More than anything, Fall Forum is the place to find the people with whom you think, plan, dream, and act on behalf of principle-driven, student-centered education for all young people everywhere.
In response to your requests, we have redesigned the last hour of Fall Forum, before our closing session, to provide a final opportunity to connect with the people and ideas that you want to power and inform your work moving forward.
Here’s how it works:
YOUR BIG TOPICS If you have a topic around which you want to gather conversation, friends, connections, and an ongoing network, share it with us. We’ll have topic cards at the registration desk outside the Narragansett Ballroom. Topics can be questions or ideas about classroom practice, politics, action and resistance, policy, school design, curriculum, community-based work, professional growth, leadership…you get the idea. Please share the topics around which you most want to gather a tribe. Briefly describe your topic or question on a card, and make sure we receive it by noon on Saturday, December 3.
The CES staff will sort through your ideas and group similar topics. We’ll create signs with your topics and questions that will be on display on tables in the Narragansett Ballroom at 3:30 pm.
THE GATHERING Come in, find your topic, and connect with your people. The rest is up to you and your group. You make the magic. Do you want to: make a Facebook or other online group? Exchange contact information? Plan a conference? Strategize political action? Start a new school? This is your time to start to make it happen.
We suggest quick introductions at your tables, along with your hopes and dreams related to the idea that attracted you. Keep the conversation action-focused. Suggest resources to each other. Take notes! And make sure you share contact information so you can move forward with your people to do great work.
A LITTLE SUGAR We’ll have ice cream for all to help power you along. We can’t wait to share your ideas. Come and connect, and then stay for our closing session with Dennis Littky, Nancy Sizer, and the Extraordinary Rendition Band---and then we’ll all celebrate at the hotel’s Centro Restaurant.
