Workshops

Start/Stop/Continue: Reflecting on Pandemic Learning

Since early 2020 educators have transitioned, responded, and regrouped. They’ve adapted between in-person, online, and hybrid models. And in these shifts, they have upskilled, revised, and refined their practice in ways that will forever impact student learning. Now is the time to elevate educators’ experiences, sharing what we will take with us and what we will leave behind. In this action-oriented workshop, school teams will experience real-time exercises that walk educator teams through a framework for affirmation, a protocol for reflection, and an exercise to give permission to make shifts, all that result in concrete takeaways for the next school year. This workshop may be taken on its own or may be paired with the follow-up workshop, Nuts and Bolts: Designing Post-Pandemic Learning, to empower educators in recommitting to enduring priorities for a successful, productive start to the new school year.

Nuts and Bolts: Designing Post-Pandemic Learning

This one hour workshop creates time and space for school teams to re-establish priorities for successfully launching a new school year. This workshop is designed intentionally to surface and reinforce enduring strategies that support flexible, equitable, and sustainable learning. Participants will walk through a vision articulation and alignment exercise and then utilize what has been created to transition to “nuts and bolts": concrete action steps that can inform professional learning communities at your school throughout the academic year. This new workshop is both a stand-alone and a companion to our reflection based workshop, Start/Stop/Continue: Reflecting on Pandemic Learning.

Additional Workshops

• How Might We Design Assessments that Promote Equity, Integrity, and Rigor?
• How Might We Design for Equity in Grading?
• How Might We Design for Inclusion?
• How Might We Design Synchronous Student-Centered Experiences?
• How Might We Design for Hybrid Blocks?
• How Might We Humanize Online Spaces?
  

How Might We Design Assessments that Promote Equity, Integrity, and Rigor?

The transition to online and hybrid learning environments presents unique challenges when it comes to designing assessments. In online and hybrid environments, it becomes even more important to ensure that assessments faithfully capture what students know and can do. Assessments also need to offer students actionable information about where they are in their learning. This workshop explores how teachers can make decisions around assessment design to promote academic integrity, equity, and rigor. Teachers will work through a framework that will drive them to design versatile, “cheat-proof” assessments for learning that serve multiple audiences.

How Might We Design for Equity in Grading?

In this workshop, we’ll explore a framework for designing grading and reporting systems based on compassion, equity, and rigor. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has put into sharp relief pre-existing broken grading practices. What has become even more apparent in hybrid and online spaces is that grading systems that aren’t designed to support targeted outcomes can detract from the learning process and exacerbate inequities. Participants will develop a common language around bias-resistant grading practices and explore strategies grounded in GOA’s own work for applying grading for equity to hybrid and online learning settings.

How Might We Design for Inclusion?

Whether in-person, hybrid, or online, the learning environments we design and foster impact student learning and their sense of belonging. In this workshop, we will explore how to intentionally design inclusive and affirming learning environments that are rooted in antiracist principles. From visual representation to equitable participation, we will consider how we can leverage online platforms and tools to build and maintain learning environments of belonging and inclusion.

How Might We Design Synchronous Student-Centered Experiences?

Many students (and educators!) are spending a significant amount of time online in synchronous experiences. How do we make these synchronous experiences more student-centered? What are the specific ways of organizing synchronous experiences that allow for students to engage and connect? In this workshop, we’ll tease out best practices from the GOA network in designing synchronous time. From protocol-driven breakout rooms to designing equitable group work practices, this workshop is designed for elementary, middle, and high school teachers to design intentionally to promote student-centered learning in online synchronous environments. Using specific protocols, frameworks, and tools, synchronous experiences can drive student engagement, humanizing the online learning space and creating meaningful, connected learning experiences for students and teachers. We’ll go beyond emojis and ice breakers to talk about the ways in which teachers can make synchronous time a productive, inclusive learning space.

How Might We Design for Hybrid Blocks?

Hybrid learning combines online and in-person spaces to create a flexible learning environment. Using the “HyFlex” model as a guide, this workshop will show teachers how to prepare a single block that serves three types of students: those who are in person, those who will be joining synchronously online, and those who will need to engage asynchronously with the lesson. Participants will explore how to pace a hybrid block, how to encourage interaction and collaboration, and how to use technology to support learning for students and sustainability/efficiency for the teacher.

How Might We Humanize Online Spaces?

For learners to thrive, we need to first consider how we humanize learning experiences and design intentionally for presence and connection. Establishing and maintaining relationships is the foundation of a culturally responsive classroom. Small shifts offer big impacts in transforming online learning from a solitary, individual, teacher-driven experience to a connected, relational, student-driven community. From audio and video-based strategies to proactive design moves, this workshop offers specific ways teachers can humanize learning while promoting student agency across online, hybrid, and in-person contexts.

GOA workshops are a synchronous opportunity to learn together as a team facilitated by GOA. A member of the GOA team will lead a 60 minute synchronous workshop for your school-based team. GOA will record the workshop for colleagues who cannot attend. Workshop dates and times customized to your calendar are available as time permits. The workshop may be recorded by the school in the case of absent participants. For GOA member schools, each workshop is $1000. For non-member schools, each workshop is $1250.

Workshops should be scheduled at least three weeks in advance with GOA. GOA will host the workshop in Zoom and will send the recording to you of the workshop after it is over. We can accommodate a group size up to a total of 299 participants. We also can provide closed captioning for participants.

Fill out the form above if you are interested in having GOA lead one of these workshops for your team. GOA’s professional learning team will be in touch to schedule a 30 minute pre-workshop call to cover logistics including confirmation of the date and time of the workshop. We will prioritize scheduling workshops for GOA member schools.