Our embedded messages will either support to erode our intended message. Schools have mission statements and an abundance of rules and policies. What are educators and students to do when the messages embedded in these established doctrines collide with the very practices used in the school? This keynote highlights how mixed messages abound everywhere in our society and that the extent to which our actions contradict our words ranges from the humorous to the disturbing.  Unfortunately it’s no different in schools.

From school mission statements to classroom rules and norms, students certainly feel the brunt of mixed messages.  This keynote not only addressed the issue of confusing statements, but participants will also get a few suggestions and hands-on strategies to deal with the most obvious mixed messages surrounding standards-based grading issues related to homework, lates and attendance.

Legendary NASA Flight Director, Mr. Gene Kranz, famously declared that ‘Failure Is Not an Option’ while engineering the safe return of the Apollo 13 crew. Though this approach is essential when lives hang in the balance, it may not be the mantra to adopt when designing deeper learning experiences for our students.  Recent research suggests that creativity and understanding are the silver lining of struggle.

Furthermore, bands like the Beatles, who took great artistic risks, ended up fundamentally changing modern music.   Surprisingly, immediate feedback models and instant performance measurements can actually be misinterpreted as true student understanding, while our own life experiences suggest that difficulty, uncertainty and mistakes provide the canvas for long-term memory.

This keynote will make the case that if we want to increase student learning and promote competencies such as critical thinking and problem-solving, we need to embrace modes of inquiry, risk and exploration in which failing is certainly an option.

Perhaps David Bowie sang it best, ‘Times may change me, but I can’t change time.’ There is no denying that transformational forces are at play in the global education arena.

The Digital Information Revolution is arguably the biggest change agent since the printing press, so as the ground moves beneath our feet, are we preparing our students for an uncertain future or the one that seemed predictable a decade or four ago? Content is free and readily available, so are we changing our focus to competencies such as communication, creativity and critical thinking? Unfortunately we may still be gearing for the 1980s rather than the 2020s when it comes to our instructional, grading, assessment and reporting procedures. Our students will be heading into the digital and competency-based future with or without us, but thankfully there are signposts that education is adapting.

Myron will make a strong argument that instruction and assessments that include inquiry, differentiation, exploration and problem solving may certainly prove effective for an uncertain future.

reTool – Why we must equip our students to succeed in a world that values competencies over content.
When content was our focus, we delivered ample amounts of it with specific pedagogy. However, it’s obvious that the cutting edge of global education has shifted towards competencies such as problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity.

The global forum rewards the competent learner who has a sliver of innovation over one who has a broad but shallow knowledge base. Given that learning is a dynamic endeavor with multiple pathways to achieve it, how we design the context for learning becomes paramount.  As we teach students who will see the 22ndcentury, we should not guess what will be required, but rather help our students develop the tools that have always been necessary for both advancement and survival. ‘Retool’ means to ‘adapt or alter something to make it more useful or suitable’; perhaps this is exactly what we need to do in order to remain relevant.

Tradition is valued and upheld in many school districts.  While educational institutions have much to be proud of and should honor the contributions previous educators, what are we to do when new, and possibly contradictory, ideas and research appear on the horizon? Participants in this session will be challenged to identify the difference between upholding tradition and defending something that is arguably obsolete.

What if poses a series of questions such as: What if students could monitor their own progress?  What if we only measured personal evidence of learning? What if students could strive for mastery learning? This keynote will challenge educators to think outside the box and to consider the value of a paradigm shift. Thankfully replacement routines will be offered for each question.

Resiliency has been described in many ways. To pick one’s self up after falling down, to be like ‘Gumby’ – the green rubber fictional character that literally bounces back from every setback, or to bend like a willow but not break.

The American Psychological Association defines ‘resilience’ in part as the ‘process of adapting well in the face of adversity.’ In health, sport and business, some cite resilience as the number one predictor of success or failure. Research suggests we can increase our levels of resilience by the mental and physical habits we adopt and practice. A resilient person does not avoid stress, but rather learns to tame and master it. If this is true, what are some ways that we can foster resilience by the design of our classroom systems and routines? How can our assessment routines be built through an SEL lens? In this session we will explore a variety of ways that we can help students re-frame difficulty, talk more openly about temporary struggles, and learn from setbacks.

Join this session to explore topics including sharing circles, strength-based language, desirable difficulties and more.

In their NYT bestseller, ‘Extreme Ownership’ (2015), former Navy SEALs Willink and Babin describe the necessity of ‘Decentralized Command’: that ‘every tactical-level team member must understand not just what to do, but why they are doing it.

If this principle is true for SEAL team members, it likely applies to learning environments and our students. Research suggests that how we engineer our assessment strategies impacts the perceptions students have of fairness, equity and accessibility. This session will focus on ways that we can invite students into the assessment realm as co-pilots rather than disinterested passengers.