Saturday Session Highlights/Fall Forum 2012

Saturday session highlights!

Here are some of the inspiring sessions planned for Saturday November 10.  
(For a look at Friday’s lineup, please click here.)

Water and the Global Classroom:  A design thinking project example
Kader Adjout, History Chair, Beaver Country Day School, Chestnut Hill, MA
Paul Beran, Director, Outreach Center, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
 
This session will present a design thinking project in which students utilize new and existing knowledge to propose alternatives to current problems.  The example used will be water in the context of area studies, specifically the Middle East region.  We will highlight ways to build interdisciplinary classrooms that are informed by conversations with a layered group of educators (K-12 educators, 12-16 faculty, students).  Participants in the workshop will be provided with an overview of the design thinking project model, different ideas for approaching the study of water, and a project idea for potential application in the classroom.
 
Water Water Everywhere:  Studio-Lab Intersections and Inquiry Learning
Ramiro Gonzalez and Lynn Brown, Boston Arts Academy

Workshop presenters will briefly describe the TERC summer water project and provide samples of the prompts and materials used and students who participated in the program will share their processes and inquiry products.  Participants will then have the opportunity to create their own journey, resulting in a unique new understanding of the role of water in their world by experimenting with and exploring questions and materials.  You will leave with a greater understanding of studio habits and their connection with the scientific method, and ideas for developing interdisciplinary, thematic approaches to any topic to allow students to construct their own learning experience.

Advisory As An Equity Pedagogy

Gregory Peters, Executive Director, The San Francisco Coalition of Essential Small Schools
 
Whether your Advisory program is just getting started or is in need of a jumpstart, this workshop will provide participants the opportunity to learn from the experiences of advisors and students.  After seeing examples of structures that allow advisors to support students academically and emotionally, they will consider how to define or refine their own schools’ advisory programs from mission and vision to signature curriculum--from schedule to staffing to budget.  Participants will create a blueprint of key assessments and core curriculum.  Recommended for school teams.

Coaching for Transformation
Gregory Peters, Executive Director, The San Francisco Coalition of Essential Small Schools

This interactive workshop will demonstrate the San Francisco Coalition of Essential Small Schools (SF-CESS) model of transformative coaching and share a range of our tools and practices.  Using participant-generated coaching dilemmas we will explore how specific strategies and perspectives create opportunities for meaningful and sustained change.  Participants will create personal action plans to inspire transformation in your own contexts.

Singing for Message and Meaning: Songs of Equity and Trust
Amina Michel-Lord, Ayla Gavins and Betsy Caruso, Mission Hill School

Music can inspire, teach and refresh. When we sing together, we find new ways of connecting across age, race, class and status.  In this session, participants will sing songs that promote democratic habits. The songs will be selected by the presenters and will be given to participants in a booklet. Bring your favorites and share with the group. Singers and non-singers are all welcome!

Transformative Change: A Rural School- Community Partnership
Heidi Early-Hersey, Noble High School
Jim LaPrad, Western Illinois University
Rebecca Manning, United Way of York County
Adina Hunter, Noble High School

How does a regional high school serving 1000+ students from three different rural communities develop the 21st Century skills? In this workshop we will explore what it means to be rural, how the rural context impacts the school community,  strategies for building community partnership in rural contexts, the benefits to stakeholders, especially students, of engaging more meaningfully with the community and how we can best personalize and meet the needs of all learners when we are the “only game in town”?


“I Don’t Have to Be Bad to be Known” – What We Learned from Watts Middle School Students
Liza Bearman, Ed.D., Associate Director, Collective Voices Foundation
Diana Fisher, Ph.D., Executive Director/Founder, Collective Voices Foundation
Stephanie Schmier, Ed.D., School Improvement Coordinator, Mayor’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools

Collective Voices was invited by the Mayor’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS) to customize a site-based, within-the-school day "personal development" program for Gompers Middle School (Watts, CA) focusing on shifting a culture of violence, truancy, and suspension among some of their most distressed 6th, 7th and 8th grade students. Designed to address the students’ social-emotional needs, we created a thematic and student-interest driven experiential curriculum rooted in speaking, listening, team building, and collaboration (we provided all of the on-site curriculum, activities, materials, and facilitators).  In partnership with several community organizations doing work of interest to our students (e.g. environmental activists, martial artists, television writers, animal welfare educators, and various visual and performing artists, to name just some), our goal was to plan a program that would foster trust, voice, empowerment, understanding, creativity, awareness, dialogue, and healthier relationships for our students (i.e. student-to-student relationships, student-to-teacher relationships, student-to-community relationships and student-to-self relationship).

The Hunger Games: An Interdisciplinary Unit
Mo Greene, Betsy Wallisch, Kim Theriault; Souhegan High School

Exactly what are the chances that Katniss can shoot to kill each time she needs to feed her family?  If the Hunger Games took place in the desert what natural disasters would the tributes encounter?  What would be different about your school if it were run as a totalitarian government?  What makes Katniss a hero?  What would Katniss' facebook page look like? Our students spent three weeks strengthening their skills as collaborative workers, complex thinkers and knowledgeable students through this highly engaging integrated math, science, social studies and language arts unit complete with "Reaping" and "Opening Ceremonies."  The final assessment for the unit-- our very own "Hunger Games"- - required quick thinking, collaboration, application of knowledge and a small dose of chance.  All materials will be shared.