When we tell kids to complete an assignment, we get compliance. When we empower kids to explore and learn how to make an impact on the world, we inspire problem solvers and innovators. This change in education will require more than providing training for administrators and teachers to implement new curriculum or programs and resources.
To create a culture of learning and innovation for all, these learning experiences must be situated in an ecosystem that redefines how we measure success, prioritizes learning at all levels, and is always evolving to meet the needs of those we serve.
Making these shifts requires more than equipping schools with technology or creating creative learning spaces, instead, it is about us, as educators, evolving to meet the needs of those we serve. This talk will highlight educators making these shifts and celebrate what is possible in education.
Collective efficacy is about the overwhelming power that school teams have to impact change when they join together to solve problems. Collective efficacy is high when educators believe that they are capable of helping students master complex content, fostering students’ creativity, and getting students to believe they can do well in school.
Expectations that they can successfully achieve their intended goals results in the confidence, resiliency, and persistence needed to overcome inequities and challenges.
Many school leaders are asking: How do we foster a sense of collective efficacy among teachers to realize better outcomes for students? Information about how efficacy beliefs are formed and ways to influence a staff’s interpretation of their effectiveness will be shared along with examples and success stories.
In this talk I discuss the future of “Smart”, the idea of shifting schools away from questioning whether kids are smart to helping them discover how they are smart. This talk focuses on the difference between the “school-centered” approach to learning that lies at the heart of the “industrial model” of education, and a learner- centered model that recognizes the purpose of education as being about creating whole human beings, and about embracing and actualizing the unique potential of every person.
The talk will discuss design elements of transformed schools that represent the future of smart, as well as the unique competencies of adults who can successfully work within these models.
Access to technology has transformed how we learn and interact with one another. To meet the needs of learners in our classrooms today and align school with the world we live in there is a need to embrace new mindsets about learning, along with new tools and resources available to make these shifts across diverse classrooms.
This paradigm shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered is changing how we see learners and their critical role in their own learning now and throughout their lives. This talk will focus on the characteristics of learner-centered experiences that spark curiosity, ignite passion, and unleash genius.
Successful educational reforms are defined by deep levels of implementation of what is known to work best in systems, schools, and classrooms. When educators share a sense of collective efficacy, it results in deeper implementation of high-leverage leadership and instructional practices.
System and school leaders’ efforts toward successful change reforms are better served by strategically and intentionally considering how to foster collective efficacy throughout the enactment and assessment of improvement initiatives. In this keynote, Jenni examines the role of collective efficacy in achieving quality implementation of evidence-based practices.
Highly efficacious teams do more than welcome new instructional practices into the mix; they find ways to bring theory and practice together in their unique environments in order to produce positive results – regardless of other circumstances. In this session, Jenni will share four processes used by highly successful learning communities in creating the conditions for mastery (the strongest source of collective efficacy) in schools.
A lot has been made of the industrial model of education and the need to redesign away from this model. However, to focus on the industrial model is to ignore the fact that it is the by-product of deeply-entrenched scientific, cultural and social beliefs that are being challenged and overturned in radical ways in today’s globalized, multi-cultural, ecologically-oriented world, and across a range of other disciplines.
This talk will leave audience members with a deeper understanding of the powerful beliefs that undergird the “industrial model” and will challenge them to move beyond tinkering with the model by proposing strategies for uprooting and replacing the model, the only way in which efforts to transform education will succeed.
Personal beliefs play such a strong role in education that it is easy to forget that there are some things on which the research is relatively clear. In this keynote, Dylan William will address seven widespread educational beliefs:
1. Experts can judge good teaching when they see it
2. We can evaluate teachers by the progress their students make
3. Insights from neuroscience can improve teaching
4. Authentic activities are the best way to teach
5. Humans know when they are learning and when they are not
6. Randomized-control trials (RCTs) are the most reliable guides on how to improve education
7. Knowledge isn’t important. You can always Google it
Dylan will then show that each of these are not just lacking evidence in their support but are, just incorrect.
By the end of this session, participants will understand why each of the seven myths are untrue, and how to evaluate similar claims when they are made.
From the first day of school we begin the process of growing a culture of thinking. The Project Zero Classroom provides a perfect opportunity for to reflect on how we built a culture of thinking with our students at the start of the last (or current) school year, learn from effective practices of others, and begin to prepare for the next school year. Of course, building culture is more than just a set of practices, we must also learn to marshal each of the eight cultural forces (expectations, time, modeling, language, routines, interactions, opportunities and the physical environment) as we teach day-by-day, week-by-week, and month-by-month. While each force is important in building a strong and cohesive culture, our interactions with students early on are especially salient in setting the tone and building the relationships and trust we need for a productive year. This keynote session will focus on important ways we interact with students to build a culture of thinking, exploring ten things to say everyday to our students and why those matter. It is through a strong and supportive culture that we can best nurture critical and creative thinking dispositions.
Participants will learn:
– The eight forces that give rise to group culture and lay a foundation for creating a culture of thinking.
– How teachers and school leaders create cultures right from the very start of the school year and effective practices for doing so.
– 10 things we need to say to our students everyday to help build a culture of thinking.
Decades in the future, what from today’s instructional thinking will we look back upon and declare, “Wow, we had that right,” or, “Whoa, how could we have been so blind to students’ learning?” Join us as the advanced-age version of Rick Wormeli (in costume) from the year 2075 travels back to us through a time vortex to 2019.
As his older and younger selves, Rick reminisces on the teaching and learning practices of today’s classrooms that will stand the test of time all the way to his contemporary world in 2075.
With wigged out hair and an ever-young and creative mind, Rick rifts on educational salience, lifting those teaching/learning elements in modern practice that are sure to last into the decades ahead. Updated regularly, the address provides not only vision, but substance for robust teaching. Don’t miss it, and be sure to say “hello” to the visitor from the future!
Denis Lawton defined curriculum as “a selection from culture” but how are we to make the selection, and who gets to decide? In the absence of a clear set of guiding principles for the design of a curriculum, curriculum development becomes a kind of inflationary spiral in which people agree to other people’s preferences provided their own are also accepted. The result is too often a curriculum that is, in the words of William Schmidt, “a mile wide and an inch deep”. This lecture will present participants with a number of principles for curriculum design, that focus, in particular, on the curriculum as a device for building knowledge, and will show why access to a knowledge-based curriculum is one of the most powerful ways of increasing educational equity.
By the end of this session, participants will understand why a broad, well-balanced, knowledge-based curriculum is disproportionately effective for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and how they can ensure a principled approach to curriculum design in their own institutions.
Transforming schools and classrooms into cultures of thinking is more than merely instituting a set of practices. As useful as practices like thinking routines, documentation, and effective questioning can be, culture runs deeper. Culture is built on our values and beliefs and embedded in the messages we send. Thus, deep and lasting transformation must begin by embracing a set of beliefs about teaching, learning, and schooling. In this plenary, we will explore through active, interactive dialogue with our peers the 10 principles that we use in the Cultures of Thinking project to drive our action. These principles motivate and guide our actions and provide the touchstones we need as we create places where thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted. We will also take a look into classrooms to explore ways we can see these principles in action.
Participants will learn:
– The 10 mindsets that underpin and lay a foundation for cultural of thinking practices.
– How these mindsets shape what happens in the classroom and across the school.
– How these mindsets connect to theories of action we can use to shape and evaluate our progress in putting these mindsets to work in our schools.
– The research behind these 10 mindsets and why they matter.
– To identify some specific “observables,” “do-ables,” and “ponderables” that can help you to move forward at your school.
Differentiated instruction is a nice idea, but what happens when it comes to grading students or those high-stakes, standardized tests? Do we really believe what is fair isn’t always equal, and it’s okay to do different things for different students along different timelines and pathways?
Being sensitive to students’ readiness levels and backgrounds while holding them accountable for the same standards can be a challenge. What works? Join us for a provocative and entertaining address that examines differentiating instruction for diverse learners while also meeting the needs of standards and accountability. We’ll bust differentiated instruction myths and get to our core beliefs as educators.
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