Early Career Teaching Institute

In this interactive session, participants will learn about The Discussion Project and will experience three techniques for getting students talking and engaging in high quality discussion.

Learning Goals

• Understand the importance of high quality discussion for student learning. 
• Distinguish between discussion and other forms of student talk.
• Learn different ways to structure and facilitate discussion.
• Implement strategies that develop students’ discussion skills.

The Coalition for Leading Anti-Racist Schools (the Coalition) utilizes the anti-racist cycle of inquiry, developed by Sandra Taylor-Marshall and Dr. Anjalé Welton, to build and develop members’ capacity to become leaders of anti-racist change. While Sandra’s and Dr. Welton’s expertise is in the education realm, their combined knowledge around coaching and anti-racist organizational change makes the Coalition’s approach theoretically sound and practically significant for PK-12 and higher education educators alongside people outside of education interested in bringing about anti-racist organizational change in their own spheres of influence. Members of the Coalition build relationships and network within and beyond the Coalition, energizing and empowering one another to develop new action plans and deepen existing ones throughout the year-long engagement. In this session, an overview of the Coalition and the anti-racist cycle of inquiry will be provided. Session attendees will then engage with the four phases of the inquiry cycle as they discuss and workshop a problem of practice. Finally, participants will contemplate problems of practice within their professional contexts to which they might apply the anti-racist cycle of inquiry.

Learning Goals

1. Learn about the Coalition for Leading Anti-Racist Schools and the anti-racist cycle of Inquiry.

2. Workshop a problem of practice specific to race through the anti-racist cycle of inquiry.

3. Consider ways to apply the anti-racist cycle of inquiry to a problem of practice specific to race in your professional context.

In this workshop, you will engage in simple sculpture making activities (collaboratively and solo) as a means to process, reflect on and gain new insights about your first year/s in the teaching profession. You’ll make art, write about metaphors for teaching and learning that emerge from the creative process, and discuss your findings with colleagues.

Learning Goals

• Experiment with collaborative and individual sculpture making processes as a means of personal and professional reflection.
• Write about artistic processes and products to generate metaphors that provide new perspectives on your teaching experience.
• Discuss insights from making art and making metaphors with other early career teachers.

This session will examine the teaching practices and pedagogy of the legendary performer and teacher Arnold Jacobs. We will discuss how his studio teaching and philosophies can be applied in classroom music settings. We will also discuss the implications of Arnold Jacobs's pedagogies as a lens for future curriculum in school music settings.

Learning Goals

• Relate the artistic mindset to curricular design.
• Discuss participants mentors and experiences that center artistic motivation in their teaching.
• Discuss strategies for incorporating this concept into teaching practice.

Are your students the next Ken Burns? Or future video journalists? Students' lives are increasingly saturated with media and the barriers to creating media are lower than ever. Media making is an essential part of media literacy. Using a variety of free resources, we will discuss tips on implementing media making into your lessons with little or no technology required.

Learning Goals

• Participants will learn the value of media creation in the classroom.
• Participants will learn the skills required to design and implement basic media projects.
• Participants will come away with free resources to assist with their youth media lessons.

This workshop uses Elena Aguilar's book Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators (2018) as a springboard to reflect and build practices to sustain educators in the profession. In this workshop, participants will reflect on the emotional components of teaching and the affordances and limitations of their current habits and practices. This reflection will include grappling with the complex and challenging structures and systems educators work within that often impact the ability to take care of oneself. Then, they will examine strategies and practices intended to cultivate emotional resilience. The practice section will include engaging in some mindfulness exercises and a look at the research on combating compassionate fatigue. Finally, participants will create individualized goals related to how they will build their emotional resilience in the next school year.

Learning Goals

• Participants will engage in reflection on the emotional components of teaching and the affordances and limitations of their current habits and practices.
• Participants will examine strategies and practice strategies intended to cultivate emotional resilience, including short mindfulness exercises and a look at the research on compassionate fatigue.
• Participants will create individualized goals related to how they will build their emotional resilience in the next school year.