Collaborative Classroom’s staff of experienced educators presents at conferences nationwide, often in partnership with district leaders and our own cadre of professional learning consultants.
If you have questions about a specific conference below, please contact us. To learn about our public institutes and webinars, please click here.
May 1–3 • Ocean City, Maryland
Session: Transforming Teacher Practice: A Case for Curriculum as Professional Learning
What is your stance on curriculum? Let’s explore our opinions and beliefs about curriculum. Teachers’ role? Division-crafted? Program-driven? How do we as educators assure that ALL students have access to the same high-quality curriculum and instruction regardless of teacher experience and knowledge? We will explore the potential of educative instructional materials as a powerful pathway to transforming teacher practice and learn from one division that is making the shift.
Presenters: Elizabeth W. English, PhD, Collaborative Classroom; Pati Cunningham, Collaborative Classroom; Stephanie Milligan, Howard County Public Schools, Coordinator of Elementary Language Arts
May 1 • Devens, MA
Session: All Learning Is Social and Emotional: A Framework and Strategies for Integrating Academics and SEL
Integrating academic and social-emotional learning is an imperative for preparing our students for the future. Students must learn to regulate their emotions, employ and communicate critical thinking, and respectfully navigate social interactions in the context of their academic learning. Their ability to do so is what will ultimately determine their potential for success and fulfillment in our complex, competitive, and globally connected world. In this session, we consider a framework for the integration of academics and SEL, view a lesson that intentionally integrates the two, and reflect on strategies for achieving impactful results.
Presenters: Kim Gilbert, Collaborative Classroom, and Stephanie Hurley, Transforming Education
May 2 • Uncasville, CT
Session: Building Equity Through Powerful Literacy Instruction
During this interactive workshop, participants will reflect on their individual experiences and understandings about equity and access within diverse settings. Using our shared learning experiences, we will deepen our collective knowledge about equitable teaching practices and literacy instruction. Participants will be invited to collect evidence of equitable teaching approaches and discuss the impact of these practices on students’ opportunity to access learning and to meaningfully engage in literacy practices. In support of this work, participants will be provided with materials that directly relate to the workshop content, including a video observation tool, model lesson templates annotated with equitable teaching practices, and practical strategies and structures designed to build equity and access in the classroom. Participants will leave the session with practical ideas to implement in their own literacy instruction and learning environments, so that all students have an equitable and excellent school experience.
Presenter: Kim Gilbert, Collaborative Classroom
May 2 • Columbus, OH
Session details to be announced
May 1–2 • Palm Springs, CA
Session: Roll Up Your Sleeves with Hands-on Science (Inspiration Station)
Experience how easy science can be after school! We will roll up our sleeves and have fun with science while discussing strategies for incorporating SEL and science with your kids. You don’t have to be a scientist to get your children excited about and interested in science. Participants will:
• Experience fun, hands-on beach science that aligns to NGSS
• Learn how to easily integrate SEL into everyday science lessons
• Understand important characteristics of successful academic enrichment and how this aligns to the Quality Standards
• Deepen your practice of extending inschool learning while carefully and intentionally staying true to the afterschool way of ensuring that learning is FUN!
Presenter: Rachel Solis, Collaborative Classroom
Session: SEL and Academics Go Hand in Hand! (Camp Inspire)
Children must explicitly learn social and emotional competencies to interact with others, foster meaningful learning, and feel connected. Social Emotional Learning (SEL) helps children to seek help when needed, manage their own emotions, and problem-solve in difficult situations. Learn how to include SEL in everything you do. Participants will experience and discuss:
• Fun engaging lessons that put an equal emphasis on SEL and academics
• Research around high-quality expanded learning programs and the alignment to SEL
• Analyze foundational skills of SEL and character development
• Reflect and take back new practices that will integrate SEL into all aspects of your program
Presenter: Rachel Solis, Collaborative Classroom
May 28–31 • Framington, MA
Session: Effective Foundation Skills Instruction
How do we ensure English Language Learners read accurately, automatically and with prosody? In this session, we will consider the recommendations outlined from the What Works Clearinghouse specific to Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding. In doing so, participants will experience research-supported practices for the effective teaching and application of foundational skills so that students become fluent and confident readers and writers.
Presenter: Katy Cortelyou, EdD, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Best Practices for Building Vocabulary
A rich and robust vocabulary is essential to a literate life! Join us for this interactive session as we consider the research and experience lessons and instructional practices for engaging English Language Learners in meaningful, authentic and effective word learning.
Presenter: Katy Cortelyou, EdD, Collaborative Classroom
May 29 • New Brunswick, NJ
Session: Effective Foundation Skills Instruction
How do we ensure English Language Learners read accurately, automatically and with prosody? In this session, we will consider the recommendations outlined from the What Works Clearinghouse specific to Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding. In doing so, participants will experience research-supported practices for the effective teaching and application of foundational skills so that students become fluent and confident readers and writers.
Presenter: Katy Cortelyou, EdD, Collaborative Classroom
June 13 • Columbus, OH
Session: Learning Walks: Job-Embedded Professional Learning to Sustain Instructional Initiatives
Major shifts in professional learning are necessary to implement 21st century instructional practices. In this session, we will explore Learning Walks: a job-embedded professional learning strategy that calls forth and sustains change, helps maintain long-term momentum of instructional initiatives, cultivates community, and encourages risk-taking. Hear from an Elementary Principal and Curriculum Director who have experienced the long-term effects of this strategy and leave the session with the resources necessary to facilitate learning walks.
Presenter: Wendy Sadd, Collaborative Classroom
June 21–22 • Las Vegas, NV
Click here to learn more about the ILA Intensive!
Session: The Work Before the Work: Uncovering and Addressing Biases Before Engaging With Culturally Diverse Text
This session will encourage participants to examine their cultural framework and how this framework impacts how they engage with culturally diverse text. Attendees will preview and deconstruct major themes within culturally diverse text and how uncovered biases can affect their text delivery, interaction, and crucial conversations with students. Presenters will share a model for addressing uncovered biases, an ongoing self-study and reflection resource, and key strategies to use when approaching culturally diverse text.
Presenters: Tamera Slaughter, MA and Rhonda Sutton, EdD, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Classroom Libraries as Windows and Mirrors: Ensuring Diverse, Representative Books for our Students
As U.S. schools become increasingly diverse, while at the same time issues are more & more polarized, it is essential for students to have access to texts that reflect shifting demographics. In this interactive session, participants will work in small groups to review & apply current research as they evaluate a range of children’s books. Additionally, participants will examine lessons that apply best-practice strategies through the lens of diverse literature as the foundation of K–6 reading and writing instruction, gaining the tools necessary to support them in their own classrooms.
Presenter: Marisa Ramirez Stukey, PhD, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Building Equity Through Powerful Literacy Instruction
A commitment to access and equity starts with the individual and is enacted daily through interactions between and with our students. Participants who attend this session will utilize discussions, lesson experiences, classroom video and reflection to examine how culturally responsive teaching practices can enhance our literacy instruction and support access and equity for culturally and linguistically diverse students.
Presenters: Claire Riddell, MEd, and Marisa Ramirez Stukey, PhD, Collaborative Classroom
June 27 • Nashville, TN
Session: Getting to the Heart of Literacy: Integrating Social-Emotional Learning and Powerful Literacy Instruction
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is not an “add on” to an already overflowing agenda. SEL is best woven into the very fabric of how our students learn to read and write as well as how they respond to literature and each other. Literacy is, at its heart, both a social and an emotional transaction. This session builds on the SEL core competencies from the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and links those competencies directly to specific best practices in literacy, including but not limited to student choice, classroom discussion, self-reflection and self-assessment, and competency building (Yoder, 2014). Participants will engage in interactive lessons that utilize teaching practices which exemplify how we can focus on SEL while simultaneously providing rich literacy instruction. Additionally, we’ll utilize classroom videos to ask participants to collaborate, plan, and reflect on how to create classrooms communities in which students work together, push each other’s thinking, respond in thoughtful ways to literature, and expository text, and write with passion and voice.
Presenter: Linda Rourke, Collaborative Classroom
October 2–4 • Chicago, IL
Click here to learn more about the SEL Exchange Conference!
Session: Harnessing the Power of Children’s Literature for Academic and Social Emotional Growth
With a heightened focus at the national, state, and district level on social emotional learning, it is becoming increasingly important to equip educators with the knowledge and tools to integrate academic and social learning through their literacy block. This session will help educators better understand 1) how children’s literature can be expertly used to build classroom community and 2) assist students in connecting with literature as a way to cope with life’s challenges, learn empathy, and inspire students to be change makers.
Presenter: Kristy Rauch, MA, Collaborative Classroom
October 10–13 • New Orleans, LA
Booth 426
Click here to learn more about ILA 2019!
Session: Literacy in a Collaborative Classroom: Integrating Social, Emotional, and Academic Development for Deep Learning and Meaningful Engagement
This interactive session will share a model for literacy instruction that supports both the academic and social development of students. We will explore how to build learning experiences that enable the deep thinking and meaningful engagement that are foundational in a truly collaborative classroom. The workshop will examine a pedagogy, developed and tested over the past four decades in classrooms nationwide, that places student thinking at the heart of literacy instruction.
Presenter: Peter Brunn, MA, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Equity and Access in a Collaborative Classroom: Creating Independent Learners Through Early Literacy Instruction
This interactive session offers culturally responsive approaches that build our youngest students’ literacy independence and encourage inquiry and collaboration. Equitable access to essential instruction (explicit and systematic phonics, comprehension and vocabulary) supports the literacy development of our youngest readers. We will examine the underlying pedagogy that helps teachers build strong meaningful relationships with and among students so that students can access rigorous literacy content.
Presenters: Marisa Ramirez Stukey, PhD, and Rhonda Sutton, EdD, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Redefining Literacy Professional Learning
Professional learning is essential for teachers to shift practice to address the literacy needs of students. Learn the research-based characteristics of powerful literacy professional learning that will support teachers in actually enacting new practices. Consider the ways small shifts in how you think about professional learning can provide maximum impact. Participants will engage in collegial conversations, reflect on current practice and create an action plan for using this information in the setting in which you work.
Presenters: Isabel Sawyer, PhD, and Marisa Ramirez Stukey, PhD, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Building Equity Through Powerful Literacy Instruction
A commitment to access and equity starts with the individual and is enacted daily through interactions between and with our students. Participants who attend this session will utilize discussions, lesson experiences, classroom video and reflection to examine how culturally responsive teaching practices can enhance our literacy instruction and support access and equity for culturally and linguistically diverse students.
Presenters: Claire Riddell, MEd, and Rhonda Sutton, EdD, Collaborative Classroom
Session: Facilitating Student Talk, Thinking and Interaction: Strategies to Increase Student Engagement, Build Classroom Community, and Deepen Comprehension
Join us for a rich learning session centered on teaching all students how to access, apply, and make sense of information through facilitating conversation, thinking, and interaction. Participants will explore practical strategies and techniques that support the development of a strong community and support teachers in the use and refinement of facilitation skills, so that classrooms are safe, connected learning communities where students lead the talking, thinking, interaction and learning. Participants will be guided through an interactive learning experience designed to support students’ reading comprehension and build a sense of community while facilitation techniques are demonstrated and experienced.
Presenters: Jolynn Bernard, MA, Collaborative Classroom, and Megan Randolph, Lake County (Florida) K–5 Manager of Curriculum and Instruction
Session: SEL Meets PBL: Building a Community through Authentic Learning and Performance Tasks
We believe the role of social-emotional learning is essential to core literacy instruction. We will examine and experience teaching practices that support the intentional development of social-emotional competencies. These teaching practices will support students’ development as readers, writers, and critical thinkers. We will make deliberate connections to SEL teaching practices and the essential elements of inquiry-based learning to support the social and academic growth of the student. Voice, choice, revision, reflection, in-depth inquiry, authenticity, and more make significant impact when paired with the structures of social-emotional learning.
Presenters: Maria Arnett, MEd and Mary Tavegia, Collaborative Classroom; Peyton Anderson, PBL Specialist, and Lisa Micou, SEL Specialist, Chesterfield County Public Schools
December 9–11 • St. Louis, MO
Session: Partnering with Your Curriculum: A True Learning Center for Adults and Children
Discover how one school district created a new way of shaping schools to impact student achievement. Learn how the district shifted leadership roles, adopted a rich curriculum resource, and offered thoughtful professional learning to its teaching staff. Hear the data gathered to inform their work. Create a plan for supporting curriculum resources with professional learning in your setting.
Presenters: Isabel Sawyer, PhD and Maria Arnett, MEd, Collaborative Classroom; Dr. Kelli Cedo, Hampton City Schools