Call for Session Proposals

The deadline for submission is October 31st, 2023 at 5:00 pm (CST)

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Featured Speakers

Dr. Jenni Donohoo

Dr. Jenni Donohoo is a five-time best-selling author and professional learning facilitator with more than 25 years of experience in leading school improvement. Jenni works in school districts across the globe supporting high-quality professional learning designed to improve outcomes for all students. As the Director of the Jenni Donohoo Center for Collective Efficacy, Jenni has been recognized internationally as an educational thought leader. She has a Ph.D. in Educational Studies and Supervisory Officer Qualifications and has taught in elementary, secondary, and post-secondary schools. Her areas of expertise include teacher collaboration, adolescent literacy, metacognition, and collective efficacy.

Dr. Rick Wormeli

As one of the first nationally board-certified teachers in America, Rick Wormeli brings innovation, energy, validity and high standards to his presentations. His experience includes 36 years of teaching math, science, English, physical education, health and history as well as coaching teachers and principals. Wormeli is a columnist for AMLE Magazine and a frequent contributor to ASCD’s Educational Leadership magazine. He is a consultant and an award-winning author and is known nationally and internationally for his substantive presentations, sense of humor and unconventional approach

Dr. Jeanette Westfall

Dr. Jeanette Westfall Partner Consultant Dr. Jeanette Westfall, Assistant Superintendent for Instructional Design for Liberty Public Schools (MO) worked as an elementary teacher, high school Language Arts/Gifted & Talented teacher, Secondary Schools Instructional Coach, and High School Principal. Jeanette works collaboratively with the Department of Education #GoOpen Initiative, New America, ISTE, The Learning Accelerator, and ISKME to support districts growing the use of Open Educational Resources (OER). She is a 2018 graduate of the Learning Forward Academy and served this past year as Missouri Learning Forward President. She has served on numerous AdvancEd External Review teams. Married to Kurt, they have two sons (married) and three perfect grandchildren

  • Keynote (Monday, March 11th): The Power of Working Together
    Over the past four decades educational experts have agreed upon the characteristics of high-quality professional learning. When the learning of teaching is done collaboratively and teachers’ everyday work becomes the source for professional learning, it has a lasting effect on classroom practice. The morning session introduces
  • Breakout Session (Monday, March 11th): Overcoming the Enemies of Efficacy
    Collective teacher efficacy is a significant belief system that impacts student outcomes. According to the Visible Learning Research, it’s the number one factor that matters most in raising student achievement. To ensure that collective efficacy remains strong in schools, it’s important to understand what influences a team’s beliefs about what they can accomplish. It’s important to know what strengthens efficacy and the factors that weaken it. Jenni will outline, through storytelling, five enemies of efficacy and describe ways to overcome the enemies in today’s schools.
  • Breakout Session (Monday, March 11th): How to Achieve Quality Implementation
    This session focuses on sustaining continuous learning and achieving quality implementation of evidence-based strategies. Being aware of evidence-based practices is a great starting point however, improved student outcomes will largely depend upon the implementation of evidence-based practices. The focus of this session is identifying ways to increase the transfer of adult learning to instructional practice and supporting the quality implementation of evidence-based practices to realize impact.
  • Keynote (Tuesday, March 12th): Leadership for Teacher Engagement & Cultural Shift
    Large ships are hard to turn, but there are strategies that definitely flip the rudder and maintain the new course. Want your school to move toward differentiated practices? Evidenced-based grading? Block-scheduling? Data-driven decision-making? A new literacy or math program? Think of the exciting new directions your school could pursue if only your staff shared your excitement! Unfortunately, new building and district initiatives can be dead on arrival if teachers are cynical, fearful overworked, or suffering from low morale. Based on work with NASSP, ASCD affiliates, and in hundreds of school systems in the U.S. and around the world, this candid and compelling workshop provides new insights and dozens of practical strategies that help teachers and their leaders embrace new initiatives and changes in policy and practice, even if educators are hesitant or going into it “kicking and screaming.” Join us for a candid and inspiring look at how to get an entire faculty to set sail for the new horizon ahead.
  • Breakout Session (Tuesday, March 12th): Motivation Mosaic: Cultivating Engagement, Self-Discipline, and Efficacy in our Students
    Tenacity is a virtue, but the personal fortitude to stick with an arduous task takes time and experience to mature. Many students grow impatient with content not parsed into soundbites, and reading extended, logical rhetoric through each argument to its ultimate conclusion is almost unheard of. On the other hand, if the story is good, students will read books of more than 700 pages. They play online games working their way through 12 levels of difficulty for six hours, and they stay after school into the evening to practice for theater productions, get ready for sports tournaments and conduct fun science experiments for the public. Join us for a compelling session on how the specific tiles to include in the strategic mosaic that helps students find the reserves to stick with projects and tasks, be they physical or intellectual. We will look at the role of dopamine, goal-setting, descriptive feedback that does not invoke ego, meaning-making, executive function, constructive responses to anxiety/depression, teacher-student relationships, agency, and more. There is no such thing as laziness; our students want to do demanding, complex learning, they want to persevere! To this, our students aspire; with this, our world was built. This generation is more than ready for what it takes to make the world their own. Let’s light this rocket!
  • Post-Conference Session (Tuesday, March 12th): Reflective Coaching: Insights and Practicalities on Helping Colleagues in their Professional Growth
    When we critique and provide feedback to colleagues in such a manner that raises their defensive walls for self-preservation, there is little to be gained. The question, then, is how we turn such interactions with one another into supportive, analytical experiences that create thoughtful insights within the teacher instead of a sermon or a fight to justify one’s actions. Let’s empower our colleagues and leadership by building the skills for thoughtful coaching into our daily repertoire. The ultimate goal here is our self-efficacy: We can self-monitor/analyze/reflect, revise practices based on those reflections, grow professionally, and ultimately, improve student learning in our classrooms. And even better, we can use those skills to build that self-efficacy in our students—yes, they translate! Students having thoughtful, coaching, teachers and teachers with coaching colleagues are like all of us having an additional editor/muse/facilitator/encourager on board, an Obi-Wan Kenobi to our Padawan selves. This session provides dozens of practical tips for successful coaching interactions, and even more question/prompt stems to get teachers and students talking and analyzing, creating their own insights without feeling threatened. With reflective coaching, we learn to honor what the other person brings to the table and how to facilitate their discoveries rather than telegraph our judgments. In this, we take deeper dives into practice and develop tools of respectful discourse. Don’t miss this chance to improve your practice and help colleagues and students do the same.
  • Pre-Conference Session (Sunday, March 10th): From Clarity to Competency (CBL): Building Learner Agency and Accelerating Learning
    Join our flight crew to excite and ignite learning in your classroom and schools through a “flight plan” that builds learner agency from clarity of learning standards to competency-based learning. Examine numerous strategies as you build a plan for lifting off and accelerating learning through high-impact strategies (clarity) with amazing student and classroom examples. Join us to design a flight path that best fits your student, and provide teachers with ways to examine learner evidence to measure competency-based learning (CBL) to enable both teachers and students to soar in their learning and grow their efficacy to take flight!
    Pre-Conference Session includes a copy of the book: Learner Agency

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