time to second guess themselves. In crisis mode, they've had to recognize gaps in what is required for learning access, and act quickly to triage the needs as best they can in the moment. As we reflect on the important moves and judgement calls these leaders have made, this panel discussion seeks to specifically analyze the rules, routines, policies, and traditions with which necessity dictated we dispense, and to provide a frank dialogue about whether some of these practices are best left out of the rebuilding that is ahead of us.

Most of our students are obsessed with videos! Come learn how to practically leverage the power of videos for instruction and assessments during live, online and distance learning!

Join Brian Smith to unwind and unpack your learning. From great music to excellent dialogue, Brian will provide a chill space for you to pause, breathe, and reflect daily.