Workshops at reEngage DL2021

What if students read and analyzed their local communities the same way they read and analyze Shakespeare? What if they leveraged this critical analysis to brainstorm, develop, and execute purposeful solutions to neighborhood challenges? Come learn about the New Community Project, a year-long social impact course that uses the study of literature as the foundation for social activism. Along with reading traditional texts, students partner with a local nonprofit organization and analyze them as a “living text.” By juxtaposing “living texts” with traditional texts, the New Community Project inspires students to make an impact using the language of empathy.

In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn strategies for making project based learning accessible to English Language Learners with consideration of the in-person, blended, and remote learning settings. Teachers from International High School at Lafayette will demonstrate how they incorporate heterogeneity, collaboration, translanguaging, and other scaffolds into project design using a highly successful interdisciplinary project as a model. Participants should bring an existing project or project idea that they would like to adapt to be more inclusive of ELLs.

This panel explores how leaders from public, private, charter and community institutions leveraged technology, transparency, and deeper learning outcomes to transform education in Hawaii. The session challenges attendees to reimagine public/private partnerships. Panelists share examples of different frameworks that leverage technology, design thinking & community and cultural resources, expertise, knowledge.

In this workshop, the participants will brainstorm on how our education system can be oppressive and think about ways learning can be used as an instrument for freedom of the mind and transformation of lives. Siembra Leadership Highschool will be used as an example to see what innovative ways are used to support and help transform the educational experience of our students.

In this session, participants will develop a deeper understanding of why educator’s reflection and goal-setting practice is important and how it impacts instructional practice and student learning. Through actively engaging in research based texts, small group discussions in Breakout Rooms, and exploration of current individual reflection and goal setting practices, we will deepen understanding of structures and protocols that enable powerful reflection and goal setting. Participants will leave the workshop with tools and resources that support reflection and goal-setting as a regular and ongoing practice.

How can educators create conditions to promote increased academic engagement, improved student well-being, and an overall healthier school climate? Start with deepening your understanding of the student experience through exercises that authentically capture and elevate student voice. “Listen In” and discover how students’ input and expertise can help shape their classroom, their school, and ultimately their own learning and growth. In this interactive workshop, participants will explore specific tools and strategies designed to better understand the student experience such as Shadow Day, Dialogue Night, Fishbowl, Digital Storytelling, and Student Surveys. Learn how one school leveraged student voice data and engaged students in the process to better understand symptoms and root causes of stress and disengagement. Listening to the student voice provided an opportunity to engage all stakeholders in discussion for meaningful school culture instructional practice changes. Participants will also engage in a self-discovery process to assess when and how they may elicit and use student voice to effect change in their own schools. The session will be facilitated by Margaret Dunlap, School Program Director at Challenge Success and Dearborn Ramos, former Assistant Principal and current teacher in the San Ramon Valley School District. This will be a high energy, participatory session that offers practical, research-based strategies that can be implemented immediately. Come learn how to listen more deeply to your students!

The Deeper Learning conference is much more than just another professional development meeting. It brings educators together with emotion, inspiration, enthusiasm, and passion. Those aspects are difficult to communicate to our coworkers with traditional meeting notes, let alone across a digital platform. So how do we bring back the essence of DL to our existing school communities? How can we inspire change within our existing school culture? What if our school has a culture of resistance or exhaustion? This workshop will give you the chance to process your experience or the resources from the conference, then explore tools to spread them throughout your existing school community. Learn what has worked at our school and what we aspire to be better at. Discuss with others how DL principles have impacted their students, classrooms, coworkers, and community. Brainstorm how DL could look from your role and how it could impact those around you. Take an opportunity to solidify all the ideas, hopes, fears, and resources you gathered as a part of your Deeper Learning conference experience into one, actionable implementation plan. You will leave this session with an image of where your school culture is now, a projection of where you believe it could be, and a plan to help get you there!

Are the kids alright? Are they engaged with their classmates and teachers? Are they all learning? Are they truly learning while doing school from home? In this workshop we will explore the findings from a national project that has asked students from across the country about life and learning during the pandemic. Together we will engage with a handful of evocative data points as we discuss the implications of how students’ perceptions of school have changed during the pandemic to include their experiences of their relationships with their teachers and peers, their senses of belonging, and their perceptions of academic challenge. We will also practice a mindset-check activity as we reflect on the power of empathy and radical listening as a tool for supporting individual students and as a lever for organizational change. We will also engage in a virtual data equity walk to investigate how this last school year has differentially impacted our students. Taking one High Tech High campus as our case-study, we will interact with an innovative school leader who will share how she employs student feedback as a catalytic ingredient for strategic and ethical leadership.

High School for Recording Arts is a Project-Based school that proudly exhibits the artistic, brilliant, hip-hop focused work of our students on the local, state, national and international level. While the beautiful work is exhibited, the behind the scenes details of curriculum design and engagement aren’t always discussed. Attendees will be challenged to rethink classroom and curriculum design in order to create a learner-centric, student-paced classroom that incorporates multiple best practices and strategies including station-based models, blended learning, interactive notebooks, project-based learning and competency-based student assessment, resulting in a student-empowered environment where learning is relevant and meaningful.

Come join “Love and Fear in Education”. We’ll explore the question: How might we help shift learning & school culture from fear to love? Using a co-design model we’ll dive into this challenge starting with awareness + learning, moving to interpreting + brainstorming, and ending with prototypes to try in your community. Be ready to talk openly about our fears and the love it takes to be courageous educators.

Why do students learn? How do students use their learning to design/create with empathy and a purpose in mind? Thinking beyond grades, how can we encourage students to create and have a meaningful, positive impact on others? At Beaver, students are encouraged to transfer and apply their knowledge and delve deep into their work to problem-solve and design to affect the world around them. Taking from the Beaver New Basics, we will showcase some of the work students created as they design and innovate with a purpose. In this interactive workshop, participants will have the opportunity to learn about our approach and mindset, engage with students about their work and process, and collaborate to design projects that promote deeper learning, innovation, and empathy.

We know the power of Presentations of Learning (POLS) for students, but how can POLS be used to spark, assess, and share educator learning? Join this workshop for an immersive step into the “what” and “how” of educator POLS. You’ll see what it looks like when educators share their learning by touring a living gallery of educator work products, videos, protocols, rubrics, and case studies. You’ll also “learn by doing” by engaging in a mini-POL process. Throughout the workshop, you’ll be invited to consider how parallel pedagogy for students and educators might unlock new learning opportunities for both and how POLS could support a learning culture in your local context.

History is the study of all of the events in the past that have led us to where we are today. However, most social studies and history courses include a very limited view of the past and miss opportunities to empower students through Culturally Responsive Teaching practices. In this session, educators, administrators, and support staff will be given the opportunity to consider how to adapt materials to best reflect the diverse interests of learners, while presenting content in a way that is meaningful and relevant. Attendees will critically examine and revise their own teaching and/or instructional practices to be more reflective of the complex needs of learners, and ultimately create a plan of action for how to continue these practices. Even within the confines of state and national standards, educators have power to reframe their practices to be more inclusive of every learner’s history!

Creative Activism: Arts Integration in Social Justice Education will provide practical strategies for integrating social justice themed literary, performance, and visual art in the classroom. This interactive workshop will provide an introduction to artists, performers, and authors who focus their creative work on solutions to social justice issues. Participants will explore what has happened to creativity in the educational system, and will deepen their insight into how and why the system has not nurtured critical problem solving and creative visioning. Participants will examine their own experience of the creative process, create an original collaborative lesson plan, and set goals for integrating art for social change into their classroom teaching. Teachers curious about creative activism will discover ways to navigate arts integration—often an intimidating prospect—within the support of a dynamic learning community. Participants will: • collaboratively plan an arts-integrated lesson based on a social justice themed children’s book • acquire resources to find solution-focused artists whose work can be used in lessons across the curriculum • gain insight into their own creative blocks and creative confidence

“Resilience is not all or nothing. It comes in amounts. You can be a little resilient, a lot resilient. Resilient in some situations and not others. And no matter how resilient you are today, you can become more resilient tomorrow.” – Karen Reivich The worldwide coronavirus pandemic and a national racial reckoning have stretched the ability of children, and the adults that care for them, to cope with the challenges of day to day life. Supporting students to learn and grow and engage in school has been a challenge that educators across the country have met, while attempting to also take care of themselves. This session will focus on building connections for adults and children during distance learning (during modalities such as community circles, advisory, etc.), as well as integrate coping strategies so that educators and students can do more than survive during these wild times.

VAP: Vigorous Activity Period Learn how one school implemented a Vigorous Activity Period and transformed their academic program by putting the physical and emotional needs of their students at the forefront of their educational experience. A student enters your class bouncing off of the walls. Another enters and slumps down on the table, asleep before the second bell. A third is sitting stiffly, afraid to make a move for fear of social ridicule. If only there were a way to help each student regulate their energy level! In this presentation you will learn how The Crefeld School in Philadelphia instituted a Vigorous Activity Period for all middle school students first thing in the morning and how it has changed the rhythm of our days. Vigorous activity is not about athleticism or competition, but rather is about helping students to connect their minds to their bodies and to find accessible activities that they enjoy, benefit from, and sustain long after they leave your classroom. Attendees will experience several activities that they will be able to take back to their school. There will be accessible physical activity. We will brainstorm ways to overcome obstacles imposed by schedules and other logistical considerations.

Participants will create PBLs including pacing guides with multiple classes; they will learn how students use science, math, language arts, social sciences and world language for one project in different classrooms.

The industrial-age system of education has focused on measuring seat time, grade-point averages, and standardized test scores. What does a post-industrial educational system need to measure in order to better prepare all learners for an era of accelerating change? Research and frameworks will be shared to guide an inquiry into identifying, capturing, and using whole-child measures to build learner agency, collaboration, and problem solving. In addition, assessments methods for challenging SEL outcomes will be reviewed. Participants will come away from this session with an actionable list of tasks to help expand our views of learner success.

In this session participants will explore the story of how the global pandemic was leveraged to supercharge the Ulster BOCES school transformation and the creation of their “North Star”. Learners will develop their unique self Learners will develop their capacity Learners will contribute to the community Learners will engage in continuous cycles of inquiry Participants will engage in collaborative discussions about new learnings from the last 12 months that should and can be applied in the post pandemic landscape, and how the last year fostered a “beginner’s mind” (one in which everyone was a new teacher, leader, or learner). Focus areas will include best practice that can be carried over, moving from attendance to engagement, and transforming teacher evaluation to cycles of inquiry for adults to foster adult professional learning environments focused on our most valuable resource…our students.

Looking for ways to teach and assess students’ critical thinking and problem solving skills? Building on assessment for learning principles, Two Rivers Public Charter School has developed a system to collect data on students’ abilities to transfer the cognitive skills embedded in project-based learning and other inquiry-based instructional approaches across the curriculum. Come learn how we developed discrete performance assessments centered on different aspects of critical thinking, and how we use the data to inform instruction and to help students integrate cognitive skills into their lives. Our session will leave participants with practical considerations for implementing similar models.

Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will understand. Chinese Proverb To meet the challenges of the future, our students need to be creative, collaborative, compassionate, critical thinkers who are also good communicators. This workshop will show participants how to use drama to explore elements of literacy. Since communication is central to drama, students who regularly are exposed to drama strategies, will more effectively broaden their vocabulary and further develop their oracy skills. Drama is easily adaptable to a variety of text studies and students acquire confidence in speaking from using language rhythms, expression, intonation and pronunciation. The role drama can play in enhancing literacy outcomes will be explored during this workshop. Creative arts-rich pedagogies enable students to go beyond surface and literal interpretations of literature to develop deeper understanding. Students’ perspectives about themselves and their world can be broadened to embrace an understanding of the vast diversity of cultures. Drama is ideal for cross-curricular learning. In the areas of literacy and the arts, this workshop will focus on the use of process drama, utilising rich texts to foster students’ imaginations and critical literacies. Drama engages multi-dimensional learning styles, thereby facilitating connections with students and motivating learners. In addition, drama has the ability to enhance reflection in students and can be used to create powerful social learning environments where students can develop empathy. Student engagement is high as drama activities are dynamic – making learning both enjoyable and memorable. We hope to lead participants to an appreciation of this approach and to promote their confidence and expertise, so it becomes an integral part of their students’ classroom experience. Participants will explore; what are the benefits of using drama? how warm up activities can engage your students, how to use the drama strategies to explore characters and concepts through a quality text. There will be opportunity for discussion and all participants will walk away with a resource booklet containing a toolbox of ideas they can use as soon when they return to their classroom.

Ever wonder why, as the world has drastically changed over the last 200 years, classrooms have remained largely the same? This highly interactive workshop invites you to re-imagine learning spaces, putting everything we know about learning, neurology and 21st century skills to work as we prototype and design engaging student-centered classrooms. In this virtual and playful edition of our Learning Space Design Lab which three years in a row has been selected among Top 100 Global Innovations in Education by HundrED.org, we invite educators to explore and take a fresh look at how the design of spaces can support teaching and learning and be a transformative tool, enabling the learning culture you aim to create, empowering students and giving them agency. Take Aways: Re-imagine what classrooms could look like Bring back a bunch of ideas to explore further with your students in your classroom Explore how learning, creativity and design of spaces connect

Molefe Kete Asante laments the fact that “an African-American or Hispanic person [student]-in order to master the white cultural information-has had to experience the death of his or her own culture”. And on our best day, we as educators are yet unknowing participants in that cultural death as we stand in front of students to teach what we ourselves were once taught…but no more. Through partner activities, independent reflection, and critical group discussion spanning all core subjects, teachers in this session will learn to highlight student culture in daily lessons and create culturally empowering moments that students will never forget.

Have you ever felt like you’re walking a tightrope while implementing PBL? That you’re balancing the requirements to cover content and meet rigorous learning targets WHILE trying to engage students with a compelling, meaningful project? If you fall too much one way, then students might not build the skills and develop the content knowledge they need. Too much the other way and you drain the life, energy, and authenticity out of their learning. Informed Action allows students to use findings from a rigorous investigation to determine the purpose, impact, and content of their project and action. In this session, we’ll explore how you can use an Informed Action approach to transform Project-Based Learning to Learning-Based Projects. We’ll also provide the practical strategies to keep students engaged and moving forward toward ideation and creation. Finally, we’ll dig deep into the watershed moment when students pivot to action. Participants will practice strategies to help students organize and collate their research, then work together to create Challenge Statements, which help students take ownership of the process AND product of their work. Participants will walk away with the hands-on experience they can use to help students take Informed Action and create Learning-Based Projects in their classrooms.

In this session, participants will hear from Lead Coaches on the NYCDOE’s Continuous Learning team and teacher leaders (CL Fellows) at schools in the Continuous Learning Program about how we have established a robust equity lens for our work and incorporated student input and voice as a guiding principle for school improvement work. The Networked Improvement Community that the Continuous Learning team has established in Districts 9 and 10 in the Bronx has a collective Aim: “Together by 2024, we will dramatically increase the number of Black and Latinx multilingual middle schoolers excelling in literacy and content, ensuring they are ready to shine in high school and take on the world.” Our interactive workshop will center on how we are working toward that aim with an established racial equity lens and the prioritization of student/family voice in our work. After hosts share a broad overview of how we are moving toward this Aim and some school-based experiences in this work in a 15 minute panel format, participants will break out into three groups to do a deeper dive and simulation around one of the following activities: Student Journey Maps: All Continuous Learning Fellows are expected to engage in a Journey Map activity where they learn about a student’s experiences through and beyond the classroom. With these Journey Maps, teachers combine an exploration of student data (qualitative and quantitative), interviews with previous teachers, and interviews with the students themselves in order to create a deeper understanding of their student’s holistic strengths and areas of need. Participants will learn more about this activity and brainstorm how they would implement journey maps to inform their own improvement work. Student and Family Input on Change Ideas: Whenever a change is implemented in schools, students and their families are profoundly impacted and are an integral voice into both how those ideas are developed and adjusted. In this group, participants will learn about how student/family input is incorporated into PDSA cycles, then consider an improvement initiative in their own school and how they can tap into student and family voice as a tool. Centering Racial Equity in School-based Coaching: In working with Black and Latinx Multilingual Learners, our NIC has made it a priority to very intentionally think about how race impacts the work that we do. CL Lead Coaches/Fellows will share how intentional conversations about race have been weaved into our Coaching Scope and Sequence and support our instructional improvement work. Participants will then engage in a collaborative activity to tweak a future lesson, professional learning, or other activity to incorporate a racial equity lens. Participants will then share their learning and engage in a personal reflection of how they will bring their learning into practice in their school/district community.

Come together with other educators, school leaders, and student ambassadors from a middle school LBGTQ+ Club to co-create a change package to make your school a safe, joyful space for queer students and allies. Advisors and students from our middle school’s student-led LGBTQ+ Club will conduct a quick Gender and Sexuality 101 before facilitating and participating in this process with you. You will break into groups and examine your current school environment for potential areas of growth in inclusivity. Then you’ll collaborate with other participants to find creative ways to improve your school setting. Leave with concrete resources and ideas to create a student-led LGBTQ+ club, disrupt heteronormativity, and make sure every student at your school feels welcome.

In this hands-on, minds-on workshop, participants will learn how to weave making into their own practice, keeping the virtual ‘hands-on,’ and enabling learners to drive their own learning. After a first-hand investigation into the dynamics of light and shadow (in breakouts), participants will reflect on and uncover key variables of activity design and facilitation (related, for example, to the choreography of group work, the curation of tools and materials, and making learning visible) – all of which they can adopt, adapt, and tailor to their own learning environment (with an emphasis on ‘remote’ or ‘virtual’ learning contexts). Agenda: 3-5 min. – Overview and Orientation **Immersive, hands-on, activity (60 min. total) 10 min. – Materials Scavenger Hunt: Participants explore their respective locations and recycling bins for light play materials: a source of light (for example, an LED), a small variety of opaque objects, and materials (for example, cardboard, paper, wax paper, etc.) to create a make-shift shadow screen. 15 min. – Tinkering with Light & Shadow: In virtual pairs or trios (in breakout rooms), participants explore the aesthetic and scientific dimensions of a single white light’s interaction with objects of varying opacity. As they explore, pairs record discoveries they make in the process on a virtual white board (Google’s Jamboard or Padlet) to create a group model of light & shadow. 10 min. – Building a group model of understanding: All participants together review discoveries, share noticings, and add questions to the group model. Pairs or trios set intentions to gather additional evidence related to a specific discovery of their choosing. 15 min. – Further Tinkering with Light & Shadow: Pairs or trios continue their exploration of light & shadow (in breakout rooms). Participants may add a second source of light into their exploration. Pairs continue to record additional discoveries on the virtual group model. 10 min. – Building onto a group model of understanding: All participants together review new discoveries and propose strategies for reorganizing or revising the virtual group model. **Reflection on Activity Design and Facilitation (25 min. total) 5 min. – Individuals reflect quietly in writing on the following question: “What was that experience like for you as a learner?” 10 min. – In new virtual pairs or trios (in breakout rooms), participants share their reflections with each other, as well as consider and discuss the following question: “What in the design and facilitation of this activity led to or informed what you experienced?” Participants synthesize their discussion into a single ‘headline’ and nominate one member of their pair/trio to share their headline with the whole group. 10 min. – Each virtual pair or trio shares their ‘headline’ with the whole group; time for additional discussion.

The need to build empathy amongst kids is a national call. Join this session to learn how Mesa Middle School teachers address this need using Design Thinking with students to identify and address local and global issues with student designed and tested prototypes in authentic environments. Participants will leave with a framework that includes activities, rubrics, engagement strategies as well as time to collaborate and plan.

The goal for this workshop is for educators to learn the basic principles of visual analysis and how they can be applied in a variety of contexts and all classroom settings. The majority of the time will be spent practicing and testing foundational formal principles and then debriefing to consider how these seemingly “intuitive” principles actually create an inequitable learning environment. We will consider our own assumptions and find strategies to bring these visual assumptions to the surface and use them constructively in a variety of classes and disciplines.

Katie Weingarten dived into personalized learning during the 2019-2020 school year. She jumped in head-first and learned so much about herself and her students along the way. During this presentation, she will share the tools she created to personalize her 6th grade students journey through science and she will add in what she has done this year to guide her 8th graders through math during virtual instruction. You will leave with copies of her tools to take back and use immediately and will get to hear from her students and how personalization impacted their education.

This younger generation–more than any other—is exploring and discovering what border identities are—what it means to live in the spaces between cultures, countries, and languages. The term “border” is often given negative connotations when actually borders challenge us, offer new opportunities, and bring us joy as we move back and forth between worlds. This workshop will explore a “border pedagogy”—a way of teaching that embraces multiple cultures, languages, and identities. In order to teach across borders we need to employ a set of diverse and multidimensional teaching approaches. Experience multisensory activities where you will meet and learn from each other in a set of evolving conversations. Read and learn about a series of diverse texts that can be used in the classroom at all levels to explore border concepts. Finally participate in a community event where we will collectively create an exhibition of learning representing our own border identities.

Literacy in the Making is an interactive, hands-on session that connects literacy skills, social-emotional skills and making skills. In this immersive session you will explore these connections using your head, heart and hands. The workshop is designed to challenge the way we think about students’ responses to text, which are often limited to words. It’s an opportunity to use extended discourse, think about how to help students express emotions through literature, and respond using a variety of modes. The session closes with opportunities to connect what you learned by crafting activities that support your classroom instructional practices.