With the proliferation and integration of AI tools into our daily lives, the need for AI literacy is paramount for our students. Experience activities incorporating AI literacy that teach AI fundamentals, ethical implications, and practical applications while fostering critical thinking (wonder), creativity (joy), and digital citizenship. Attendees will leave with a better of idea how to integrate AI literacy in their work with students and other educators though collaboration, reflection, and sharing of ideas.
Join us as we dive into the transformative power of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) for middle school administrators. Discover how we utilized This We Believe: Successful Middle Schools as our anchor text, leveraged regional data, and crafted practice profiles to guide reflective discussions. Learn practical strategies and engaging activities to propel positive changes in your schools, teachers, and students!
Surviving Stranger Things is an interactive workshop designed to help teachers manage challenging classroom behaviors with trauma-informed strategies. Participants learn to see misbehavior as communication and respond empathetically, using alternatives to exclusion and punishment. The workshop offers practical tools for building strong relationships, fostering self-regulation, and creating a proactive classroom environment. Attendees leave with over a dozen actionable strategies, such as the 2x2x3 method for noticing students, structuring explicit coaching conversations, mirroring body language, feigning boredom, and using powerful scripts like Feel-Felt-Found and I don’t want…I do want. This session is ideal for teachers, deans, counselors, and administrators seeking practical, unique solutions for today’s unusual classroom behaviors. The presenter, Keith, is a seasoned middle school English and math teacher, principal, and author of two ASCD books, including The Instructional Coaching Handbook.
This session will highlight the importance of addressing students' basic psychological autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs. Doing so can help move students from amotivated towards intrinsically motivated, reinforcing our commitment to their holistic development and well-being. Teachers will learn practical and easy-to-implement strategies to enhance students' autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the classroom, including research-based high-yield strategies that teachers can leverage to increase student learning and achievement. This interactive session will engage teachers in reflecting on current practices and practical implementation strategies, empowering them with the capability to make a positive impact on student motivation. When these needs are factored into teachers' decision-making processes, these three basic needs can significantly increase students' perceptions of autonomy, competence, and relatedness within the classroom, thereby increasing their intrinsic motivation.
Having students read aloud encourages them to become directly involved in lessons. The text comes alive, connecting that which Laurence Perrine defines as critical elements of language: the sound and the sense. Student writers are constantly encouraged to show, not tell their stories. By both reading aloud and being read to aloud, students make connections between showing and telling the text’s intent. Reading aloud directly addresses the needs of auditory learners in the classroom while enhancing the auditory experience for visual and kinesthetic learners. The goal of lifelong learning is directly addressed, and the authenticity of the text is maintained when the material is shared aloud. Moreover, interpretation can be included to generate a discussion of the challenges facing textual interpretation. For students to achieve literacy, they must believe they own the text. It must be clearly and concisely accessible, and it must be supported with appropriate interpretation.
Many students often struggle with connecting with literacy in an authentic way. Design Thinking, a human centered problem solving process, can be a powerful integration tool to help students connect with literacy in authentic ways. The experience of integrating Design Thinking with literacy can be transformative for learners when students use empathy maps and create solutions for characters from the stories that they are reading. Additionally, students will cultivate and grow their own creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration.
This workshop aims to empower school leaders with the tools and strategies to cultivate a thriving culture of care among their staff. By addressing the pressing need for healthier and more sustainable school environments, we can significantly improve outcomes for both students and educators. Participants will delve into the critical reasons why prioritizing well-being is essential for school success. Through engaging discussions and practical exercises, they will explore innovative approaches to enhance school culture and operations. By the end of the workshop, school leaders will be equipped to implement tangible changes that foster a more supportive and fulfilling work environment, ultimately leading to improved student learning and teacher retention.
In order to close the gender gap and promote STEM careers for female students, hands-on activities and curriculum are only the beginning. The tipping point occurs when girls not only see who they are but who they can become. By modeling career choices and matching mentors with schools, interest and perception are changed. Career Fairs, mentoring, modeling, and university partnerships are other parts to the solution. This session will take you through the steps to create a culture of belonging and exploration to empower girls in STEM.
