DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS AT THE JOHN HAY LIBRARY, WE ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTING RESERVATIONS FOR "LET'S TALK." WE REGRET ANY INCONVENIENCE.
Please join us at “Let’s Talk:” Theodore Sizer and the Founding of the Coalition of Essential Schools exhibit, December 1, 2016, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm, at the John Hay Library, 20 Prospect Street, Providence, RI.
“Let’s Talk,” an exhibit at Brown University’s John Hay Library, highlights archival material from the collected papers of Theodore Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools from the creation of CES and its early years. The exhibit displays, for the first time, materials from these special archival collections and provides a glimpse of the work that sparked national conversations about the American classroom and led to the founding of the Coalition in 1984. We invite you to this interactive exhibit featuring some of the original documents that shaped a critical chapter in the history of public education in the United States.
- If you have items from your own personal collection that you would like other attendees to see, please bring them. We will have table space available for you to share your own memories of the Coalition of Essential Schools. If you want to bring something to share, please let us know on the RSVP form
- This event is located at the John Hay Library at Brown University, which is a mile from the Omni Providence Hotel.Transportation options include taxi, Uber, or walking
- Portions of the exhibit will be on display to the public at the John Hay Library following the Fall Forum 2016, and an online version of the exhibit will also be available
We would like to thank Brown University students Catriona Schwartz, Amelia Golcheski, Sienna Giraldi and Emily Sloan for their work creating this exhibition. We would also like to thank the John Hay Library and their staff including Christopher Geissler and Sarah Dylla, and the director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities, Susan Smulyan. Special thanks to Kathy Hardie, Paula Evans, and Molly Schen for their guidance.
Questions? Please email us at fallforum@essentialschools.org or call 401-426-9638.
On the afternoon of Thursday, December 1, we invite intrepid Fall Forum guests to visit a few of Providence’s youth development organizations. Providence is known nationally for being home to forward-thinking community-based organizations that are partnering with our city’s young people as they pursue their passions. Please note: we are also talking with Community MusicWorks about a rehearsal open house. As soon as we have that information, we will share it.
This is an open house event; feel free to drop by to look around, talk with students and staff, and learn more about some of the amazing ways young people are using their voices in our city. All organizations are in the city of Providence, and will welcome visitors between 3:00 and 5:00 pm on Thursday, December 1 unless otherwise noted.
Please note that you’re responsible for your own transportation (we suggest walking, Uber, or cab).
Many thanks to these organizations for their open doors and hospitality!
College Visions
collegevisions.org
131 Washington Street, Suite 205
College Visions empowers low-income and first-generation college-bound students to realize the promise of higher education by providing advising and resources to promote college enrollment, persistence, and graduation. College Visions advances equal access to educational opportunities in historically under-served communities. The College Access Program provides high school juniors and seniors with one-on-one advising, college knowledge workshops, college campus visits, family engagement, financial aid support, and more. College Visions also provides students who are enrolled in college ongoing support with advising and coaching, connections to campus support, financial aid renewal support, and more. College Visions is expanding its work through the CV Lab, which support educators and other adults to help first-generation students find college matches and success.
Girls Rock! Rhode Island
girlsrockri.org
769 Westminster Street
Girls Rock! Rhode Island (GRRI) uses music creation and critical thinking to foster empowerment, collaborative relationships, and healthy identities in girls and women. Girls Rock! RI offers lessons, classes, afterschool programming, leadership training, instrument loan and rental, in-school and summer programming. GRRI’s intensive summer camps supports girls at all stages of musical ability to form working bands within a week. By championing the power of the youth voice, Girls Rock directly addresses the strengths of young women, while simultaneously speaking to their qualities as the leaders of tomorrow. Girls Rock favors action over words, envisioning a world in which gender and identity are assets, not limitations; where girls and women can actively name and claim their own strengths, expertise, and purpose in pursuing goals of their own accord; where girls feel encouraged, supported, and valued more for what they do than for how they look.
New Urban Arts
newurbanarts.org
705 Westminster Street
New Urban Arts (NUA) is a community arts studio for high school students and emerging artists. NUA offers free, year-round out-of-school programs that promote sustained mentoring relationships between urban high school students and trained artist mentors who together engage in youth leadership, risk taking, collaboration, and self-directed learning. NUA is grounded in the belief that in order to fulfill the promise of our democracy, all young people, no matter their place in society, should have the opportunity to become more creative and independent thinkers. NUA’s programs encourage students to develop positive relationships with adult mentors and peers, acquire standards-based skills and knowledge in the arts, begin to develop their unique artistic voice, and graduate from high school on a path towards post-secondary success. NUA’s programs are offered free of charge and provide afterschool snacks, free bus passes, tutoring, and homework help. NUA also offers summer programs, workshops and institutes, publications, public events, and more.
Providence Student Union
providencestudentunion.org
741 Westminster Street
3:00-4:00 pm only, please
The Providence Student Union (PSU) develops youth leaders, staff, and adult allies to build student power. PSU builds student power within and across schools so young people can reshape their own education from the ground up. Students in PSU win education changes by participating in a student union structure that encourages them to take on leadership roles. Providence Student Union currently has chapters at six Providence high schools and is growing every day. From citywide actions on transportation to specific campaigns in a single school to pressing city officials to try high-stakes testing for themselves, PSU is fueled by the creative organizing tactics of the city’s youth. PSU’s young people have worked tirelessly to ensure that all Providence students can have an equitable and powerful education. Most recently, students won ethnic studies courses in local high schools, ensuring that students’ diverse cultures have a place in the city’s history curriculum.
Join CES founder Deborah Meier and CES board member Linda Nathan--both founders of several Essential schools in Boston and New York--to discuss the different meanings that democracy, as it applies to schools, might take. Deborah and Linda invite conversation about the different forms of democratic approaches to education that enable "we the people" to make decisions about our schools, thinking through the roles of federal, state, and local policymakers. Among other questions, they will consider the ways that the consistently perpetuated adversarial relationship between charter schools and traditional schools in ways that too often have blurred potential common aspirations and have often prevented powerful partnerships. Is there another way to think about this and other dilemmas so that we can ensure that the schools our children need and deserve serve democracy well.
WORKSHOP NARRATIVE AND OVERVIEW
On planet Gaia, CES educators from around the nation gather for our final journey to engage youth in their everlasting adventure called learning. Unfortunately, Gaia faces an engagement and empowerment gap. Though legend says there is a hidden power that we might be able to harness to provide an opportunity to solve this disengagement epidemic. If we are to use this power, we must understand what it is, how it is used, why it might be useful, and understand its benefits/limitations. Will this solve the disengagement epidemic that Darth Boredom placed on Gaia's youth?
How might we integrate game mechanics into our instructional design so we can engage youth in learning?
MATERIALS AND TASKS NEEDED:
Tablet or Laptop (preferably). If you don't have a laptop I will bring 2 additional laptops to the workshop
AGENDA
PRELUDE
Part I- EXPLORE AND DISCOVER
Assessing students is arguably one of the most difficult and nuanced tasks that teachers do on a daily basis. The whole-student philosophy about looking at students’ abilities beyond the content are both necessary and wonderful in the theory but teachers often find themselves struggling to make sense of it when pen hits paper. How do you actually assess work habits? Join a group of teachers who are committed to finding the proper balance and strategies in assessing where students are as learners of learning and life skills. Share ideas about what is happening in your classroom, grade-level or at your school and learn about alternate ways that other practitioners are finding success assessing students’ work habits in their classrooms. Please feel free to bring your grading policy or assessment strands from your school/district if you think it will be helpful in framing the conversation.
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
Often progressive schools, policies, and approaches are vulnerable to shifts in leadership, from within schools as well as external to them. In this convening conversation, we would like to explore how schools, networks like CES, and districts intentionally build progressive leaders. Questions we would like to engage with during this discussion include:
1. How does your organization or network intentionally build progressive leadership for the future?
2. What are the curriculum and structures and the types of knowledge, skills, and experience that progressive leader candidates must have in order to be ready to lead, and how does one develop them?
3. How does/could this network and/or your district contribute to building a pipeline of progressive leadership candidates?
4. How should teacher leaders be leveraged in building such pipeline?
5. How can we help each other at a national scale put this work on the map and share strong practices and candidates?
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
Last year, the United States graduated 42,969 computer sciences graduates into the workforce while there were a whopping 523,222 open computer science jobs nationwide. Obviously there is an urgent need for schools to teach computer science courses starting in kindergarten and through graduation. According to Code.org, “Computer science drives innovation throughout the US economy, but it remains marginalized throughout K-12 education. Only 32 states allow students to count computer science courses toward high school graduation.” At this rate, students in states that do not have computer science courses or do not count the computer science toward graduation will likely be unprepared to major in computer science in college. Further, the diversity in computer science is poor, with notable underrepresentation of women, racial and ethnic minorities, and students from economically challenged homes. If we wait for others to do what is obviously needed, our students may never get the chance to be part of this emerging and exciting field. How can K-12 schools implement computer science into their curriculum? How can schools use the CES Common Principles to encourage and support the computer science in our schools?
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
DESPERATELY SEEKING long term relationships with like-minded, passionate schools determined to maintain the common principles as the core foundations of their communities. Must be interested in ongoing conversations, school visitations, sharing best practices and developing transformational leadership with equity as a lens.
How do we keep the CES Common Principles at the heart of our work long-term, especially given the coming changes with CES National? From our perspectives as past and current leaders of Crater Renaissance Academy of Arts and Sciences in Central Point, Oregon, we will bring to the discussion our own experiences of how implementing the CES Common Principles with fidelity allowed us to weather the greatest challenges we have faced as a school. Networking and discussing this topic will allow all schools to add to their practices. Conversation around this topic assures that with or without guidance from other Coalition schools, a site can make decisions based on research and practice which best ensure students will, for example, learn to use their minds well, and teachers and systems will, for example, show commitment to the entire school. We seek partners in this work.
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
There is a lot of buzz about the notion of taking a "strengths-based" approach to developing school culture. On the student level, this is easier said than done especially when many "behavior-management" systems serve to focus on and document "infractions", and many incentive systems focus on extrinsic rewards. Similarly on the adult level, most teacher coaching and evaluation processes focus on gaps and deficiencies; rarely are teacher action steps focused on pre-existing strengths. Hannah Kehn is the principal of East Harlem Scholars Academy II, in East Harlem, New York. This networking conversation will explore the questions: How do we create conditions that support individual strengths to emerge? How do we create and implement systems that lean on and further develop individual strengths during challenging times?
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
Boston Arts Academy (BAA) is Boston’s public high school for the visual and performing arts. BAA provides a diverse student body, a majority who come from low-income families, access to a college-preparatory arts and academic education not otherwise available to them. Our mission is to prepare a community of aspiring artist-scholars-citizens to be successful in their college or professional careers and to be engaged members of their communities. Our innovative arts and academic curriculum yields impressive results. Using BAA and other Boston public schools as examples, we will discuss a deeper understanding of what is essential for a healthy school climate and culture, the three tiers of Circle Practice, mediations, and specific work in Restorative Justice. Our goal is define much-needed implemented norms and practices that will assist in addressing essentials in a school community.
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
How do you commit to the Common Principles for three decades and beyond? We will share the Lehman Alternative Community School’s successes and challenges, including three building changes, several superintendents, numerous favorable and unfavorable school board members, transitioning to new principals, and dealing with the departure of founding staff members. We will also share the roles of parent/caregivers in a democratically run school, the transition to a high school doing graduation based on a credit system to a CES high school doing graduation by exhibition, the progress and set-backs in developing a digital portfolio system, and the current processes involved in developing middle school promotion by exhibition. We want to learn with you. Please bring your questions and stories of your experience of sustaining commitment to CES principles and related practices.
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
We have all known people who have had new, creative ideas for programs and schools. But how does that idea turn into a successful school? You cannot go lightly into this work. There will be challenges and surprises at almost every step of the way. And yet, it will be some of the most rewarding work of your life. Whether you are a founder, teacher, or district administrator, support is needed throughout the process and that support changes depending on the phase of the school's life cycle. Join this networking conversation to talk about cultivating the seed of an innovative idea into a sustainable school.
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
Quest Early College High School is a small school in Humble, Texas designed to help students earn an Associate degree as well as their high school diploma in their four years of high school. We’re committed to educating the whole child by supporting their social-emotional learning through intentional support systems. Two of our hallmark pillars of support are an exemplary weekly Service Learning component and Family, a daily student advisory support system. We would love to share the topic of social-emotional support through Service Learning and Family with others who strive to educate the whole child in small school settings, and to learn with you about what’s working in our schools.
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
Teacher educators constantly face the tension between preparing pre-service teachers to work in schools as they currently are and preparing pre-service teachers for schools as they could be. Let’s begin a deliberate conversation about how teacher certification programs can advance the work of Coalition schools and get new teachers ready to both work in schools already focused on equity and teacher-driven instruction and (maybe more importantly) be effective advocates and change agents for such instruction in schools that have not adopted practices consistent with Coalition philosophy. A small number of public school-university partnerships have been effective in preparing beginning teachers to work in equity-minded classrooms and schools, the guidelines for the sort of university-school partnerships that could prepare beginning teachers to be advocates for Coalition principles needs updating. This conversation as an opportunity to do that work with consideration of questions such as: How could teacher certification programs be structured in order to most effectively advance the principals of student-centered and teacher-driven schools? What are some fundamental experiences beginning teachers need in order to foster such principals in their emergent practices? What are some essential readings or ideas that certification students should be familiar with in order to function effectively in a classroom and school based on the CES Common Principles? Such a conversation between experienced Coalition teachers and teacher educators could be a new way to approach this ongoing challenge.
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
This conversations invites those who are interested in furthering trauma-informed theory and practice in our schools. This is an equity issue that cuts across race, class, language, gender, and more and impacts so many of the students we serve. There is growing energy in schools to become more trauma-informed and many strategies look very similar to those already in use by CES schools. This conversation will benefit classroom teachers, administrators, consulting agencies/individuals, and anyone else who works with students to build awareness and follow through on the impact of trauma.
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
The founding years of CES were heady and optimistic times, referred to by some as the Golden Years of the nation's focus on high schools. The Founder's Panel brings together an eclectic and accomplished group of CES "early days" stalwarts who worked with and distinguished Ted Sizer's "big ideas." Sure to be a rousing chat, with plenty of time for audience interaction, our panelists will include: Deborah Meier, Dennis Littky, Paula Evans, Bob McCarthy, and Nancy Sizer. The moderator will be another CES veteran, Larry Myatt, offering attendees both a history lesson and implications for the future.
Panelists include:
Originally intended to be a space for educators to reflect on and explore the role of race in their work, this session has been edited in order to respond to our recent political events and current reality as they relate to race in our communities, schools and classrooms.
After a short input, we will hear from a panel who will reflect on their experiences as educations – in the skin they are in – and consider what work they have in front of them. If time allows, we will ask the audience to engage in their own reflective work.
Agenda
15-20 minutes: Opening
35-40 minutes: Interactive Panel on Race
15 Minutes: Closing
Dorchester, Massachusetts’ Conservatory Lab Charter School is an Expeditionary Learning (EL) school. One of the foundational credos of Expeditionary Learning is “We are Crew, Not Passengers.” This metaphor refers to a group in a boat on a long voyage, where everyone is needed to pull at an oar and no one sits by watching. In adhering to this motto, “Crew” can be used to reference both individual classrooms and the entire school community. We strive to instill a sense of responsibility, participation, and cooperation among individuals, the student body, the school community, and the greater community. This motto represents our commitment to inclusion and action in the service of self and others. This conversation explores the connections, continuity, and contrasts between CES and EL, and provides a place to think through EL as a way to sustain CES principles and practices.
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
Often progressive schools, policies, and approaches are vulnerable to shifts in leadership, from within schools as well as external to them. In this convening conversation, we would like to explore how schools, networks like CES, and districts intentionally build progressive leaders. Questions we would like to engage with during this discussion include:
1. How does your organization or network intentionally build progressive leadership for the future?
2. What are the curriculum and structures and the types of knowledge, skills, and experience that progressive leader candidates must have in order to be ready to lead, and how does one develop them?
3. How does/could this network and/or your district contribute to building a pipeline of progressive leadership candidates?
4. How should teacher leaders be leveraged in building such pipeline?
5. How can we help each other at a national scale put this work on the map and share strong practices and candidates?
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
I am interested in convening participants around the idea of connecting the first CES Common Principle (helping young people use their minds well) with the tenth (diversity and equity). Specifically, I'd like to bring together people who can talk about and share ideas related to creating and sustaining intentionally diverse schools and practices and resources that build on the diversity of the school to help students learn to use their minds well.
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
Please note that this networking conversation will convene only on Saturday, December 3 from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm and 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm.
Creating and sustaining high-performing, high-achieving secondary classrooms that are engaging and personalized has a transformative impact on students and the class culture and climate. In this session, participants will learn about of a range of research-based instructional strategies, core classroom practices, protocols, and procedures for reaching and engaging adolescent learners in secondary classrooms. Through readings, simulations, group learning protocols and dialogue, participants will have an opportunity to explore the following question: What are some of the critical conditions that foster student engagement and increased levels of trust, attention, participation, motivation, effort, and investment in learning? Participants will also explore how to support implementation and sustainability for these practices to ensure fidelity and long-term success in schools.
Denise
Often progressive schools, policies, and approaches are vulnerable to shifts in leadership, from within schools as well as external to them. In this convening conversation, we would like to explore how schools, networks like CES, and districts intentionally build progressive leaders. Questions we would like to engage with during this discussion include:
1. How does your organization or network intentionally build progressive leadership for the future?
2. What are the curriculum and structures and the types of knowledge, skills, and experience that progressive leader candidates must have in order to be ready to lead, and how does one develop them?
3. How does/could this network and/or your district contribute to building a pipeline of progressive leadership candidates?
4. How should teacher leaders be leveraged in building such pipeline?
5. How can we help each other at a national scale put this work on the map and share strong practices and candidates?
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
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.
I am interested in convening participants around the idea of connecting the first CES Common Principle (helping young people use their minds well) with the tenth (diversity and equity). Specifically, I'd like to bring together people who can talk about and share ideas related to creating and sustaining intentionally diverse schools and practices and resources that build on the diversity of the school to help students learn to use their minds well.
Please see the Networking Conversations document deslgned to guide this conversation: http://bit.ly/NetworkingConversations2016.
Please note that this networking conversation will convene only on Saturday, December 3 from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm and 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm.
