Workshop Descriptions

Assess for Learning: The Essentials

How do you know your students are learning? And, how do your students know they are learning? This one-hour workshop offers a clear, accessible definition of and approach to student-centered assessment. Through classroom and course examples, the workshop introduces the look-fors that teachers can identify in their own practice and potential shifts they can make to ensure that assessment is directly impacting student learning. Participants will apply those look-fors, engaging in a collaborative conversation to self-assess their own practice. Participants will leave the workshop with a shared understanding of what it means to assess for learning, an outcomes-based rubric for ongoing reflection, identified areas for growth, and impactful strategies to try out.

New! Build Collaborative Communities: The Essentials

When students are engaged in meaningful work together, they grow in both their connection and their learning. They develop essential collaboration skills that apply across classrooms and beyond school. But effective collaboration requires intention, and all too often “group work” becomes a divide-and-conquer approach with imbalances in contributions and inequities in shared products. What if collaboration looked different? What if collaboration skills were explicitly taught? What if group work led to deepened relationships and deeper learning? In this one-hour workshop, we’ll explore GOA’s educator competency, “Build Collaborative Communities”, defining the what and why of collaboration. This workshop prioritizes moving from theory to practice, exploring how communities built on trust, care, collaboration, and high expectations connect and empower learners. We’ll explore a range of strategies for co-curating norms, building collaboration skills, and engaging students in authentic processes. Participants will leave with an outcomes based rubric for reflection, an identified next step they want to take, and a toolkit of resources and strategies for ongoing support in building thriving collaborative communities.

Cultivate Belonging: The Essentials

Cultivating belonging is an intentional process; it requires awareness and deliberate action. In this one-hour workshop, educators are introduced to a common understanding of what it means to cultivate belonging, why it matters, and how to get started. Participants will examine examples of moves to look for in their own practice and will self-reflect on a rubric that names outcomes to work towards in schools and classrooms. This is an ideal experience for starting a school year: participants will clarify and elevate what matters most--students being known and experiencing psychological safety--and leave this interactive workshop with a shared understanding of what it means to cultivate belonging, identified areas for growth, and impactful strategies to try out.

NEW! Design a Feedback Ecosystem

Assessments that are rooted in robust cycles of feedback have the single most significant impact on student learning. To ensure that we, as educators, can maximize the effectiveness of our feedback while managing our feedback workload, we need to employ the use of a feedback ecosystem. When educators design feedback ecosystems, they plan for students to exchange, receive, and apply meaningful feedback in an integrated, sustainable way. As part of our Assess for Learning series, this one-hour workshop explores the what, why, and how of providing students with ongoing, timely, and actionable feedback, leaving with a plan for launching a school year or learning experience with a feedback ecosystem in place.

NEW! Design for Student Voice

Designing for student voice is not a checklist; it’s a process we revisit over time to ensure that all of our students experience belonging and have pathways for engagement in our schools. As part of our Cultivate Belonging series, in this one-hour workshop, participants are introduced to a variety of actions they can take to begin actively designing to include and leverage student voice. With a focus on strategies supporting representation, affirmation, and participation, participants will explore a range of ideas they can put into practice right away that invite and empower all learners. From how we greet students, to protocols for discussion, to how we plan diverse content playlists, each participant will walk away with a small next step for making a big impact.

Goal Setting for a Purpose-Driven School Year

There’s never a better time for uniting as a community in purpose and priorities than the launch of a school year. In this one-hour workshop, participants will experience a series of exercises that invite them to draft purpose statements, make meaning from priorities, and set a focused, purpose-driven goal. Ideal for supporting alignment in a community this hour provides opportunities for both personal reflection and crafting a shared vision. There is power and affirmation in educators joining to make our thinking visible and to share why the work we do with students matters. Experience an hour that moves you from reflection to goal setting, and elevates the bigger purposes behind the daily actions that we take in schools.

Introduction to Competency-Based Learning

The disruptions of the past few years in education have renewed interest in competency-based learning (CBL), a system designed to promote agency, equity, and transfer in schools. But what is CBL? Why does it matter? How might schools begin working towards it? In this hour-long workshop, a GOA coach will help your team understand the core elements and impact of CBL and, through a series of simple exercises, introduce five key shifts for moving towards CBL in classrooms and beyond. Participants will leave this workshop with a deeper understanding of CBL as a framework for school design as well as concrete approaches to bring competency-based learning into their classrooms.