NEASC2024

Too often, community responses to inequities see schools as the primary drivers of societal change. This presentation addresses this critical dilemma – how can educators teach inclusive content and implement equitable teaching practices without the engagement of all members of the school community – including all families? Clearly, we cannot create inclusive schools without also addressing bias and discrimination in the broader community. This presentation will focus on two main ideas. First, we'll explore how to build inclusive school environments within our increasingly diverse school populations. Discussion will include how a family's social identity influences their engagement and advocacy and why educators should expect conflict as part of the family-school relationship (and what to do with it!). Second, we'll explore how families from high income backgrounds upend education equity and ways to address this issue and move our entire school community towards education for the common good.

In today's diverse educational landscape, cultivating inclusive school cultures that honor the unique backgrounds and perspectives of all students is essential. This session will demonstrate how to harness the power of global literature to promote empathy, understanding, and cultural appreciation among students from various backgrounds. In this session, participants will learn to design and implement a bespoke curriculum that celebrates diversity and fosters inclusivity in K-12 education. Drawing from my experience in crafting English Language coursebooks and teaching Language and Literature to secondary students, I will share a case study of a successful unit titled "Around the World in Short Stories." Attendees will engage in group discussions and a multimedia presentation. They will explore strategies for selecting diverse texts, innovative assessment practices, and methods to foster inclusive dialogue. Participants will leave with practical tools and resources to create empathetic learning environments that empower all students to build a common purpose.

This session will use tabletop activities to demonstrate the value of developing internal "Guiding Documents" around hot-button or risk-rich topics. When working through difficult topics - politics, identity, conflict, to name a few - policies often fall short of delivering solutions that preserve relationships. Guiding documents are internal resources that supplement policies and offer clarity around shared priorities, allowing those on the front lines to navigate complexity with clarity and generosity. Using real and relevant examples, this session will explore effective strategies to restore and/or preserve important relationships while navigating difficult topics.

What would it look like if you replaced tests and letter grades with projects, portfolios and public exhibitions? What if students moved on to the next level, not based on age or time, but when they demonstrated proficiency on essential skills? Performance-based promotion is the fundamental premise of Parker Charter, a public charter school in Massachusetts with 29 years of experience of using portfolios and public exhibitions to assess student readiness to move to the next level of study. This session details how the teachers and students of Parker Charter design and complete projects, share feedback, make revisions and progress through the program. The highlight of the session will be small group discussions with Parker students who will share their academic portfolios, showcasing their growth over time. The students will reflect on the process of learning and what they learned about themselves through hard work, reflection and revision.

Madison Public Schools, CT will share their journey in transforming districtwide systems to leverage Profile of a Graduate (POG) through district curriculum design standards, performance assessments and teacher and leader evaluation. Their eleven-year journey has resulted in almost 900 adopted units (across disciplines) that ensure a systemic approach and shared values to develop the Profile of a Graduate in all learners. We will examine the districtwide tools and systems that support foundational element 2.2a and many of the sub-elements of the NEASC section on Student Learning. We will illustrate the system through our journeys in reimagined high school pathways and authentic examples of transformative K-12 curricula. Student voice is an important part of the redesign process. Take a close look at the design of a course and a unit where students develop in both content and profile of a graduate capacities which are ultimately demonstrated in end-of-unit complex performance tasks.

When Middlesex School embarked on an embedded Mindfulness program over a decade ago it was done so, only after careful consideration and scrutiny of the growing research regarding its benefits for teenagers. At the time we were learning that a practice of mindfulness can increase concentration, emotional regulation, positive social skills, care for others, self-esteem, quality of sleep, executive functioning, fortify the immune system, and improve overall well-being. The research also suggested that mindfulness decreases test anxiety, behaviors associated with ADHD, outbursts of anger, inflammation, negative emotions, and depression. The research has been so compelling that mindfulness has been incorporated into most mental health treatment modalities. While many schools are trying to find ways to incorporate elements of a mindfulness curriculum, we, at Middlesex School, have found that a fully integrated Mindfulness Program that reaches all areas of school life has exponential benefits for students and the entire community.

Explore the power of student voice and identify why "student voice" is integral to learning success for all students in our schools. In this session participants will consider working definitions of student voice in shared decision making using a democratic school high school as the model. This presentation of a governance model will uncover a range of challenges and supports to building opportunities for student voice in our schools. Examples will be given on how a school community can grow the supports and build bridges to meet the challenges of growing student voice in their school community. Time allowing, each school will have an opportunity to make an action plan to take back to their school.

This session will involve participants in small group discussion, active listening, critical and creative thinking, and sharing your own experiences and expertise. We will discuss diversity and marginalisation, in international contexts and in your own context, and introduce you to The Digital School: its vision, mission and core values; its diverse operational contexts, working with marginalised students in 14 countries; and the model that unifies these diverse individuals and communities. Marginalised students lack access to consistent structured education, and digital education is helping to provide that access. But even when they have access, there is often no system to collect evidence of learning, further hindering students’ continuing journeys into higher education, vocational training, and employment. We will outline the aspirational partnership between The Digital School and Mastery Transcript Consortium, created to design a competency framework, a digital portfolio system, and a portable digital credential, specifically to benefit marginalized students.

Does my school explicitly foster an intrinsic escalation of one's wellbeing among students? How might students be involved in developing and monitoring a wellbeing toolbox? This proposal is school's pilot project, an action research method focused on building and postulating learner centred Wellbeing strategy central to school's culture and environment. Through its strategic intent and social-emotional learning programmes, the school started addressing Student's well-being as an inclusive practice since 2018.While the school's Accreditation data and Cambridge Well-being Check evidence shows high levels of school life satisfaction, it highlights limitations related to intrinsic satisfaction. Drawn from Laura Taylor, et.al., Subjective wellbeing Concept (IBO,2022), this proposal intends to address these limitations by gathering qualitative and quantitative evidence to examine the factors that influence the self-perceived wellbeing of students and teachers in school context. The school's survey sample comprised of 500 high school students and 150 teachers, 50 sample interviews and reflective anecdotes.

In this session, ELA Curriculum Coordinators will present approaches to expanding text offerings while preparing for book challenges. Representation of multiple identities is critical to the English Language Arts curriculum (Bishop 1990), and we are responsible for supporting teachers to expand their offerings and prepare to teach those texts in culturally responsive ways. Diverse texts support students to see multiple modes of language as both acceptable and valuable; this is a critical component of working toward linguistic justice (Baker-Bell 2020). With the onslaught of book challenges and bans across the country, this work has become more urgent. School leaders must develop frameworks for text selection and strategies for approaching book challenges in the classroom and community. We will share strategies for working with teachers around text selection; additionally, we will discuss transferable policy frameworks we have developed in collaboration with our library and DEIB departments to address potential book concerns.

Too often students experience school as a series of things that happens to them over which they have little or no control. This leads to transactional mindsets and a sense that all school is for is investing in future (markers of) success: college/university acceptance, major, grad school, career, salary. This session challenges educators and leaders to think of school as an investment in who our students are now, as people developing identities, figuring out how they want to see and be seen in the world, forging world views, and determining how they want to act and interact with others. Through a spider chart activity on educational models, a discussion of ways to leverage external motivators (like grades) for intrinsic passion development, and a reflection on what constitutes true 21st century skills and capacities, participants will acquire strategies and tactics for combatting relevance resistance and for making school more human-centered.

In this session you will learn about how questions can launch community in your classroom. All you need is a willingness to learn about others and the enthusiasm to share a little about yourself.