Deeper Learning 2018

It’s clear that project-based learning provides students with meaningful educational experiences, but how might we leverage this model to help schools make meaningful change? Join us as we explore three possible models: Two that amplify the power of student voice in change-making efforts and one that brings educators together in partnerships with their students to question, explore, and challenge one another with an ultimate goal of understanding personalized learning.
We will share strategies for creating a student-led group to empower students in improving their school, resources for a semester-long high-school class that culminates in a change pitch to decision makers, and information for creating a space and time for educators and students to come together, collaborate and learn from and with each other around a common educational theme.
Participants will apply some design thinking strategies to go deeper into school change issues in order to imagine how these might fit into their current school models. Our goal is for participants to leave our session with plans in place for implementing project-based learning to support students in making positive school change at their schools.

This interactive presentation demonstrates strategies for empowering students to go beyond band-aid solutions to important issues and look for long term sustainable solutions. Project based learning ideas will be provided. Participants will become knowledgeable of the Action Civics philosophy, approach and how it can help students to guide the direction of their education. The Project Soapbox activity is an example of the workshop will help illustrate how the Action Civics model of The Mikva Challenge supports student inquiry, critical thinking and communication skills.
The workshop will utilize multiple models of identify with respect to citizenship and civic engagement. Participants will examine three different models of citizenship and apply the models to their students. Participants will engage in the “ root cause “ activity from our Action Civics programs and reflect on application and implementation of this activity with their students. Participants will reflect on ways to incorporate Action Civics in their classrooms. Participants will gain ideas for project based learning opportunities in their classrooms and school communities.
The Six Steps to the Action Civics Classroom workshop is based upon the premise that effective and sustainable deeper learning occurs when students are involved in the decision making process throughout. Supporting student voice is at the heart of Mikva’s work. Session participants will gain an understanding of how Action Civics helps teachers provide the increased opportunities for deeper learning that result in sustainable post-secondary success.

UbD, extremely effective for lesson-planning at the classroom level, is rarely used for transformation planning at the school level. Administration will often skip the vision, or the ‘Why,’ and instead identify the mission, or the ‘What’—for example, ‘engage students in deeper learning’—and then move on to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to get at the ‘How.’
Operating on the premise that personalization works just as well for adults as it does for students, this workshop will take a learner-centered approach to helping participants articulate their own ‘Whys.’ By the end of the session, attendees will have engaged in a series of protocols that they can use with their own stakeholders to establish a collective context and relevance for their work, and help identify the multiple strategies and practices that educators and students can use to engage in that work. In addition, the facilitator will share examples of one Vermont Supervisory Union’s vision and some examples of the methods they use to engage all students in deeper learning in order to realize that vision.

How can we as teacher leaders make innovative teaching and learning the norm? This workshop explores the experiences of being “on the fringe” in a traditional system-filled with barriers and challenges to teaching in innovative ways. In our 90 minutes we hope to honor our experiences and collectively work to “clear the path” for progressive practices in our classrooms, and ultimately schools. This session will be prepped with tips and resources for teachers who are ready to become a deeper learning maverick-meaning YOU are interested and/or have dabbled in things like PBL, PrBL or Design Thinking but have faced some challenges to implementation and are not sure how to move forward-professional culture, parent communication, student support-you name it we have felt it! This workshop will build on our collective capacity and derives from the belief that “we are better together” and together we can be levers for change!

Our program is focused on using social media and other means of contacting non-profits, authors, businesses, and activists to help facilitate deeper learning partnerships with the wider community. As students are working on their deeper learning projects, they will also be researching what non-profits, authors, businesses, and activists relate to their work. Students (with the guidance and supervision of teachers) then Tweet to, email, skype, Facebook, phone-conference, and connect with the specific organizations or individuals that fit with their project. The goals here are multi-faceted:

a. Build global, national, state, city, and district partnerships

b. Develop interview opportunities with professionals in a variety of fields that relate to their topic and can deepen the expertise of both students and teachers

c. The partnerships should be an on-going thing as students are working on their project; however, it is also important to get some of the outside community to come to the exhibition and present their own work alongside and with students

d. To create possibilities for internships, travel, and more partnerships with experts from a wide variety of places and fields

e. To grow the audience that the students reach

f. To establish firm connections between school and the real world that makes education more meaningful and relevant for all. It makes it more authentic.

g. To get feed-back from experts in the field on student work.

The challenge for all of us is to identify where individual students are on any learning trajectory, and address their needs, passions, and interests in “real time.” We believe that meeting all students where they are is a commitment that requires us to reconfigure our old systems, practices and paradigms, placing the individual learner at the center of the learning process.
In this session we’ll dive into the pedagogical practices that support learner-centered classrooms that can meet the academic needs of students who struggle to overcome significant skill and knowledge gaps, through deeper learning experiences.

What will we do together: After an initial launch, the session is self-paced, encouraging participant choice, with five learning pods/stations set up for exploration. Learning pod activities include modeling, role play, design sprints, and independent exploration. We will close with time for synthesis and reflection on our learning.

The National Writing Project recently completed work on a instructional tool designed to strengthen and assess civically engaged writing. This Civically Engaged Writing Analysis Continuum (CEWAC) focuses on encouraging and supporting youth civic writing in two areas: 1) engaging with arguments and evidence; 2) engaging with others across difference.

Throughout this session, participants will explore the CEWAC and skills necessary for thoughtful and powerful civic writing. Emphasized skills include “employs a public voice,” “argues a position,” and “advocates civic engagement."

As an entry point participants will view clips from “American Creed,” a new documentary that airs on PBS in February. American Creed explores, through personal stories, the values that underlie the American identity, and efforts of groups and individuals to engage in dialogue across difference.

Participants will then further explore the focus of engaging in dialogue across difference by working with the CEWAC and two letters published on NWP’s 2016 “Letters to the Next President” website. The letters take different stances on a significant civic issue. Using the CEWAC as a guide, participants will discuss and/or write to the following questions and prompts:

What distinguishes public writing from academic writing? How might these differences shape your instruction?

Practice writing across difference by responding to one of the following prompts:
- As the author of one of the letters, write a letter of response to a writer who took a different position. Your goal is to both begin a dialogue and thoughtfully explain your position.
- As a teacher, write a letter to one of the writers that provides specific feedback and suggestions for revision and refinement.

How might the sharing of personal stories help bring us together as communities and a nation?

Participants will also preview related digital resources, including annotated writing samples, and discuss implications for designing assignments and instruction.

73% of teens have access to a smartphone. 24% say they are online “almost constantly.” And, 50% report feeling “addicted” to their personal device (Pew Research). It has also been shown that students who spend more time on social media than their peers have a greater likelihood of being unhappy, getting less sleep, and performing worse on tests. The increasing rates of depression among adolescents are especially worrisome among young women (Journal of Pediatrics). As it turns out, the happiest teens use their phones between 0-2 hours per day (iGen). Unfortunately, tech companies are failing our youth and are in no hurry to make their products less addicting. So how can we teach students to find the right balance?
During the fall of 2017, the AP Statistics class at the Academy of Our Lady of Peace in San Diego partnered with Live Offline, an organization that helps individuals adopt healthy habits for phone usage. The goal of this partnership was to challenge students to reconnect with the real world by adopting an offline activity of their choice to practice daily for two weeks. The offline-challenge project was completed individually by each student and consisted of four phases: self-assessment, activity selection, implementation (a 14-day challenge in which the students practiced their activity on a daily basis), and self-reflection.
This workshop will help educators adopt and adapt the offline-challenge project for themselves and their students. Attendees will select and/or design offline habits to complete on their own over a two-week span. Further, attendees will be provided with time and support (lesson materials, assessment tools, rubrics, and in-person consultation) to produce structured projects for their students. All workshop attendees will be encouraged to submit project outlines to Live Offline and will receive complimentary project support from Live Offline during the school year.

One of the most challenging aspects of changing to a PBL pedagogy is building in time for students to practice new ways of being in relationship with each other that support the teacher’s content and skill goals. This is especially challenging if a teacher is the only or one of few teachers implementing PBL in their building. In this session, we will use a unit from an 8th grade PBL US History course to look at how to combine Restorative Justice practices within a content based class. We will practice as a group two key strategies: operationalizing a community agreement and using circles to promote positive relationships and engagement. Teachers will have the opportunity to reflect on how to embed this practice in their own courses. This workshop will be facilitated by Adrienne Dickinson, a curriculum designer from Educurious, a Seattle-based non-profit that designs and supports PBL instruction with the goal of making learning meaningful, relevant, and rigorous and Nicholas Bradford, the Founder of the National Center for Restorative Justice.

We are ALL trying to fight the good fight of raising academic achievement and empowering our students of color, but do we REALLY know what culturally relevant, gap-closing instruction looks like? Well then... JOIN US for this highly engaging, thought-proving, and activities-based session on “Facing Inferiority” where educators will practice 3 instructional strategies to turn basic daily plans into lessons that both culturally empower students and increase their understanding and mastery.

Educators will take away the following:
a) a succinct, data-grounded understanding of the historic, political, and educational marginalization that perpetuates in students of color a sense of academic inferiority.
b) 3 solid instructional strategies to turn basic daily plans into lessons that both culturally empower students and increase their understanding and mastery

Are today’s high school graduates prepared for post-secondary education? The Crefeld School’s Graduation by Exhibition (GBE) model better prepares students for a smooth transition to life after high school. Crefeld staff will share details about their successful progressive GBE process that is an essential component of the school’s program.
At Crefeld, students earn their diploma through Graduation by Exhibition. This process requires students to demonstrate mastery in fifteen distinct projects. While working on each of the exhibitions, students utilize essential skills including logical reasoning, expository writing, analytical reading, research and understanding, self-reflection, engaged citizenship, and executive functioning. All of these skills prepare students for post-secondary education.
After sharing a small amount of background and philosophy about our process, we will engage participants in several of the activities that involve various structures and opportunities to interact with the exhibitions. Our workshop will be participant-centered, allowing time to hear from the group about their experiences, concerns and visions for a similar process at their schools. Attendees will leave having actively participated in progressive activities intended to solidify their understanding, as well as an understanding on how this process drives the culture of the school , and our handbook outlining the graduation by exhibition process.

Participants in this fun workshop will engage in activities that will help them learn more about understanding the steps to create amazing high quality work. The will begin by doing a mini-project which introduces how to cultivate team dynamics and collaboration, which are both must-haves in the creation of great projects. After completing the mini-project portion of the workshop, we will then run a short Looking at Student Protocol. After that we will put together the building blocks to what goes into the creation of a project as a group and then have Q&A about what it’s like to be on the other side of a project as a student!

Have you experienced the power of sharing student work publicly? Want to know more? In this session, we’ll dive into the value of exhibiting student work and then focus on the how through the specific lens of curation. Participants should be ready develop a product, research public displays in Liberty Station, get creative, and curate their products for a mini-exhibition. Participants will walk away with tools and curation ideas for how to share their own students’ work publicly.

Let’s say it: Agency is a challenging outcome to implement. With its focus on a student’s mindset and self-advocacy, agency is unique in its pure focus on a student’s personal growth as a true learner. While it is unique, agency is also uniquely poised to be an essential and impactful outcome as we work to serve all students. During this session, we’ll investigate this often misunderstood and underutilized outcome and concretely strategize how to intentionally develop rubric-based, agency-fueled environments that provide even stronger learning opportunities for all students.

Students need to understand their strengths and talents, have their interests and passions validated, and be provided with inspiration and support to explore pathways that lead to deeper learning and deeper purpose. In this workshop, teachers will learn how to lead students on a discovery of their strengths, passions & interests and help them connect to learning and activities that build these personal traits. Participants will be led through the same lesson that would be introduced to their students, and provided with supporting materials. Personal devices are necessary.

There is often a tension between teachers who want more autonomy to use professional development time to become experts in their self-identified areas of interest and administrators who want to meet specific school-wide goals. In this workshop, teachers and administrators will explore the benefits of Personal Learning Plans. Personal Learning Plans give teachers the opportunity to use the cycle of inquiry and professional learning communities to improve their practice and make their learning public. By looking at an example of a teacher’s Personal Learning Plan, exploring the role of professional learning communities, and discussing connections between administrative goals and teacher autonomy, both teachers and administrators will think through how self-identified and self-directed teacher learning can be connected to school-wide goals in order to increase deeper learning among teachers and students.

According to a national sample of YouthTruth student responses, only 1 in 2 secondary students enjoy coming to school most of the time. And less than half feel that what they’re learning in class helps them outside of school. Part of engaging students is giving them a voice in their instruction, and a role in school improvement. How can a school or district systematically empower student-driven ideas, questions, and goals? How can we integrate student voice authentically, honestly, and proactively? In this session, you’ll hear from a school network leader, a teacher, and High Tech High students about how they move from feedback to action. We’ll provide a model for analyzing student feedback data, and guiding productive conversations when the results are surprising. You’ll have the chance to sink your teeth into a sample scenario, share your experiences and insights, and leave with resources to increase student engagement and ownership.

Founded at Stanford University’s d.school, Project Wayfinder is a leader in purposeful education for high schools. Having purpose is fundamental to cultivating a meaningful life because it connects you to your raison d'être, something that matters deeply to you, gives your life direction and is of consequence to the world. We consider purpose as one of five pillars integral to living a meaningful life alongside personal story, belonging, transcendence and making. Our curriculum encourages students to explore the roles that all these pillars play in their lives and offers ways to deepen their experience of each.

This workshop will explore the ways in which we can create classroom environments to support students in deepening their sense of purposefulness. One of the most important ways that educators can support their students in this journey, is by deepening their own self-awareness and understanding their own meaning-making processes. After a short presentation, we will complete a Wayfinder activity designed to offer students insight into the origins of their values. Participants will map out answers to questions including: What sources have been most influential in shaping my values? What values have I been taught throughout my life? How did I come to learn the values that are important to me and the ones I disagree with? The activity will blend personal reflection with paired sharing and group discussion. The aim of this activity is to guide participants through a process that will increase their awareness around how their value system came to be and how others’ journeys have led to the development of different value systems. By exploring these questions in their own lives, participants will be better equipped to explore them with their own students. K-12 students will complete the activity alongside participants and will share their stories and experience with the group at the end of the workshop.

Words like innovation, disruption, or hacking are commonly heard in progressive education circles, but the reality of our own contexts often leaves us perplexed when faced with the task of bringing them to life. Where do we start when we have limited control? Where do we start when we have total control? We need a guide to help us navigate toward our goals. This engaging and interactive workshop is an exercise in self-reflection. Participants will use multiple strategies drawn from Design Thinking, like developing empathy and ideating, to build a prototype for problem reframing within their schools. By taking some time to examine what is working and what needs to be left behind, you will leave with an accessible intervention strategy to help you move toward ambitious, positive outcomes in your daily work.

Student Voice, a nonprofit organization run by students, for students, is working to equip young people to take ownership of their education. In this workshop, we will define student voice, outline processes to find one’s voice and discuss how student perspectives improve decision-making. In addition, we will work in small groups with students and teachers to brainstorm ways that student voice can be implemented into deeper learning classrooms.

In November 2017, we attended a conference at MIT called "Data for Black Lives". The conference tagline was "Data as protest. Data as accountability. Data as collective action." With the conference as our inspiration, we plan to use the Black Panther Party's Ten Point Program as a jumping-off point for students to explore social issues using math and science. A ten-week unit will focus first on the history and social issues raised by the Black Panther Party. The students will have a chance to choose which aspect of the Ten Point Program they wish to research in Boston. The goal of the unit is taken from the Data for Black Lives mission statement: "We will be using data science to create concrete and measurable change in the lives of Black people."

Our job will be to help them use big data and algorithms to empower local communities of color. Tools like statistical modeling, data visualization, and crowd-sourcing, will be used for fighting bias, helping progressive movements, and promoting civic engagement. We hope to enlist data scientists, computer programmers, racial justice activists, and government officials in our project. Our work will be displayed at our school's symposium in May 2018.

One of the reasons Deeper Learning has an Equity problem is because there is nothing in the competencies about student relationship building, school culture, and student support. Quality student engagement and learning is more than instructional strategies and practices. This session will engage participants in explore the role of developmental relationship building, social emotional learning, and student support in school settings. Participants will be introduced to a school model that emphasizes social and emotional support of students as the critical strategy for high levels of deeper learning. This model includes how time and resources are dedicated throughout the school day to include asset based development, check-ins, developmental relationship building, and support for all students. This workshop will explore the role of social emotional learning and student support in creating and advancing equitable learning environments.

Participant Learning Outcomes:
- Explore student realities and aligning resources and services to support their academic success.

- Explore how school leaders can utilize positive youth development and student support services as a key factor in school programming and design.

- Learn how asset development leads to program development and stronger Deeper Learning.

Participants will engage in the following activities:
- Participants will do interactive activities and discussion exploring their knowledge regarding the role of student support in the schools.

- Participants will utilize a “Say Something” protocol as they read an article in a group setting and engage in a small discussion to look at the needs of students today and how school staff can be more responsive to those needs through an asset based lens.

- Participants will explore, through workstations in interactive small groups, the connection between social emotional learning, developmental relationships and student support and Deeper Learning.

- Participants will reflect individually and with peers to analyze current organizational and personal practices which will be used to guide their next steps, and identify at least one thing they can do to enhance their practice with young people.

In this student-led interactive workshop we will explore strategies to unlock everyone’s inner math person. 10th grade students at HTHMA have been exploring trigonometry through a discussion-based series of open-ended problems. In this session, they will lead a workshop to demonstrate how collaborative, discussion-based problem solving can lead to a deeper understanding of complex mathematical concepts. Participants will leave with valuable insights from the student facilitators as well as concrete tools for facilitating positive group work and whole class discussions. This would be a valuable session for mathematics educators, but also any adults that believe they are not math-people!

What happens when English teachers ask students to talk about the stories that matter most to them? What happens when students share those stories aloud in class, in school-wide performances, and out in their communities? Come learn about Story Works Alaska, a teacher/student/community partnership that supports true, first-person story workshops in high school English classrooms. Participants will listen to stories, share stories, and learn about Story Works' programs and our evolving curriculum.

In this session, participants will learn of how internship programs can create a reinforcing paradigm, where kids with lots of opportunity are able to foster a more developed professional network, while historically disenfranchised kids will continue to have less social capital. However, we will show how an internship program that prioritizes student choice, can reduce the opportunity gap and develop social capital for all students. Participants will walk away with ideas and practices that can build a student-driven and engaging internship program, and one that will elevate the career aspirations of all students. Participants will discuss both school design components that support this work as well as practical tools to help implement.