Learning Summit

Have you encountered moments where your educational values seemed at odds with your institution’s? This session will provide affirming and productive strategies to navigate dissonance, managing discrepancies between personal purpose and lived experience. You'll be introduced to a framework to support bridging value gaps through journaling exercises and participation protocols in order to channel feelings to thoughts to actions. This introspective approach will empower you to reconcile differing values and perspectives, leading to a clarified sense of self and purpose to inform your next steps.

Building upon our opening session, this follow-up reflective hour is designed to provide you with time and space to continue to refine and reaffirm your purpose. You’ll journey through a series of scenario-based exercises intended to bring clarity to both your personal and professional experiences through reflection and alignment. Participants will leave with a draft of their own mission statement that will help concretize their “why” in the future.

When wellness feels like another to-do on the to-do list, it seems to lose its meaning. Whether used as a buzzword or as an aspiration with no structure to support it, the pursuit of wellness can be daunting and defeating. In this session, participants will confront this tension and incorporate practical ways to prioritize wellness in their day-to-days. Through exploring concrete actions like taking back one's calendar and constructing sustainable communication practices, participants will leave this session with a menu of options to support wellness practices in the school year ahead.

Many of our professional “whys” are in support of students being known, students knowing themselves, and students taking action for their learning journeys. In this hour we’ll get clear on what it means to empower student voice and will explore strategies for inviting students to show up and participate in all stages of their learning experiences. From student driven learning proposals to engagement frameworks, participants will leave with ideas and replicable frameworks for amplifying student voice.

Who is looking for a low time investment, high impact new skill to incorporate into their practice? In this session, participants will rotate through and choose stations that guide them through developing a new skill and provide time for practice. Skills include: how to get started with AI, how to upgrade your AI prompting practice, how to make your own GPT and more. Please bring your headphones and your own device to participate actively in this session.

As AI redefines the boundaries of what's possible in education, this session explores how AI can tailor education to individual student needs and preferences. You will learn how features of personalized learning, such as agency, depth, and relevance, can be supported with AI. You will walk away with practical strategies for embedding AI into your classroom practice, making personalized learning a sustainable part of your educator practice.

How can we design learning environments where every student feels valued and supported? In our journey to create classrooms that cultivate belonging, this session offers a framework that begins with our selves, collaborates with our colleagues, and reaches to our students and their families. The practice of nurturing belonging can be joyful, and this hour aims to embrace that stance, examining inspirational actions we can take and personalizing them to our unique school contexts through adaptable reflection protocols. You’ll leave with both a mindset and moves for deepening belonging in the service of students.

How might the use of generative AI accelerate the creation of more human-centered, inclusive, and accessible learning environments? This workshop aims to equip participants with a shared vocabulary and essential knowledge of inclusive design principles. Through the integration of generative AI tools, participants will discover how to effectively apply these principles, fostering a learning environment where every student feels recognized and valued. Leveraging CAST’s Universal Design for Learning framework as a guiding lens, we will explore practical strategies to boost learner engagement and motivation. Concrete examples will be shared, demonstrating how AI can be used to accommodate diverse learning styles and facilitate various means for learners to express and communicate their understanding.

What do we do about AI? The conversations and decisions to make around AI provide us with both possibilities and risks. In our schools, we have to navigate these complex and challenging times with a both-and mindset. In this session participants will incorporate the Polarity Mapping process to engage in discussion on AI policy with the hope of embracing possibilities and establishing clarity. Participants will leave with renewed perspectives, informing AI policy conversations in their own schools.

In a landscape where the only constant is change, leaders are often faced with the challenge of responding to unexpected events with agility and insight. This session will introduce a framework designed to empower leaders to navigate uncertainty with confidence. Through case studies and discussions, you will leave with both proactive and reactive strategies, ensuring you are prepared to address challenges swiftly and effectively.

This session offers participants a “strategic plan decoder” that helps to translate and organize strategic plans into initiatives that will result in effective implementation. Whether you set the vision, develop the plan, or execute the initiatives, this session will offer a framework for aligning vision to purpose and translating vision to action. Participants will engage in the process collaboratively during the session and will leave equipped to lead it in their own school communities.

This session is designed for anyone who is looking to harness the power of AI for data-driven decision making. Learn how AI can be responsibly utilized to analyze complex datasets, uncover insights, and inform strategic planning. Through a hands-on session, engaging with example sets and collaborating on processes, participants will leave this session with a roadmap for implementing AI in your data-analysis practice, from beginning to end.