2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

From A Nation Deceived to A Nation Empowered: Why We Need This!

The 2004 watershed report — A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students — entered the educational arena as a starting point for a balanced conversation among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers about the academic intervention known as acceleration. The need for A Nation Deceived was great because, although the research on the various forms of acceleration unequivocally demonstrated its effectiveness, implementation in classrooms was vastly underused. A Nation Deceived, with its provocative title and body of research, was highly effective in advancing the field. In the ensuing years, several educational initiatives, or issues, including twice-exceptionality, the core curriculum, STEM initiatives, and concerns about the excellence gap, made salient the need to update A Nation Deceived. A new publication, A Nation Empowered: Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America’s Brightest Students, is more than an update — it is a powerful resource for practitioners, researchers, and policymakers. In this talk, Dr. Assouline will present the new publication, review the robustness of the research concerning the 20 forms of acceleration, and address the new issues that have surfaced. Two case studies will highlight the effectiveness of the intervention and emphasize that, despite significant advances in the field, excuses not to implement acceleration still abound.

Controversies of Educating the Gifted (Panel)

Gifted education has been a controversial topic since its earliest days, and it remains so today. There are many differing opinions about educating the gifted — from elitism, equity, cultural bias, myths, and a misunderstanding of what the term gifted means. Please join this discussion on gifted education. We will cover the controversies, myths, and biases; what research supports; and what we can do collectively to help move the cause forward to meet the needs of gifted children in our current education system.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Experience on Demand: How the Virtual Reality Revolution Will Change the World

Virtual reality in various forms will play an increasing role in all of our lives, in and out of the classroom. This talk, by one of the world’s leading experts in virtual reality technologies and research, will explore the exciting possibilities — and limits — of virtual reality, from affecting our empathetic ability to increasing sports performance to developing communication skills.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Why Big History? Why Online? Why Now? The Case for Adding a Big Picture and Big Literacy Course to Student Education

This presentation makes a case for Big History — a course taking students on a journey from the Big Bang to the future. This big-picture, problem-based class builds on the reading, writing, and thinking practices of scholars, and the research on learning. Drawing on evidence from Big History Project’s (BHP) classrooms, Bob Bain shows how this coherent, problem-based, literacy-rich course has helped students and teachers successfully meet the challenges of teaching and learning.

What are these challenges? Too often students experience schooling as a knowledge cavalcade, a race through time and content contained in weighty textbooks. Typically this leads to disengaged students and weak literacy skills. It also proves challenging for teachers, who struggle to cover all the required “stuff” while still meeting the growing demands of the new standards and external assessments.

Bain shows how BHP's coherent narrative, grounded in regular and consistent literacy activities, offers ways for teachers to engage bored students, develop disciplinary literacy skills, and help stimulate students’ thinking about their past, present, and future. Furthermore, BHP’s dynamic online resources offer an innovative model of an educative curriculum that supports teachers while drawing on their craft wisdom to continually improve resources and activities.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Competing Demands: The Tipping Point in the College Admission Process

The confusion and angst surrounding the college admission process continues to grow. While students and parents strive to discover the secret to getting into college, admission officers are balancing a growing number of demands. Three seasoned admission professionals will discuss these often-competing pressures as well as some of the changes they have seen in their profession in recent years. These will include the soon-to-be revised SAT, the move by many institutions to a testing-optional process, the growing use of the Common Application and other online options, challenges to affirmative action, how incoming college students have changed over the years, and how colleges and universities are responding to these changes.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Story behind the Numbers: Social Justice in Mathematics

Nueva equips students with a design thinking mindset to solve real-world problems, driven by an empathetic understanding of others. Its social-emotional learning program equips students with the intra- and interpersonal skills to navigate complex problems. Through these two programs, our students are equipped to be social justice advocates and activists. But how do we convince others, and ourselves, of social injustice? How do we move from ideas backed anecdotally to statistically significant evidence? This session explores the beautiful intersection of statistics and social justice. As consumers of information, it is imperative that our students understand how to critically read and interpret statistical data. Furthermore, as passionate future leaders, it is equally important that our students be able to back claims with statistical support. Data, used well, is convincing. Using a number of examples from Nueva’s Math II course, we will demonstrate simple yet profound ways to deepen students’ understanding of social justice issues through mathematics.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Advisory Is Essential: Why Relationships Matter

Educators have long known that strong advisory programs provide a solid foundation on which students can build academic and personal success. The research showing this link is finally catching up — telling us that students in advisory programs do better in school. In this session, we’ll forge our own ad hoc advisory group. You’ll get current insights into how advisory programs help kids — from research and connections to growth mindset. We’ll also explore what’s in it for you, including how to connect with “advisors” from your past and gain tools to use in your own practice.

For middle and high school students, forging a close, personal connection with a caring adult advisor can be a tipping point, leading to greater accomplishment. Students develop supportive relationships with adults they trust, as well as with their peers. Advisory becomes a safe space where kids try out new ideas and explore their own identities. In the process, they cultivate a sense of self — academically, emotionally, and socially. Whether your school has an advisory program or you are looking to forge closer connections with the students you teach, come dig deeper with us to realize the power of relationships and how they can help improve your practice.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Design for 21st Century Skills: A Conversation about the Future of Design and Education

Increasingly, students need to solve complex, multifaceted problems that don’t have single right answers. Join us for an engaging moderated conversation between two leading design educators on where and how design can shape not only what we teach, but also how we teach it. Topics discussed will include how to turn STEM into STEAM, how to apply a studio approach to traditional disciplines, and how to combine creative and analytical subjects into integrated projects. Stephen Beal is the president of the California College of the Arts, a 108-year-old accredited art and design school that provides more than 20 interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate degrees. Jeanne Liedtka is a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and author and online educator to thousands of global online learners through her popular Coursera course, “Designing Thinking for Innovation.“

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Nurturing Kids’ Natural Ability to Question—and What Parents and Schools Can Do to Help

Children are natural questioners, asking hundreds of questions a day between the ages of two and five. But then kids go to school, and the art of questioning falls off a cliff, displaced by rote learning and standardized tests. We are doing a great disservice to our young people if we allow their “questioning muscles” to atrophy. Questioning is key to learning, and people who are comfortable raising and tackling difficult questions are more likely to flourish in the innovation-driven world of tomorrow. Warren Berger, author of A More Beautiful Question, will share practical ideas and strategies for encouraging more questioning in today’s classrooms and at home.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Structured Word Inquiry: Making Sense of How the Written Word Works

In this model lesson in Matt Berman's fourth grade class, Dr. Peter Bowers and the classroom teacher team-teach a structured word inquiry lesson. Drawing from words related to units of study, the students are guided through a scientific investigation of the written structure and the history of those words and related words that students discover along the way. Observers will see students work with linguistic tools, such as the morphological matrix and word sums, to test hypotheses about the structure and meanings of words. They will use both paper and online references and tools to inform their investigations and then present their learning to the group for further analysis. This lesson illustrates how a linguistic understanding of English spelling allows a teacher to use scientific inquiry as a tool for developing spelling, reading, and vocabulary knowledge that can be applied during work in any content area.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Interdisciplinary Activities for High School Math and Science Courses

In this session, we will explore opportunities for math and science teachers to collaborate on lab activities that integrate scientific concepts with mathematical analysis. Teachers will participate in specific lab activities appropriate for a variety of grade levels — additional resources with content information for both math and science will be provided. We will cover structures for implementing interdisciplinary instruction, how to guide student discussions, choice of experimental design, and appropriate mathematical tools. Assessment models appropriate to different settings will be shared and analyzed.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

The Mindset Revolution: Teaching Mathematics for a Growth Mindset

In recent years, scientific studies have demonstrated that student and teacher “mindsets” have a profound impact on learning. Students with a “growth mindset” (Dweck 2006), who believe that intelligence and “smartness” can be learned and that the brain can grow from exercise, learn more effectively, displaying a desire for challenge and showing resilience in the face of failure. Such behaviors encourage greater math persistence, engagement, and high achievement. Mathematics teachers play a critical role in the development of mindsets, and in this session we will consider what it means to teach math for a growth mindset and how to do it. In this interactive session, we will work together and use classroom videos to explore different mathematics tasks, classroom norms, forms of assessment and grading, grouping arrangements, encouragement and praise, and many other aspects of mathematics teaching.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

One-Moment Meditation: Stillness for People on the Go

In this workshop — for both parents and educators — Martin Boroson provides basic training in his playful, profound, and practical technique of One-Moment Meditation®, showing you how to tap many of the benefits of meditation — for peace of mind and improved performance — in just a moment.

One-Moment Meditation has been extremely popular in schools, leadership seminars, and workplaces around the world, showing a 30% reduction in perceived stress for very little time commitment.

This session is ideal for anyone who is curious about meditation, feels “too busy” to meditate, has “failed” at meditation, or wants to experience a fresh approach to this ancient practice. You will leave with a practical new skill, an ability to make meaningful change in your state of mind quickly, and an understanding of what it really means to live “in the moment.”

How to Have the Time of Your Life

Living in the 21st century, we have more “time-saving devices” than ever before in human history — and yet, no one seems to have enough time. Many people live in a state of extreme time poverty, and life is getting more and more stressful.

With the nature of work changing radically, and our natural rhythms and sleep cycles more distorted than ever, the ability to take time off or to find time to do what we value most is at serious risk. We are all becoming “crazy busy.”

In this provocative, philosophical, and ultimately positive talk, Martin Boroson explores the way we experience time, how our understanding of time has changed over time, and even what “time” really is.

Martin will also share with you the one simple “mindshift” you need to finally start getting a grip on time. For the real key to time management lies not in the clock, or in any device, but in the very thing you have most control over: your state of mind. And each and every moment offers you an opportunity to play with time, expand time, conquer time, and finally, have the time of your life.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Structured Word Inquiry: Making Sense of How the Written Word Works (Thursday)

In this model lesson in Matt Berman's fourth grade class, Dr. Peter Bowers and the classroom teacher team-teach a structured word inquiry lesson. Drawing from words related to units of study, the students are guided through a scientific investigation of the written structure and the history of those words and related words that students discover along the way. Observers will see students work with linguistic tools, such as the morphological matrix and word sums, to test hypotheses about the structure and meanings of words. They will use both paper and online references and tools to inform their investigations and then present their learning to the group for further analysis. This lesson illustrates how a linguistic understanding of English spelling allows a teacher to use scientific inquiry as a tool for developing spelling, reading, and vocabulary knowledge that can be applied during work in any content area.

Structured Word Inquiry: Developing Literacy and Critical Thinking through Scientific Inquiry of the Written Word (Friday)

This interactive session reveals how schools around the world bring scientific inquiry to spelling instruction. Dr. Bowers models “structured word inquiry” (Bowers & Kirby, 2010) investigations appropriate for preK–12 classrooms that reveal the surprisingly ordered way English spelling works to link words of related structure and meaning. Dr. Bowers will also discuss the most current research showing that instruction about morphological structure (bases and affixes) benefits all learners. In fact, contrary to long-held, untested assumptions, current research shows that morphological instruction has particular benefits for younger and lower-ability students. For an introduction to this work, explore www.wordworkskingston.com, where you can find many links to videos and other illustrations of structured word inquiry in preK–12 classrooms, including many great examples from Nueva classrooms.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Competing Demands: The Tipping Point in the College Admission Process

The confusion and angst surrounding the college admission process continues to grow. While students and parents strive to discover the secret to getting into college, admission officers are balancing a growing number of demands. Three seasoned admission professionals will discuss these often-competing pressures as well as some of the changes they have seen in their profession in recent years. These will include the soon-to-be revised SAT, the move by many institutions to a testing-optional process, the growing use of the Common Application and other online options, challenges to affirmative action, how incoming college students have changed over the years, and how colleges and universities are responding to these changes.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Bringing Design Thinking and Innovation Skills to the Classroom: Lessons from 2,000 Staff (Thursday)

Each spring, Galileo Learning hires, on-boards, trains, and leads nearly 2,000 staff to teach innovation and design-thinking skills at summer programs throughout California and Illinois. While one might expect this to turn into a mess of confused culture, misunderstood instructional approaches, and operational snafus, Galileo is actually known for its inspiring culture and staff and repeatedly appears on “best places to work” lists. Glen Tripp and Pamela Briskman will share how Galileo works within unusual constraints to design curriculum and implement hiring and training systems that support a culture and program that builds the creative confidence of 50,000 kids each summer.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Pragmatic Imagination and Its Growing Importance in Our Exponential Age

These days everyone seems to be focusing on creativity as the coin of the realm. In this talk we will look at the spectrum from creativity to imagination and show various ways that we can tickle our imagination into action for purpose.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Overcoming Resistance to Change in Our Schools: Leaders as Designers in Education

As we begin to imagine new models of education, how can we use design to help overcome common obstacles and resistance to change? In times of increasing complexity and constraints, what does it mean to lead like a designer?

Join public school leaders Erik Burmeister, assistant superintendent of Menlo Park City public schools, and Alyssa Gallagher, director of special projects and innovation at Los Altos public schools, for an interactive session of practical strategies on how to adopt a future-oriented strategic vision, how to engage the community in collaborative and co-creative conversations, and how to create catalyzing environments where all teachers, specialists, and parents can be drivers of change and possibility.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Where to Start? Practical Steps to Bring Maker-Based Learning into Your Classroom

Have a 3D printer but not quite sure how to integrate it into your lesson plans? Interested in bringing electronics and the Internet of Things to your learners but not sure where to start? Come join the Autodesk Project Ignite team and we'll share practical guidance about setting up makerspaces you can implement in learning environments immediately. By bringing together design thinking and tinkering, coupled with thoughtful discussion, students will learn to think critically, solve problems, collaborate, and gain an intuitive understanding of STEM concepts. From software to hardware, plus all the secret sauce for success in between (read: projects and professional development!), we'll get you on a foundational K–12 fast track into the world of designing and making. (Stick around after our talk, and we’ll give you hands-on time with 3D printers and other projects that bridge digital and physical—making ideas come to life!)

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Blended Learning “The Real Deal”: Two Schools on the Front Lines

Everyone has heard the hype: technology is changing everything. But we rarely hear from real educators doing the actual work. How are they running their classrooms and schools differently using these powerful new tools? This fireside chat features two dynamic educators in a conversation with a national thought leader on blended learning. They will describe what the front lines of innovative education look like right now and then paint a picture of where we may be headed in the future. Michael De Sousa is the celebrated principal of Leadership Public Schools Hayward, an award-winning, leading-edge Bay Area high school. Nicole Cerra is a co-founder and lead teacher at Design Tech High School, a highly innovative new school focused on design thinking and personalized learning. Brian Greenberg is the CEO of the Silicon Schools Fund, the leading funder of blended learning schools in the region and a former teacher and school leader.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Creative Ways to Introduce and Implement the Elements of Depth and Complexity

In our presentation, we will describe how we introduced Nueva 3rd grade students to each of the elements of depth and complexity in a meaningful and engaging way at the beginning of the school year. We will then discuss how we continue to use this model to differentiate our curriculum for the various needs of Nueva’s gifted students.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

A Day in the Life of Miguel, Class of 2025

Today’s young people are the most diverse, connected generation in history. What kind of learning experiences will prepare and inspire them to achieve their most ambitious dreams and plans? What will it take to put more power in the student’s hands and tailor learning to their individual needs and interests, while at the same time creating an environment that encourages deep connections to their classmates and teachers. In this session, we will explore the possibilities through a day in the life of Miguel, a member of the high school class of 2025.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

The Nueva Mission Statement as a Foundation for Music Education

This violin master class, led by Sin-Tung Chiu in collaboration with Dmitriy Cogan at the piano, will showcase the music of three young Nueva violinists at three different levels — beginning, intermediate, and advanced. The focus will be on learning how to practice efficiently, strengthening fundamentals in technique in order to make music, and this session will demonstrate how the mission statement of the Nueva School serves as a foundation for music education. There will be a brief question-and-answer period after the performance.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Identity Safe Classrooms, Places to Belong and Learn (Thursday)

Join authors and researchers Dorothy Steele and Becki Cohn-Vargas, who will discuss their research focused on identity safe classrooms, classrooms where teachers strive to ensure students that their social identities are an asset rather than a barrier to success in school. In 84 diverse elementary classrooms, research revealed evidence that when teachers used identity safe teaching strategies, students achieved at higher levels and liked school more. This research identified the following components of identity safe teaching that will be introduced in this interactive session:

Child-centered teaching promotes autonomy, cooperation, and student voice.
Cultivating diversity as a resource provides challenging curriculum and high expectations for all students in the context of the regular classroom and features diversity and culturally competent activities.
Classroom relationships should be built on trusting, positive teacher-student interactions.
Caring classroom environments where social skills are taught and practiced help students care for one another in an emotionally and physically safe classroom.

During this session, teachers will be invited to explore an array of strategies to create identity safe classrooms where students from diverse racial, social, economic, and linguistic groups feel a sense of belonging and can flourish.

Not In Our School Workshop Selma to Ferguson: Working to Address Implicit Bias and Create Identity Safety (Friday)

As educators, it may seem overwhelming that in addition to addressing overt racism in our classrooms and schools, we also need to tackle unconscious racist feelings (known as implicit bias) not only in our students, but also in ourselves. Something can be done, and the solutions are in our hands. This interactive workshop will cover implicit bias, stereotype threat, and the antidote: identity safety. We will offer on-the-ground actions teachers can take to counter stereotypes, build empathy, and promote identity safe environments where students of all backgrounds are welcomed, supported, and successful and learn to accept others who are different from them.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

The Rise and Fall of Jazz in Shanghai: How Teachers Can Facilitate Discussions of Race and Culture through the Arts

Wherever jazz landed, African American music and dance quickly dominated the entertainment landscape, often overshadowing long-established musical traditions. New York, London, Paris, and Berlin in the ’30s and ’40s were all rocking to the sounds of swing, as youth culture embraced a musical style created through adversity and oppression.

Predictably, classical music elitists in Europe and the United States dismissed swing as crass entertainment at best, and a cultural depravity at worst. And when jazz arrived in China and melded with local music, the debate grew more complicated, raising key questions of national identity, as China battled colonialism, international fascism, and internal conflicts.

Shanghai, China’s often-decadent metropolis, was at the center of this debate as American-born entertainment intoxicated the international and local population, forever altering the cultural and political landscapes.

During this session, we will look at the political, musical, and cultural elements that dominated Shanghai between the great wars, and we will discuss how the arts can facilitate challenging conversations about race and national identity. This session includes rare audio and unique film, providing a different perspective on Asia during one of the most turbulent times in modern history.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children

Chef Ann Cooper will discuss the importance of healthy, delicious food in schools and why teaching our children about healthy food and feeding them healthy food is one of the most important educational opportunities that we have. In the past seven years, school food has come to the forefront. More than ever before, we need to understand and support healthy food in every school. Reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act as well as the Farm Bill will likely happen in the coming months. Advocating for strong language in these bills, which will lead to the health of our nation’s children, is of the utmost import. Join Chef Ann as she explains the intricacies of the National School Lunch Program, the challenges that schools face, and the solutions that will help schools overcome these challenges.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Mindfulness in Education: The Deep End vs. The Shallow End — What Happens after the Trend?

When the trendiness of mindfulness passes, what will the foundation of mindfulness in education be? With the rapid growth of mindfulness, there are varying entry points for people, varying levels of interest, and varying levels of training available. The entire spectrum has value, and all levels will influence the movement. This includes everything from single classrooms integrating mindfulness without full community involvement, to whole districts trying to implement programming on a wide scale.

What can we do to understand and participate in the movement in a way that supports mindfulness beyond the trend? Some questions we will address in this talk are:

• What types of training and programs provide the most sustainability?
• What creates the most accessibility for educators and students?
• What does a “mindful” school or classroom mean/look like?
• What are the ultimate aims of training educators in mindfulness, training students in mindfulness?
• How does mindfulness relate to the current styles of education?

Whether you are fully invested or a true skeptic, this talk will offer comprehensive information to support your exploration of this movement.

Building and Sustaining Mindfulness with Middle and Upper School Students

In this session, participants will get an inside look into how to explore mindfulness in a 5th-grade classroom setting. As students get older, there is more emotional content to explore, as well as a stronger sense of self and cognitive ability. This impacts how we approach mindfulness with older students. We will spend the first half of the session discussing how mindfulness is delivered to grades 5–12, and then we will join the 5th-grade class for an actual lesson. We will also cover how to introduce mindfulness as something new and how mindfulness deepens once you have integrated it into your classroom routine.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

The Age of Purpose

We will discuss why finding purpose is especially important now for people of all ages, how youth is a formative period for developing the capacity for purpose, and what educators can do to foster purpose in students.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Interdisciplinary Activities for High School Math and Science Courses

In this session, we will explore opportunities for math and science teachers to collaborate on lab activities that integrate scientific concepts with mathematical analysis. Teachers will participate in specific lab activities appropriate for a variety of grade levels — additional resources with content information for both math and science will be provided. We will cover structures for implementing interdisciplinary instruction, how to guide student discussions, choice of experimental design, and appropriate mathematical tools. Assessment models appropriate to different settings will be shared and analyzed.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Blended Learning “The Real Deal”: Two Schools on the Front Lines

Everyone has heard the hype: technology is changing everything. But we rarely hear from real educators doing the actual work. How are they running their classrooms and schools differently using these powerful new tools? This fireside chat features two dynamic educators in a conversation with a national thought leader on blended learning. They will describe what the front lines of innovative education look like right now and then paint a picture of where we may be headed in the future. Michael De Sousa is the celebrated principal of Leadership Public Schools Hayward, an award-winning, leading-edge Bay Area high school. Nicole Cerra is a co-founder and lead teacher at Design Tech High School, a highly innovative new school focused on design thinking and personalized learning. Brian Greenberg is the CEO of the Silicon Schools Fund, the leading funder of blended learning schools in the region and a former teacher and school leader.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Game-Based Learning/Assessment and Common Core Math: A Perfect Match

Studies show, and countries like Finland and Japan illustrate, that student success in Common Core–like math is better assured by focusing on deep, conceptual understanding, developed and assessed not by drill and multiple-choice questions but by repeated engagement with complex performance tasks. Well-designed math learning video games like DragonBox Algebra, Ko’s Journey, Jiji, and my own Wuzzit Trouble provide such contextualized, problem-based, discovery learning. Recent research shows significant learning gains from this approach, with particularly dramatic impact on low socioeconomic-status children.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

The Shape of Mathematical Arguments to Come

In the elementary grades K–4, what kinds of investigations and problems inspire student engagement and produce a diversity of mathematical arguments? With a focus on data and number theory, this session will highlight lessons that encourage students to creatively and rigorously engage in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) mathematical practice of “constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others.” This interactive session will allow educators to test various possibilities for developing mathematical arguments through the use of manipulatives, visual proofs, language arts integration, and technology. Aspects of formative and summative assessments will also be discussed.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Inquiry Science Workshop and Next-Generation Science Standards

In this inquiry-based science workshop, facilitated by Fred Estes and Lelia Youn, teachers will engage in scientific investigations using inquiry, reflect on the inquiry process and scientific content, and discuss how to implement inquiry-based science into their classrooms. The lesson will exemplify the practices of scientific inquiry, including open-ended framing questions, multiple approaches to exploring a topic question, student involvement with the design of the investigation, using “fair tests” to answer questions and gather data, analysis of results and data, and discussions to make sense of the results and communicate understanding. Rather than any specific set of lessons, inquiry is a process based on increased student involvement, multiple ways of knowing, and sequential phases of cognition. Student-derived investigations make knowledge more relevant and meaningful. Inquiry leads to active construction of meaningful knowledge, rather than passive acquisition, and it incorporates previously learned knowledge. The student-to-student collaboration reinforces assimilation of knowledge, while the teacher-to-student collaboration builds trust for future discovery. In the spirit of inquiry, we truly invite questions, comments, and critical dialogue from workshop participants.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Research-Based Strategies for Working with Twice-Exceptional Students

The last decade has seen a surge in knowledge and awareness of what it means for a student to be twice exceptional, and researchers are unveiling ever-better strategies for effectively working with this population of learners. This presentation will review the latest research findings specific to twice-exceptionality and how these findings can be applied in educational and home settings. The focus will be on social and emotional development, acceleration, and ways to remediate areas of growth in gifted students with ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, learning differences, and anxiety/depression. Detailed examples of practical strategies will be provided.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Making Meaning in a Physical Space: How the Learning Environment Reflects and Shapes Educational Values

Our designed environment is a reflection and outgrowth of our values. We use it to tell our stories, and it also speaks back to us. The cues given by our educational spaces dictate roles and set expectations that we then strive to fulfill. This reciprocity, between making an environment and the environment making us, is ripe for exploration and should be considered thoughtfully. Documentation, prescriptive design, and the image of the learner are all powerful players in the equation. This presentation will consider the role of meaningful spaces in shaping learning, weaving together ideas from the design studies field and the Reggio Emilia approach to early education.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Creativity in Action: Developing Seven Key Components of Creativity in K–8 Classrooms

This session provides educators interested in promoting creativity and innovation a research-backed framework for understanding the developmental skills underlying the cognitive, social-emotional, and physical components of creativity in children. This is an active, hands-on session. Participants will engage with a series of activities that are aligned with research on promoting imagination and originality, flexibility, decision-making, communication and self-expression, motivation, collaboration, and movement.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Fail Early, Succeed Often: Increasing Innovation Thinking to Improve Education and Energize Entrepreneurship

In recent years, the definition of intelligence has been warped by standardized testing. Being smart is increasingly defined as the ability to recall facts and succeed on timed tests. As a result, problem-solving and innovative thinking are increasingly under attack in our school system.

A deeper look at the 10% of the population who are dyslexic reveals interesting lessons about what could be going wrong. Thirty-five percent of entrepreneurs in the United States are dyslexic, suggesting these outliers can make major contributions to society. At the same time, 41% of the United States prison population is made up of people with these same specific learning disabilities. What are schools doing wrong? How can we help more people have the great outcomes and fewer people end up at the bottom of the curve?

The answer may be less testing and more risk-taking in the classroom. This talk will focus on ways to encourage students to play to their strengths, learn to tell their own story, and ultimately blaze a new path to innovation and entrepreneurship. Educators and parents interested in upending default models of standardized testing, while teaching children to be resilient, should attend this talk.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Design Thinking and The Humanities

Many people associate design thinking with STEM classes, but this workshop will show how design thinking can help humanities students create and test thesis statements and engage with literary and historical texts in deeper ways.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Making Meaning in a Physical Space: How the Learning Environment Reflects and Shapes Educational Values (Thursday)

Our designed environment is a reflection and outgrowth of our values. We use it to tell our stories, and it also speaks back to us. The cues given by our educational spaces dictate roles and set expectations that we then strive to fulfill. This reciprocity, between making an environment and the environment making us, is ripe for exploration and should be considered thoughtfully. Documentation, prescriptive design, and the image of the learner are all powerful players in the equation. This presentation will consider the role of meaningful spaces in shaping learning, weaving together ideas from the design studies field and the Reggio Emilia approach to early education.

Connecting Points: The Educational Approach in Reggio Emilia with Design Thinking and Maker-Centered Learning (Thursday)

Two new approaches or narratives about education, creativity, and innovation are prominent in our culture today: design thinking and maker-centered learning. As early childhood educators, we are interested in these approaches. Many of the ideas in these new educational frameworks seem to reflect, or closely parallel, the research in early education that has been part of the Reggio Emilia approach for nearly 60 years. In this workshop, co-presenters Susan Lyon and Carolee Fucigna will highlight major educational inspirations from the Reggio approach and draw meaningful connections between this approach and ideas presented in design thinking and maker-centered learning. Come join a dialogue about how these powerful inspirations are connected and how they enhance and support each other.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Overcoming Resistance to Change in Our Schools: Leaders as Designers in Education

As we begin to imagine new models of education, how can we use design to help overcome common obstacles and resistance to change? In times of increasing complexity and constraints, what does it mean to lead like a designer?

Join public school leaders Erik Burmeister, assistant superintendent of Menlo Park City public schools, and Alyssa Gallagher, director of special projects and innovation at Los Altos public schools, for an interactive session of practical strategies on how to adopt a future-oriented strategic vision, how to engage the community in collaborative and co-creative conversations, and how to create catalyzing environments where all teachers, specialists, and parents can be drivers of change and possibility.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Prototyping Classes, Prototyping Culture

Experimenting in successful, established educational institutions is challenging. Overextended faculty, external constraints, and institutional norms often shut down innovative practices before they have a chance to get started. Making change in these educational environments is as much about changing culture as it is about changing the classroom. We will share some of the tools and mindsets that we used while working with the Claremont Colleges (a consortium of five undergraduate liberal arts colleges) to help them prototype both culture and classes through simple, inexpensive, and effective methods.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Solutions to the Omnivore's Dilemma: Fixing the Broken Food System

For 15+ years, Professor Gardner conducted human nutrition studies at Stanford University on topics that included garlic, soy, antioxidants, fish oil, vegetarian diets, and weight-loss diets. After more than a dozen studies, it became clear that the impact of these studies on the eating behaviors of Americans was negligible. He made a career-altering decision around that time to join colleague Thomas Robinson in designing and teaching an undergraduate “Food and Society” class. The class spanned animal rights and welfare, climate change and global warming, human labor abuses in agricultural fields, fast food restaurants, and slaughterhouses — all centered on the common theme of food. Nutrition was a topic that was intentionally avoided. The impact this course had on the eating behaviors of students was dramatic and larger than the impact of any of Professor Gardner’s nutrition studies. This has led to a growing interest in a food-systems perspective on improving people’s eating behaviors — school food, university food, worksite food, and hospital food. These all share important choices in sourcing, preparing, and presenting food. Successful and scalable changes in those food systems could contribute to the Holy Grail — reconnecting people to their food and changing social norms.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Video Games and Neuroscience: A Vision of the Future of Education

A fundamental challenge of modern society is the development of effective approaches to enhance brain function and cognition, both in healthy and impaired individuals. Unfortunately, there are serious concerns about our current education system’s and/or healthcare system’s ability to meet this challenge. Innovative neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley will describe an approach developed in his laboratory that uses custom-designed video games to achieve meaningful and sustainable cognitive enhancement, as well as the next stage of his research program, which uses video games integrated with technological innovations in software (e.g., brain computer interface algorithms, GPU computing) and hardware (e.g., virtual reality headsets, motion capture, mobile EEG) to create personalized closed-loop systems. He will share with you a vision for the future, in which video games are used as an underlying engine to enhance students’ fundamental information processing systems, thus supporting global educational efforts.

Panel: The Future of Neuroscience-Inspired Education

Cognitive neuroscientists and related experts discuss the importance of and current contributions to neuroscience in educational practice through the lenses of creativity, social-emotional learning, academic achievement, meditation, and technology. The panel will discuss the following questions: What would neuroscience-inspired education look like in 10 years? Can neuroscience ever transform education?

Panelists: Adam Gazzaley, Bruce McCandliss, Philippe Goldin, Scott Barry Kaufman
Moderated by Fumiko Hoeft

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Science and Practice of Mindfulness and Compassion Meditation


There has been an explosion of empirical research on the mechanisms and impact of contemplative practices, including a variety of mindfulness and compassion meditation techniques. Dr. Goldin’s talk will highlight recent findings from neuroscience and clinical science. In particular, he will elucidate how meditation practices: (a) influence brain systems implicated in attention regulation, emotion awareness, emotion regulation, and self-views; and (b) are being integrated into clinical interventions for a variety of psychological problems.

Panel: The Future of Neuroscience-Inspired Education

Cognitive neuroscientists and related experts discuss the importance of and current contributions to neuroscience in educational practice through the lenses of creativity, social-emotional learning, academic achievement, meditation, and technology. The panel will discuss the following questions: What would neuroscience-inspired education look like in 10 years? Can neuroscience ever transform education?

Panelists: Adam Gazzaley, Bruce McCandliss, Philippe Goldin, Scott Barry Kaufman
Moderated by Fumiko Hoeft

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Oakland Students Find Joy and Play through Learning with Tech: One Teacher's Journey to Achieving 2½ Years of Reading Growth with His Students Every Year

Teaching in Oakland exposes you to the harsh reality that plagues America’s youth living in neglected rural areas and inner cities. The forces of poverty, drugs, joblessness, and systemic racism are all factors in the achievement gap. We often read these words in the papers and sympathize, but what do the headlines really mean? It means our educators are often teaching the equivalent of four grade levels in one classroom, and that developing a growth mindset culture in schools is fundamental if we are to shift students from disengaged to empowered. In Oakland we’re starting to realize that education technology is offering a glimmer of hope because it can accelerate learning, especially for our most vulnerable youth.

In this session, Stacey Wang of Oakland Unified School District will present an effective model for technology integration in inner city learning environments and examine the role that disruptive innovation plays in personalized learning. You will also hear from Oakland teacher Tommy Gonzalez, whose method of teaching reading through a blended, personalized learning model has had great success — moving most students’ reading levels up by 2½ years. He’ll share the journey of a student who began 5th grade at a 1st-grade reading level and ended the year at a fourth-grade reading level, keen on Harry Potter novels. The bulk of the session will be an interactive workshop for educators to experience blended learning firsthand from both the teacher’s and the student’s perspective.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

5th Grade Design Engineering Treehouse Project

The 5th grade design thinking and engineering class project involves pairs of students designing and fabricating a mechanical treehouse toy for first-grade students. The class walks the students through the entire design thinking process, and also includes engineering content as students learn how to use the machines in the lab and begin to create their toys. This presentation explains the project and the path followed by the 5th graders, as well as how we teach a class with an open-ended project.

I-Lab Recess and Informal Conversations with I-Lab Faculty

Nueva’s I-Lab is open to students during lunch and lunch recess each day. Come see the students as they conceive their own projects, use the laser cutter, design on TinkerCad, print on the 3-D printers, and build with hot glue guns! We have created an environment of “Yes!” that empowers students to create and learn by doing. Participants can informally ask I-Lab faculty questions one on one, including Director Kim Saxe (overall program structure/design thinking principles and goals/entrepreneurship), Michelle Grau (design engineering/robotics), and Steve Westwood (design engineering/digital fabrication/woodshop).

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Blended Learning “The Real Deal”: Two Schools on the Front Lines

Everyone has heard the hype: technology is changing everything. But we rarely hear from real educators doing the actual work. How are they running their classrooms and schools differently using these powerful new tools? This fireside chat features two dynamic educators in a conversation with a national thought leader on blended learning. They will describe what the front lines of innovative education look like right now and then paint a picture of where we may be headed in the future. Michael De Sousa is the celebrated principal of Leadership Public Schools Hayward, an award-winning, leading-edge Bay Area high school. Nicole Cerra is a co-founder and lead teacher at Design Tech High School, a highly innovative new school focused on design thinking and personalized learning. Brian Greenberg is the CEO of the Silicon Schools Fund, the leading funder of blended learning schools in the region and a former teacher and school leader.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Finding the Treasures Embedded in So-Called Learning Differences

Dr. Hallowell enlarges on the refrain of his children's story, A Walk in the Rain with a Brain: “No brain is the same, no brain is the best, each brain finds its own special way.” He will show how children with conditions like ADHD and dyslexia usually possess extraordinary talents, which will emerge in the right kind of environment, with the right kind of teacher, and with the right kind of guidance at home.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Looking Again: Revision and Developing the Eyes to See the Qualities of Good Writing

In this session, writer and poet Georgia Heard will draw on the new edition of her book The Revision Toolbox: Teaching Techniques That Work to provide specific, practical strategies that can be used to help young writers revise their writing.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

SEL Toolbox: A Demonstration Lesson

At Nueva, first grade is when students broaden their knowledge and awareness of social-emotional learning (SEL) as they engage in an hour-long class each week dedicated to the subject. During this year, the curriculum focuses on teaching children the SEL toolbox, a set of skills to build their self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, collaboration and cooperation, and relationships. In this demonstration lesson, you will observe the process and methods used to teach these tools.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

EdHack through Neuroscience

How is education being hacked through neuroscience research, and how is this research transforming how we learn? Dr. Hoeft and high school intern Audrey Wong (a Nueva student) will give an overview of the conceptual framework of educational neuroscience research, followed by examples in the fields of creativity, motivation, meditation, and learning differences.

Panel: The Future of Neuroscience-Inspired Education

Cognitive neuroscientists and related experts discuss the importance of and current contributions to neuroscience in educational practice through the lenses of creativity, social-emotional learning, academic achievement, meditation, and technology. The panel will discuss the following questions: What would neuroscience-inspired education look like in 10 years? Can neuroscience ever transform education?

Panelists: Adam Gazzaley, Bruce McCandliss, Philippe Goldin, Scott Barry Kaufman
Moderated by Fumiko Hoeft

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Across the Strands: The Mathematician Biography Project

Nueva Middle and Upper School teachers Karen Tiegel and Lee Holtzman will present the Mathematician Biography Project, a four-week collaborative project between the sixth grade math and writing classes. The project has each student study a mathematician chosen from a broad range, present and past, and focuses their research by asking them to write a letter of recommendation for one of six fictional awards such as “most likely to find their work in a middle school classroom” or “best collaborator.” Students learn about the time period of their specific mathematician, study a strand of mathematics explored by the mathematician, and reflect on the collaborative work of their mathematician. The project culminates in a poster that presents each student's learning. We'll discuss timelines and rubrics and view samples of the students' work. This presentation is intended for new and current middle and lower school teachers.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Hooking Students with Website Creation

Students have numerous choices for presenting information in the classroom — reports, slideshow presentations, movies, podcasts, and more. Given students’ familiarity with the Internet as an information resource, Nueva’s required computer science classes engage them in the world of programming by teaching them the basics of web design. They learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, empowering them to embrace simple web design and discover a new way to present research and content learned in their core classes.

In this presentation, we will discuss ways in which teachers can integrate computer science with humanities, math, and other subject area projects in order to produce websites that are not only informational, but are also well designed with interactive, engaging content. Attendees will receive tools and resources to facilitate the implementation of integrated web design lessons into their classrooms.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Curriculum vs. Instruction

Traditionally, differentiating the curriculum has been the primary way of accommodating the needs of gifted learners across the grade levels. The emphasis on curriculum — the “what” of differentiation — often ignores the instruction, or the “how” of differentiation. This session will introduce and emphasize instructional strategies that promote challenging intellectual methods and processes to study and learn the curriculum. Learning How To Learn will also be presented to reinforce how students can learn to think and study independently.

Constructing the Meaning of “Challenge” for Gifted Students

Reinforce. Replace. Redefine. These terms have been fundamental to the design and/or modification of curriculum to meet the needs of gifted students. Contemporary understandings of the needs of middle school gifted learners, comprehension of students' readiness for sophisticated learning experiences, and new awareness of the intellectual demands of the disciplines have resulted in the creation of new definitions for how we construct challenging curriculum for gifted students in middle school.

Controversies of Educating the Gifted (Panel)

Gifted education has been a controversial topic since its earliest days, and it remains so today. There are many differing opinions about educating the gifted — from elitism, equity, cultural bias, myths, and a misunderstanding of what the term gifted means. Please join this discussion on gifted education. We will cover the controversies, myths, and biases; what research supports; and what we can do collectively to help move the cause forward to meet the needs of gifted children in our current education system.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

From Evaluation to Inspiration

Inspired by his personal experience in special education, Scott Kaufman, now a cognitive psychologist, has made it his mission to redefine potential. Why do we have such an obsessive need to compare students? Why do we insist on labeling and categorizing everyone? In his talk, Kaufman will encourage us — specifically educators, school psychologists, parents, and caregivers — to move towards a culture of inspiration, where we only compare people to their past and future selves. He argues for intelligent testing as opposed to intelligence testing — deep evaluation that focuses on finding out a person’s strengths and weaknesses and the characteristics that make him or her unique. He advocates for thinking about talent and potential as moving targets. They are not inherent qualities we are born with; they are based on our engagement with something that is meaningful to us. When students are inspired or activated, they come alive. Instead of using testing to sort gifted from ungifted students, Kaufman encourages audiences to take a holistic approach to evaluation, one that benefits all students. It is time to focus on a practical approach to individual needs that enables students to unlock their potential and reach their goals, at school and beyond.

Panel: The Future of Neuroscience-Inspired Education

Cognitive neuroscientists and related experts discuss the importance of and current contributions to neuroscience in educational practice through the lenses of creativity, social-emotional learning, academic achievement, meditation, and technology. The panel will discuss the following questions: What would neuroscience-inspired education look like in 10 years? Can neuroscience ever transform education?

Panelists: Adam Gazzaley, Bruce McCandliss, Philippe Goldin, Scott Barry Kaufman
Moderated by Fumiko Hoeft

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Creative Confidence

IDEO founder and Stanford d.school creator David Kelley and his brother Tom Kelley (IDEO partner and the author of the bestselling book The Art of Innovation) have written a powerful and compelling book on unleashing the creativity that lies within each and every one of us.

Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the “creative types.” But two of the world’s leading experts in innovation, design, and creativity show us that each and every one of us is creative. In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO and with many of the world’s top companies, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work and personal lives, and will allow us to innovate in terms of how we approach and solve problems. This session will help each of us become more productive and successful in our lives and in our careers.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Design Thinking Comes of Age: A Conversation about Empowering Students, Teachers, and Schools

What is the value of teaching design thinking in preK–12 classrooms? Why are so many schools devoting resources to design thinking experiences? Join George Kembel, executive director and co-founder of Stanford University’s d.school, and Kim Saxe, director of Nueva’s pioneering design thinking, design engineering, and entrepreneurship program, as they discuss the importance of enhancing student creativity, empathy, problem identification, iteration to solutions, and instilling a bias to action. What is happening in design-thinking classrooms today, and where is design-thinking education heading in the futures?

Nurturing Creativity on a Global Scale — from a Teacher’s Point of View

Get a sneak peek into d.global, a new project emerging from Stanford University’s d.school. The d.school has helped usher in a larger design thinking movement that actively teaches mindsets and skills that are not traditionally taught in school, but are essential for students, teachers, and leaders living in the 21st century. In a rapidly changing educational landscape and an increasingly global context, how might we adapt and advance design thinking so it works in more extreme contexts? How might we provide creative learning experiences to people who currently don’t have access to them? And how might we amplify the impact of design thinking pioneers to accelerate this larger cultural shift in education and work? In this session, we will look inside d.global’s emerging ways of learning, doing, and teaching, and ask how we might begin to nurture and unleash creativity on a global scale.

Nurturing Creativity on a Global Scale — from a Learner’s Point of View

Get a sneak peek into d.global, a new project emerging from Stanford University’s d.school. The d.school has helped usher in a larger design thinking movement that actively teaches mindsets and skills that are not traditionally taught in school, but are essential for students, teachers, and leaders living in the 21st century. In a rapidly changing educational landscape and an increasingly global context, how might we adapt and advance design thinking so it works in more extreme contexts? How might learners everywhere take responsibility for their own creative experiences without requiring the presence of teachers to guide them? And how might we amplify the impact of design thinking pioneers to accelerate this larger cultural shift in education and work? In this session, we will look inside d.global’s emerging ways of learning, doing, and teaching, and ask how we might begin to nurture and unleash creativity on a global scale.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Creating Lives: Illuminating the Invisible Pathways to Innovative Careers

For the gifted student who chooses a career in a profession like academic science, medicine, or law, the pathways are straightforward and linear. What are the pathways, however, to becoming an installation artist, a videogame journalist, a social entrepreneur, or an organic farmer? Over the past 10 years, the Counseling Laboratory for the Exploration of Optimal States (CLEOS) has provided career and college planning and psychological services to more than 1,000 creative adolescents, while generating research findings about the needs of young innovators. The research suggests that creative adolescents often have uneven grades — high achievement in their areas of interest and only moderate achievement in other subjects. As a result, they may not qualify for elite universities. In some cases their creativity may predispose them to distractibility, procrastination, and risky experiences. Creative adolescents also struggle to get adults to take their goals seriously since their desired careers are often unusual, multidisciplinary, or not yet in existence.

The CLEOS project takes young innovators’ goals seriously. CLEOS activities help them find the invisible pathway toward their life goal through personality, interest, and flow assessment and offer a wealth of information about academic options, DIY education, and career milestones for innovators. The CLEOS staff/counselors — graduate level and licensed psychologists who are also artists, writers, performers, scientists, and social entrepreneurs — help students overcome barriers to their goals. This presentation reviews the research findings of the last 10 years and their implications for counseling creative adolescents.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Formative Assessment Lessons

Formative assessment lessons — what are they and why do them? These strategically designed lessons exemplify the standards for mathematical practice in the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) and the five dimensions of powerful mathematics classrooms. Join this session to learn about the intent, purpose, and research behind the development of formative assessment lessons, and their powerful contribution to the improvement of teaching instruction in the classroom for all students.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Literacy for the 21st Century: The Power of Children’s Literature to Explain Our World

Who could have foreseen 30 years ago the changes and challenges parents, teachers, and librarians would face today as we educate our children and teach them to read? In some ways, we, as adults, are a step or two behind our kids who have been born into a world where images have become equal partners with text and often call for “decoding” in order to reveal meaning. Story and information is presented in ways that demand a heightened awareness of our visual and auditory senses, technological proficiency, and cultural assumptions. In this session, Marilyn Kimura, librarian at the Nueva School, will use children’s literature for younger and older readers to explore expanded definitions of what it means to be literate in the 21st century. This session is for parents and educators of preK–8 students.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Student-Led Discoveries in Mathematics

How can we promote student explorations in elementary math, grades K–4, so they can discover what Shakespeare called the “undiscovered country” in the realm of mathematics? This session will allow participants to engage in arithmetic and multiplicative lessons and investigate patterns of interest, so they can experience some of the discoveries that arise in the course of playing with mathematics. The session will focus on student-generated patterns and structures that promote inquiry, discovery, conjectures, visual-spatial thinking, and synthesis.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

The Power of Portfolios: Empowering Independent Learners

At Nueva, student portfolios are a cornerstone of the approach teachers use to reinforce and assess student learning. Students gather artifacts of their learning, reflect on their process and growth, and share their work and their experience with teachers, peers, and parents. In creating their portfolios, students must decide what is most important, and how each piece in the portfolio ties together to tell the story of their learning throughout the year. As John Dewey wrote, “We do not learn from experience ... we learn from reflecting on experience.” This process of deep reflection and synthesis creates long-term, enduring, and transferable learning. In this session, we will look at how portfolios foster student growth in ways that traditional assessments cannot, helping students grow into independent — self-assessing and self-adjusting — learners. What does the portfolio process look like at different grade levels? How are portfolios compiled, reviewed, and evaluated? How do teachers manage portfolio systems? How do portfolios fit into existing assessment structures?

In this session, attendees will break out into educator groups by division — elementary, middle, and high school — to review and have an interactive discussion around examples of Nueva student portfolios relevant to their specific teaching level.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

From Soup to Nuts: Building and Launching Your School Maker Space

Fostering imaginative and innovative learning with K–8 students and teachers with your own school maker space can seem like a Herculean task if you are starting from square one. Come learn from two master teacher makers on how they found funding, got school site councils and communities on board, and built exciting, clamored-for, new learning and making spaces in their public schools. Smita Kolhatkar and Robert Pronovost will share grant-writing tips, presentation materials, and their deep expertise in training teachers to teach using cross-curricular collaboration — incorporating the tools of technology, creativity, and Common Core curriculum.

To Infinity and Beyond for Creating a Maker Space

Children learn best through the experiences they have when they are “making.” The Maker Movement combines the best of high and low tech, enabling students to have varied choices, find a passion, make connections, and develop a range of skills. “Making” facilitates high-level thinking skills in children — an integral part of the Common Core standards. It enables them to broaden their perspectives and gain a deeper understanding of concepts. Participants in this session will come away with ideas on how to start up maker spaces; what kinds of materials to look for; and how to incorporate various making projects into their curriculum, including 3-D design and printing, coding, robotics, circuitry, and science and engineering projects. They will also learn how to leverage the wider community and other available resources. We will share completed student projects, ongoing projects, and discuss future possibilities.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Mindful Tech: Bringing Greater Balance to Our Online Lives

Today’s digital devices and apps are both powerful and powerfully distracting. It has become increasingly clear that they can serve as instruments for learning and connection on the one hand and distraction and disconnection on the other. The challenge we face is to use them to their best advantage, and to ours, and to understand when to use them and when to abstain from them. For a number of years, through my research and teaching, I have been developing methods to help students (as well as faculty, staff, and adult professionals) investigate and improve their relationship with their devices and apps. In this session, I will present some of the exercises I use in my courses and seminars and will discuss the pedagogical approach underlying them.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Design for 21st Century Skills: A Conversation about the Future of Design and Education

Increasingly, students need to solve complex, multifaceted problems that don’t have single right answers. Join us for an engaging moderated conversation between two leading design educators on where and how design can shape not only what we teach, but also how we teach it. Topics discussed will include how to turn STEM into STEAM, how to apply a studio approach to traditional disciplines, and how to combine creative and analytical subjects into integrated projects. Stephen Beal is the president of the California College of the Arts, a 108-year-old accredited art and design school that provides more than 20 interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate degrees. Jeanne Liedtka is a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and author and online educator to thousands of global online learners through her popular Coursera course, “Designing Thinking for Innovation.“

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Useless Information? How Information Does and Does Not Help Parents Reach Their Goals

Parents play an important role in their children’s education, but there are substantial differences in the home learning experiences of children. While goals for children and available resources contribute to these differences, knowledge and — even more important — the ability to translate knowledge into action are key factors. In this session, Susanna Loeb discusses the barriers to effective parenting using research study results, including studies from READY4K!, a text-messaging program for parents of preschoolers designed to help them support their children’s literacy development. Unlike most low-cost parenting programs, READY4K! has had significant positive effects on parents’ home literacy activities, parental involvement in the school (as reported by teachers), and on children’s literacy assessment scores.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Connecting Points: The Educational Approach in Reggio Emilia with Design Thinking and Maker-Centered Learning

Two new approaches or narratives about education, creativity, and innovation are prominent in our culture today: design thinking and maker-centered learning. As early childhood educators, we are interested in these approaches. Many of the ideas in these new educational frameworks seem to reflect, or closely parallel, the research in early education that has been part of the Reggio Emilia approach for nearly 60 years. In this workshop, co-presenters Susan Lyon and Carolee Fucigna will highlight major educational inspirations from the Reggio approach and draw meaningful connections between this approach and ideas presented in design thinking and maker-centered learning. Come join a dialogue about how these powerful inspirations are connected and how they enhance and support each other.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

How to Raise an Adult

From parents being arrested for letting their kids play in a park or walk home alone, to parents doing their kids' homework and science projects, both parenting and childhood have undergone significant changes in recent years. Ripped from today's headlines, this talk will explore the motives for parental overprotection, overdirection, and hand-holding, explain the harm to kids and parents alike from such behaviors, and encourage parents to recommit to our biological imperative as parents, which is to raise offspring to become self-actualized adults.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Strategies for Sustaining Innovation: When Hype Turns to Gripe

Despite organizational inertia and competing priorities, how can meaningful, lasting innovation be realized? Learn from The Urban School of San Francisco’s recent innovations in blended learning, a new learning management system (LMS), and the development of an engineering program. Assess your school’s relationship to disruptive innovation and strategize for situations where enthusiasm for new ideas encounters skepticism.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Prototyping Classes, Prototyping Culture

Experimenting in successful, established educational institutions is challenging. Overextended faculty, external constraints, and institutional norms often shut down innovative practices before they have a chance to get started. Making change in these educational environments is as much about changing culture as it is about changing the classroom. We will share some of the tools and mindsets that we used while working with the Claremont Colleges (a consortium of five undergraduate liberal arts colleges) to help them prototype both culture and classes through simple, inexpensive, and effective methods.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Cultivating Confident Girls in The Digital Age

Girls’ wellness has never been more critical. In adolescence, girls are experiencing stress, anxiety, and depression at twice the rate of boys. This disparity is often amplified by online media consumption, which can leave girls feeling isolated and anxious. Girls also tell us that social media provides them with a platform for community and self-expression. We will explore three tools that parents can use to help girls develop the inter- and intrapersonal skills necessary to build authentic and resilient relationships. Parents will learn the latest research on girls’ development, have a chance to laugh at the realities of modern-day parenting, and leave with actionable tools to immediately implement with their girls offline.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Panel: The Future of Neuroscience-Inspired Education

Cognitive neuroscientists and related experts discuss the importance of and current contributions to neuroscience in educational practice through the lenses of creativity, social-emotional learning, academic achievement, meditation, and technology. The panel will discuss the following questions: What would neuroscience-inspired education look like in 10 years? Can neuroscience ever transform education?

Panelists: Adam Gazzaley, Bruce McCandliss, Philippe Goldin, Scott Barry Kaufman
Moderated by Fumiko Hoeft

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Biohacking and Biotech Natives in the 21st Century

What computers were to the 20th century, biotechnology is to the 21st century. But the equipment to do all the “fun stuff” is still expensive and difficult to access. How do we get student access to DNA sequencers, copy machines, and tools for genetic engineering so they will be prepared for this “next big thing?” The answer can be found in Silicon Valley garage labs and biohacker spaces. In this session, we will discuss the biohacker movement and the democratization of biotechnology tools. We will look at how young people are using them not only to do science projects, but also to tell their own stories about life, biology, and what it means to be human.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Engaging Students with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) by Using Video to Bring Scientists, Music, and Creativity into the Classroom

Come for the live music, stay for the rhyme writing. Middle school science teacher Tom McFadden will explain how his NGSS-inspired YouTube show, Science With Tom, can be incorporated into K–12 classrooms. After a live performance and a sneak preview, you will experience the essential student activity of the show — writing a “verse two.” As teachers explore new resources for incorporating Next Generation Science Standards into their classrooms, it is important to find materials that are interactive, engaging, and authentic to scientific inquiry. Science With Tom, a new YouTube show, aims to break student stereotypes by connecting classrooms to young, diverse, charismatic scientists and engineers who can, in turn, connect NGSS content and practices to what they do in their own labs. Each episode ends with a book recommendation and a music video, as a means of encouraging student creativity and interdisciplinary thinking as they write a second verse to the songs. Learn more at http://www.sciencewithtom.com/.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

How to Build the School Dining Area of the Future — Now

What does it take to get 56,000 kids in a public school environment to enjoy a nutritious meal that feeds their body and engages their mind? Join a conversation with the team from San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) to discuss their redesigned school meal program — the groundbreaking Future Dining Experience — developed in collaboration with the design firm IDEO and the Sara and Evan Williams Foundation. The team will discuss the human-centered journey they embarked on to develop solutions, highlighting what they learned by using the design thinking process to create enjoyable school meal experiences that engage and empower students to create communities within their schools. They will explore how they moved from design solutions to implementation, talk about the importance of public-private partnerships, and share lessons learned from the transformative experience.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Innovation Mash-Up: Spark Student Curiosity

The music industry has always understood the importance of mash-ups — taking two songs from different genres and coming up with fresh beats. Think Rihanna and Eminem or Kanye West and Ray Charles. That’s actually how a lot of innovation starts. Two existing ideas are mashed together to make something new and better. Join the Teachers Guild, an open innovation platform out of IDEO and the Riverdale Country School, for an interactive design sprint where we’ll mash together your favorite classroom projects that spark student curiosity. Together, we’ll create innovative opportunities for our students to be active seekers of new knowledge. #sparkcuriosity

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Spirituality in Youth Development for Mental Health and Thriving

The intuitive wisdom of parents and teachers has long seen children as spiritual. Yet only in the past 15 years has science shown strong evidence that a path of spiritual development has a powerful impact on mental health and thriving. Every child is born a spiritual child — it is innate. For some people it is developed within religion, for others it is developed outside of a faith tradition within the family, community, or in nature. In either case, the way that parents, educators, and the community interact with the child impacts the extent to which natural spirituality flourishes and informs all other lines of development. When natural spirituality is supported, youth gain protection against some of the most prevalent forms of suffering — substance abuse, depression, and risk-taking. The positive traits of optimism, grit, and commitment seem to be anchored for the 85% of teens with personal spirituality. Science points to ways that we can support natural spirituality both in young children and in adolescents. Ultimately, the greatest gift we can give a child for life is the cultivation of spirituality through loving relationships.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Activating a Growth Mindset Through Choice and Self-Determination

Ask your students: “what intelligence do you want to grow and how are you going to do it?” Through conversation and interactive activities, we will explore how choice and self-determination are fundamental components of fostering intrinsic motivation and a growth mindset. By connecting an exploration into growth mindset to an introduction to Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, we culminate with students setting goals for the specific intelligences they wish to grow. We also look at how a growth mindset transcends the boundaries of the “traditional classroom” and how, when enhanced by choice, self-differentiation, support, and nonjudgment benefit students throughout each developmental stage.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Activating a Growth Mindset Through Choice and Self-Determination

Ask your students: “what intelligence do you want to grow and how are you going to do it?” Through conversation and interactive activities, we will explore how choice and self-determination are fundamental components of fostering intrinsic motivation and a growth mindset. By connecting an exploration into growth mindset to an introduction to Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, we culminate with students setting goals for the specific intelligences they wish to grow. We also look at how a growth mindset transcends the boundaries of the “traditional classroom” and how, when enhanced by choice, self-differentiation, support, and nonjudgment benefit students throughout each developmental stage.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Garden-Based Education's Role in Sustainability, Wellness, and Science Education

School gardens provide an excellent setting and subject for teaching about sustainability and healthy eating. In addition, gardens provide an opportunity for real-world instruction in science, math, social studies, nutrition, and other academic topics. The direct tie-in to Next Generation Science and Common Core makes garden-based education crucial for most schools. As an added bonus, garden-based education teaches lessons in sustainability and wellness! Living Classroom provides the important linkage between these two important areas of academics and sustainability/wellness. This talk will cover how Living Classroom has achieved this linkage and implemented a program now serving 8,000 students across 21 schools.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

“It's All One Song”: Following Your Instincts to Create Easy, Natural, Collaboration across Disciplines

Neil Young once described his music by saying, “It's all one song.” I feel the same way about what should be happening in our classrooms today. Everything we do should have the same goals — student engagement, appropriate levels of challenge, and clear expectations. Beyond that, I also believe that much of our content is “one song.” We want our students to understand, discuss, and have informed opinions about the world around us. No one discipline encompasses all of that work.

This presentation will include a discussion of the following collaborative projects in the fifth grade: learning about genetic research in humanities; using data from math projects to create essays in writing; providing opportunities for thesis-driven writing across all disciplines; conceptualizing and drafting creative maps in humanities to be refined and completed in art; gardening with fifth graders every week during humanities, which provides a setting for journaling, community sharing, meditation, poetry, drawing, conflict resolution, and manual labor; and creating opportunities to tackle SEL topics in writing and content-driven class discussions.

Hooking Students with Website Creation

Students have numerous choices for presenting information in the classroom — reports, slideshow presentations, movies, podcasts, and more. Given students’ familiarity with the Internet as an information resource, Nueva’s required computer science classes engage them in the world of programming by teaching them the basics of web design. They learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, empowering them to embrace simple web design and discover a new way to present research and content learned in their core classes.

In this presentation, we will discuss ways in which teachers can integrate computer science with humanities, math, and other subject area projects in order to produce websites that are not only informational, but are also well designed with interactive, engaging content. Attendees will receive tools and resources to facilitate the implementation of integrated web design lessons into their classrooms.

For the 2015 Nueva ILC, Jim Munzenrider is presenting music for lunch on Thursday, featuring Nueva's Jazz group "Jamzilla."

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

iMovie for Fiction and Nonfiction Projects

Are you intrigued by the thought of using multimedia and filmmaking in your classroom but haven't had time to build it into the curriculum? If the answer is yes, this workshop is for you. We call on beginner and intermediate iMovie and Apple users, as well as humanities and writing teachers, to attend a teacher and student–led, hands-on workshop. We will show you the basics of iMovie (computer and iPad-based) and present easy-to-make movie projects. The majority of the workshop instruction will be Nueva-student based — guided by Nueva teachers and presented by Nueva students. Projects will be showcased from student literature clubs and Ancient Greece theme-based assignments.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Cultivating Mindfulness in the Young Child

Mindfulness is an integrative, mind-body approach to living that enables one to focus clearly on the present moment without judgment. The young child can learn to pay attention to thoughts, feelings, and body sensations in a way that cultivates this awareness, as well as self-regulation and wise decision-making. Join us for an introduction to mindfulness for young children. Participants will learn about the benefits of mindfulness firsthand as they experience exercises that can easily be implemented in the classroom and at home.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Creativity in Action: Developing Seven Key Components of Creativity in K–8 Classrooms

This session provides educators interested in promoting creativity and innovation a research-backed framework for understanding the developmental skills underlying the cognitive, social-emotional, and physical components of creativity in children. This is an active, hands-on session. Participants will engage with a series of activities that are aligned with research on promoting imagination and originality, flexibility, decision-making, communication and self-expression, motivation, collaboration, and movement.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

How to Build the School Dining Area of the Future — Now

What does it take to get 56,000 kids in a public school environment to enjoy a nutritious meal that feeds their body and engages their mind? Join a conversation with the team from San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) to discuss their redesigned school meal program — the groundbreaking Future Dining Experience — developed in collaboration with the design firm IDEO and the Sara and Evan Williams Foundation. The team will discuss the human-centered journey they embarked on to develop solutions, highlighting what they learned by using the design thinking process to create enjoyable school meal experiences that engage and empower students to create communities within their schools. They will explore how they moved from design solutions to implementation, talk about the importance of public-private partnerships, and share lessons learned from the transformative experience.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Dispelling Myths About Computer Science Education

In just over two years, Code.org has introduced 125 million students to the “Hour of Code” and has partnered with 71 public school districts and tens of thousands of teachers across America to bring computer science into the curriculum. Yet the vast majority of US schools still do not teach computer science, in large part because of common misperceptions about the field. In this session, Code.org founder Ali Partovi will dispel common myths about computer science education and tackle some of the historical obstacles that have hindered its adoption. Partovi will also share success stories and strategies that are helping educators across America integrate computer science into K–12 curriculum.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Story behind the Numbers: Social Justice in Mathematics

Nueva equips students with a design thinking mindset to solve real-world problems, driven by an empathetic understanding of others. Its social-emotional learning program equips students with the intra- and interpersonal skills to navigate complex problems. Through these two programs, our students are equipped to be social justice advocates and activists. But how do we convince others, and ourselves, of social injustice? How do we move from ideas backed anecdotally to statistically significant evidence? This session explores the beautiful intersection of statistics and social justice. As consumers of information, it is imperative that our students understand how to critically read and interpret statistical data. Furthermore, as passionate future leaders, it is equally important that our students be able to back claims with statistical support. Data, used well, is convincing. Using a number of examples from Nueva’s Math II course, we will demonstrate simple yet profound ways to deepen students’ understanding of social justice issues through mathematics.

The Power of Portfolios: Empowering Independent Learners

At Nueva, student portfolios are a cornerstone of the approach teachers use to reinforce and assess student learning. Students gather artifacts of their learning, reflect on their process and growth, and share their work and their experience with teachers, peers, and parents. In creating their portfolios, students must decide what is most important, and how each piece in the portfolio ties together to tell the story of their learning throughout the year. As John Dewey wrote, “We do not learn from experience ... we learn from reflecting on experience.” This process of deep reflection and synthesis creates long-term, enduring, and transferable learning. In this session, we will look at how portfolios foster student growth in ways that traditional assessments cannot, helping students grow into independent — self-assessing and self-adjusting — learners. What does the portfolio process look like at different grade levels? How are portfolios compiled, reviewed, and evaluated? How do teachers manage portfolio systems? How do portfolios fit into existing assessment structures?

In this session, attendees will break out into educator groups by division — elementary, middle, and high school — to review and have an interactive discussion around examples of Nueva student portfolios relevant to their specific teaching level.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

What Do I Do When Students Do Not Know What to Do?

“I need help.” “I don’t know what to do.” “I’m confuzzled.” Come explore solutions to these common classroom refrains inevitable in any learning environment. Discuss strategies to help students build perseverance to feel more comfortable when stuck. Investigate habits of mind that can help students overcome roadblocks without compromising learning and mastery. Examine routines, resources, and habits that will help students get to a more self-directed state for overcoming roadblocks. I will come with the lens of a middle school math teacher, but many of these strategies will apply to classrooms of any age and any subject.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids (Opening Remarks)

Our fast-paced, high-pressure culture with a singular focus on grades, test scores, and achievement can result in unhealthy and overloaded kids who lack the social, emotional, and academic skills needed to succeed in school and in life. Dr. Pope offers a research-based framework for schools to use to improve policies and practices concerning the daily schedule, curriculum, assessment, and school climate in order to foster more independent, adaptable, ethical, and motivated students.

Re-Thinking Assessment

How do you know when your students truly understand the material you are teaching? How do you encourage more authentic learning experiences while minimizing grade grubbing and cheating? This interactive workshop reviews the “backwards design” process and focuses on multiple assessment strategies to help teachers more effectively determine what their students are learning. In this workshop, attendees will have the opportunity to examine how current modes of assessment may not be healthy for students, to learn to align assessments with enduring understanding goals, and to find ways to make current assessments more authentic, varied, and valid.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Using Improv to Process the Conference Experience

At a conference like this, information comes at you in a storm. This session is intended as a counterpoint to that — I want to give you a chance to start to process your experience. Using a playful and participative approach that draws on my work with improvisation, we will explore some of the questions and ideas you bring. In doing so, we will experience and understand how to make sense of complexity. p>

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

From Soup to Nuts: Building and Launching Your School Maker Space

Fostering imaginative and innovative learning with K–8 students and teachers with your own school maker space can seem like a Herculean task if you are starting from square one. Come learn from two master teacher makers on how they found funding, got school site councils and communities on board, and built exciting, clamored-for, new learning and making spaces in their public schools. Smita Kolhatkar and Robert Pronovost will share grant-writing tips, presentation materials, and their deep expertise in training teachers to teach using cross-curricular collaboration — incorporating the tools of technology, creativity, and Common Core curriculum.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Building the Right Scaffold: How to Structure High School and University-Level Work for Students in the Middle Grades

In this workshop, we'll break down multiple strategies for practicing high level work — thesis-driven research papers, annotated bibliographies, nuanced literary analyses — with students in the middle grades. We'll discuss finding the balance between structure and freedom, skills and content, and universal expectations and differentiated feedback. We'll also take a look at specific tools drawn both from teachers' personal experiences as learners and from the digital environment that is natural to our students. This emphasizes strategies appropriate for students in grades 7–9, though the material is easily scalable for students in both older and younger grades. All are welcome.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Funding the Future: Why Education Innovation Depends on Innovative Education Finance

In the decade since the release of the film An Inconvenient Truth, just about everyone has learned about the previously obscure subject of global climate change. But there’s another inconvenient truth that will affect our children’s future much faster than global warming, and with consequences just as dire. Our public education systems are grappling with ongoing funding shortages while strained under an immense load of debt. Meanwhile, our student populations are becoming increasingly diverse, with higher needs. As budgets tighten, how will we address these needs, close achievement gaps, and fund innovative education programs and approaches? Or, as demographer Paul Taylor asks so eloquently in his book, The Next America, “How do we keep our promises to the old without bankrupting our young and starving the future?” Just as with global warming, the first part of the solution is recognizing the looming crisis and its causes. In this session, we will take look at the nation’s evolving demographics and the financial challenges facing our education systems. We will examine some of the new and innovative tools, approaches, and technologies that can help school systems make better use of their limited funding to achieve educational equity and excellence.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Character’s Edge

Character skills are essential for our students to thrive in school, in life, and in our world. What stops them from being at the core of our school’s mission? This workshop will share work that has been done at Riverdale Country School, KIPP, and through the Character Lab (www.characterlab.org) and suggest some ways forward that can be employed by all schools.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Cultivating Mindfulness in the Young Child

Mindfulness is an integrative, mind-body approach to living that enables one to focus clearly on the present moment without judgment. The young child can learn to pay attention to thoughts, feelings, and body sensations in a way that cultivates this awareness, as well as self-regulation and wise decision-making. Join us for an introduction to mindfulness for young children. Participants will learn about the benefits of mindfulness firsthand as they experience exercises that can easily be implemented in the classroom and at home.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

The Power of Portfolios: Empowering Independent Learners

At Nueva, student portfolios are a cornerstone of the approach teachers use to reinforce and assess student learning. Students gather artifacts of their learning, reflect on their process and growth, and share their work and their experience with teachers, peers, and parents. In creating their portfolios, students must decide what is most important, and how each piece in the portfolio ties together to tell the story of their learning throughout the year. As John Dewey wrote, “We do not learn from experience ... we learn from reflecting on experience.” This process of deep reflection and synthesis creates long-term, enduring, and transferable learning. In this session, we will look at how portfolios foster student growth in ways that traditional assessments cannot, helping students grow into independent — self-assessing and self-adjusting — learners. What does the portfolio process look like at different grade levels? How are portfolios compiled, reviewed, and evaluated? How do teachers manage portfolio systems? How do portfolios fit into existing assessment structures?

In this session, attendees will break out into educator groups by division — elementary, middle, and high school — to review and have an interactive discussion around examples of Nueva student portfolios relevant to their specific teaching level.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

How to Build the School Dining Area of the Future — Now

What does it take to get 56,000 kids in a public school environment to enjoy a nutritious meal that feeds their body and engages their mind? Join a conversation with the team from San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) to discuss their redesigned school meal program — the groundbreaking Future Dining Experience — developed in collaboration with the design firm IDEO and the Sara and Evan Williams Foundation. The team will discuss the human-centered journey they embarked on to develop solutions, highlighting what they learned by using the design thinking process to create enjoyable school meal experiences that engage and empower students to create communities within their schools. They will explore how they moved from design solutions to implementation, talk about the importance of public-private partnerships, and share lessons learned from the transformative experience.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Talented Readers

Little research has been conducted on talented readers. This session will address issues related to talented readers and provide information about what currently happens to them in American classrooms. We will focus on the special needs of this group, as well as the specific differentiated strategies necessary to help them continue to progress in reading. We will present information from a ten-year research study that used the Schoolwide Enrichment Model for talented readers. You will come away with suggestions for helping talented readers make continuous progress in reading, both in school and at home.

Controversies of Educating the Gifted (Panel)

Gifted education has been a controversial topic since its earliest days, and it remains so today. There are many differing opinions about educating the gifted — from elitism, equity, cultural bias, myths, and a misunderstanding of what the term gifted means. Please join this discussion on gifted education. We will cover the controversies, myths, and biases; what research supports; and what we can do collectively to help move the cause forward to meet the needs of gifted children in our current education system.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Creative Ways to Introduce and Implement the Elements of Depth and Complexity

In our presentation, we will describe how we introduced Nueva 3rd grade students to each of the elements of depth and complexity in a meaningful and engaging way at the beginning of the school year. We will then discuss how we continue to use this model to differentiate our curriculum for the various needs of Nueva’s gifted students.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

The Back of the Napkin: Learning to Learn with Pictures

In this fast-paced interactive session, Dan Roam shares his visual-thinking insights, experiences, case studies, and tools. From sketch-based problem-solving, to clarifying complex educational concepts, to the remarkable explanatory properties of The Six Elemental Pictures, Dan will take us through a vast, visual world of possibilities in communication and education.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Competing Demands: The Tipping Point in the College Admission Process

The confusion and angst surrounding the college admission process continues to grow. While students and parents strive to discover the secret to getting into college, admission officers are balancing a growing number of demands. Three seasoned admission professionals will discuss these often-competing pressures as well as some of the changes they have seen in their profession in recent years. These will include the soon-to-be revised SAT, the move by many institutions to a testing-optional process, the growing use of the Common Application and other online options, challenges to affirmative action, how incoming college students have changed over the years, and how colleges and universities are responding to these changes.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

The Creativity Imperative

As our world becomes increasingly dynamic, complex, and automated, creativity has become a fundamental skill that all children need in order to flourish. In this talk, we consider the shift in thinking about creativity in education — its transition from a “nice to have” to a “must have.” Dr. Rood shares highlights from the Center for Childhood Creativity's recent white paper, which recommends the focused development of seven core skills associated with creativity. She will also provide practical advice for how to inoculate children against the “fourth grade slump,” a time when many experience a decline in original thinking.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Strategies for Sustaining Innovation: When Hype Turns to Gripe

Despite organizational inertia and competing priorities, how can meaningful, lasting innovation be realized? Learn from The Urban School of San Francisco’s recent innovations in blended learning, a new learning management system (LMS), and the development of an engineering program. Assess your school’s relationship to disruptive innovation and strategize for situations where enthusiasm for new ideas encounters skepticism.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Student-Led Discoveries in Mathematics

How can we promote student explorations in elementary math, grades K–4, so they can discover what Shakespeare called the “undiscovered country” in the realm of mathematics? This session will allow participants to engage in arithmetic and multiplicative lessons and investigate patterns of interest, so they can experience some of the discoveries that arise in the course of playing with mathematics. The session will focus on student-generated patterns and structures that promote inquiry, discovery, conjectures, visual-spatial thinking, and synthesis.

The Shape of Mathematical Arguments to Come

In the elementary grades K–4, what kinds of investigations and problems inspire student engagement and produce a diversity of mathematical arguments? With a focus on data and number theory, this session will highlight lessons that encourage students to creatively and rigorously engage in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) mathematical practice of “constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others.” This interactive session will allow educators to test various possibilities for developing mathematical arguments through the use of manipulatives, visual proofs, language arts integration, and technology. Aspects of formative and summative assessments will also be discussed.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Leap and the Net Will Appear: Advisory Practices Based in Social-Emotional Learning

How do we lead a way for students to build genuine and caring relationships that resonate in school culture and impact their daily well-being?

Students are eager for adults to hold a purposeful, playful space that engages connection and brings respite within the challenges of the school day. Vibrant programs designed for success support the advisor-as-learner, as well as the advisees. They focus on experiences that develop students’ personal and interpersonal skills. Social-emotional learning (SEL) provides a creative lens for advisory design and connection with students. Students “buy in” when SEL underlies advisory. Our role as advisor can move past leading “advisory as study hall” into advisory as a powerful educational experience.

In their tech-saturated lives, students yearn to express who they are face-to-face with their peers — they want to be heard. Advisory offers opportunities to expand the repertoire of SEL skills. An SEL focus in advisory empowers students to reflect mindfully, speak assertively, listen empathically, and appreciate differences. Take the leap and lead the way!

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Strategies for Sustaining Innovation: When Hype Turns to Gripe

Despite organizational inertia and competing priorities, how can meaningful, lasting innovation be realized? Learn from The Urban School of San Francisco’s recent innovations in blended learning, a new learning management system (LMS), and the development of an engineering program. Assess your school’s relationship to disruptive innovation and strategize for situations where enthusiasm for new ideas encounters skepticism.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Humans: Are We Just Another Ape? Are We Just a Bunch of Neurons?

In this talk, Stanford scientist Robert Sapolsky approaches the issue of human behavior from the standpoint of his two areas of investigation — neuroscience and primatology. What he has to say will get you thinking about free will and our uniqueness as a species.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Design Thinking Comes of Age: A Conversation about Empowering Students, Teachers, and Schools

What is the value of teaching design thinking in preK–12 classrooms? Why are so many schools devoting resources to design thinking experiences? Join George Kembel, executive director and co-founder of Stanford University’s d.school, and Kim Saxe, director of Nueva’s pioneering design thinking, design engineering, and entrepreneurship program, as they discuss the importance of enhancing student creativity, empathy, problem identification, iteration to solutions, and instilling a bias to action. What is happening in design-thinking classrooms today, and where is design-thinking education heading in the futures?

I-Lab Recess and Informal Conversations with I-Lab Faculty

Nueva’s I-Lab is open to students during lunch and lunch recess each day. Come see the students as they conceive their own projects, use the laser cutter, design on TinkerCad, print on the 3-D printers, and build with hot glue guns! We have created an environment of “Yes!” that empowers students to create and learn by doing. Participants can informally ask I-Lab faculty questions one on one, including Director Kim Saxe (overall program structure/design thinking principles and goals/entrepreneurship), Michelle Grau (design engineering/robotics), and Steve Westwood (design engineering/digital fabrication/woodshop).

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Innovation Mash-Up: Spark Student Curiosity

The music industry has always understood the importance of mash-ups — taking two songs from different genres and coming up with fresh beats. Think Rihanna and Eminem or Kanye West and Ray Charles. That’s actually how a lot of innovation starts. Two existing ideas are mashed together to make something new and better. Join the Teachers Guild, an open innovation platform out of IDEO and the Riverdale Country School, for an interactive design sprint where we’ll mash together your favorite classroom projects that spark student curiosity. Together, we’ll create innovative opportunities for our students to be active seekers of new knowledge. #sparkcuriosity

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Innovation Mash-Up: Spark Student Curiosity

The music industry has always understood the importance of mash-ups — taking two songs from different genres and coming up with fresh beats. Think Rihanna and Eminem or Kanye West and Ray Charles. That’s actually how a lot of innovation starts. Two existing ideas are mashed together to make something new and better. Join the Teachers Guild, an open innovation platform out of IDEO and the Riverdale Country School, for an interactive design sprint where we’ll mash together your favorite classroom projects that spark student curiosity. Together, we’ll create innovative opportunities for our students to be active seekers of new knowledge. #sparkcuriosity

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Exploratory Computer Programming: How Openness and Creativity are Essential in Teaching Technical Disciplines

Imagine if a single missing comma rendered an essay totally unreadable, or if your short story could not be considered complete unless a very pedantic person found it understandable. Welcome to writing software! In learning computer programming, it is crucial that students begin to feel comfortable trying new things, making hypotheses, and updating their mental models without waiting for a complete explanation from the teacher — an explanation that could potentially cut off creativity and productive struggle. In this interactive session, we'll run through some sample exercises designed to allow students to explore and make their own discoveries in computer science. We'll also talk about how to provide targeted help to get projects past roadblocks large and small. No prior computer programming experience is required. Please bring a laptop if you have one.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Designing School

Kyle Shaffer is the head of the new KIPP Excelencia Community Prep public charter school in Redwood City. He received the prestigious Fisher Fellowship, which allowed him the opportunity to travel to multiple public and independent schools across the country where he observed best practices and interviewed teachers and leaders. Deeply committed to creating a model school, Mr. Shaffer solicited his community for feedback and then spent more than a year designing the new transitional kindergarten to 8th grade KIPP school. Now, two months into the school year, Mr. Shaffer and Megan Terra, director of the innovative teacher development program at the Nueva School, will reflect on how design thinking shaped the school's vision and mission, and what that looks like in “real life.”

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

The Adaptable Mind: What Are the Skills We Need to Flourish in the 21st Century?

As the world is becoming more and more connected, and technologies are becoming more sophisticated, it is crucial that we understand which skills we, as individuals, should focus on most. This talk will explore all the different schools of thought around skills needed in today’s world, in school and in life, and finish with their distillation in the eight-minute film The Adaptable Mind.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in the High School Academic Classroom

Classroom learning is an inherently social and emotional process, and social-emotional learning (SEL) is spreading as a means of teaching students critical 21st-century skills. Social and emotional aspects of learning remain central in high school as pressures build and students move toward greater independence. Whether or not it is called out explicitly, classroom teachers are central to teaching SEL in high school, and SEL skills are essential to academic success.

This session develops SEL as a framework for how learning happens in high school classrooms and highlights the role of academic teachers in its instruction. As teachers, our awareness of how we teach SEL through classroom activities, assignments, and rituals strengthens our ability to build both the SEL and academic skills of our students.

Participants in this session will come away with concrete ideas for improving their own SEL practice. The presenters will reflect on how they teach social and emotional skills in academic classrooms, specifically English and mathematics, and share best practices. Participants will then share their experiences and challenges with SEL and brainstorm additional strategies to employ in their classrooms.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

The New TECH: An Innovative Approach to Diversify the Valley through Technology, Education, Culture, and Housing

Olatunde Sobomehin will discuss how he and his colleagues in their organization Live In Peace/StreetCode Academy are working with students and their community in East Palo Alto to provide new talent that will help diversify Silicon Valley. This interactive session will showcase examples of how East Palo Alto is answering the timely and critical question: how do technological advances and communities of color impact one another? The presentation will present new models of accelerators, housing structures, and music and cultural programs that bring new ideas to the industry. Technology leaders will benefit from hearing the new ideas and opportunities created with this approach. Education leaders and classroom teachers will enjoy hearing how traditionally disengaged students have engaged with technology to become producers of new, innovative technologies. Community leaders will value how students discover, develop, and direct their creativity toward the benefit of their community and the broader world.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Identity Safe Classrooms, Places to Belong and Learn (Thursday)

Join authors and researchers Dorothy Steele and Becki Cohn-Vargas, who will discuss their research focused on identity safe classrooms, classrooms where teachers strive to ensure students that their social identities are an asset rather than a barrier to success in school. In 84 diverse elementary classrooms, research revealed evidence that when teachers used identity safe teaching strategies, students achieved at higher levels and liked school more. This research identified the following components of identity safe teaching that will be introduced in this interactive session:

1. Child-centered teaching promotes autonomy, cooperation, and student voice.
2. Cultivating diversity as a resource provides challenging curriculum and high expectations for all students in the context of the regular classroom and features diversity and culturally competent activities.
3. Classroom relationships should be built on trusting, positive teacher-student interactions.
4. Caring classroom environments where social skills are taught and practiced help students care for one another in an emotionally and physically safe classroom.

During this session, teachers will be invited to explore an array of strategies to create identity safe classrooms where students from diverse racial, social, economic, and linguistic groups feel a sense of belonging and can flourish.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Age of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence

Adolescence now lasts longer than ever, and the adolescent brain is surprisingly malleable. These new discoveries make this time of life crucial in determining a person’s ultimate success and happiness. In this lecture, Laurence Steinberg, one of the world's leading authorities on adolescence, will discuss the teenage brain’s potential for change, the elongation of adolescence as a developmental stage, and the implications of each for how we parent, educate, and understand young people.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Lost in Connection: Taming the Tech Effect

It’s the paradox of the digital age — never before have we been so connected, yet we seem to be losing touch with each other in fundamental ways. Schools are increasingly using information technology as a primary tool for learning, older students are spending more time on screens than on any other activity (including sleep), and technology has changed the boundaries between students, parents, and teachers. Childhood, family life, and education have rapidly changed in thrilling and challenging ways. This talk will challenge us to push the pause button and look at some of the psychological, neurological, physical, social, and creative fallout of our fast-paced adaptation to technology, and refresh our thinking about how to raise, educate, and help children in the digital age. Dr. Steiner-Adair will examine the ways in which technology and media are putting our children at risk at each stage of development. She will present an overview of the research on the impact of technology on critical aspects of family life and child development and address different areas of risk and resilience for children and teenagers.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Activating a Growth Mindset Through Choice and Self-Determination (Thursday)

Ask your students: “what intelligence do you want to grow and how are you going to do it?” Through conversation and interactive activities, we will explore how choice and self-determination are fundamental components of fostering intrinsic motivation and a growth mindset. By connecting an exploration into growth mindset to an introduction to Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, we culminate with students setting goals for the specific intelligences they wish to grow. We also look at how a growth mindset transcends the boundaries of the “traditional classroom” and how, when enhanced by choice, self-differentiation, support, and nonjudgment benefit students throughout each developmental stage.

Designing School (Friday)

Kyle Shaffer is the head of the new KIPP Excelencia Community Prep public charter school in Redwood City. He received the prestigious Fisher Fellowship, which allowed him the opportunity to travel to multiple public and independent schools across the country where he observed best practices and interviewed teachers and leaders. Deeply committed to creating a model school, Mr. Shaffer solicited his community for feedback and then spent more than a year designing the new transitional kindergarten to 8th grade KIPP school. Now, two months into the school year, Mr. Shaffer and Megan Terra, director of the innovative teacher development program at the Nueva School, will reflect on how design thinking shaped the school's vision and mission, and what that looks like in “real life.”

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Across the Strands: The Mathematician Biography Project

Nueva Middle and Upper School teachers Karen Tiegel and Lee Holtzman will present the Mathematician Biography Project, a four-week collaborative project between the sixth grade math and writing classes. The project has each student study a mathematician chosen from a broad range, present and past, and focuses their research by asking them to write a letter of recommendation for one of six fictional awards such as “most likely to find their work in a middle school classroom” or “best collaborator.” Students learn about the time period of their specific mathematician, study a strand of mathematics explored by the mathematician, and reflect on the collaborative work of their mathematician. The project culminates in a poster that presents each student's learning. We'll discuss timelines and rubrics and view samples of the students' work. This presentation is intended for new and current middle and lower school teachers.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Leap and the Net Will Appear: Advisory Practices Based in Social-Emotional Learning

How do we lead a way for students to build genuine and caring relationships that resonate in school culture and impact their daily well-being?

Students are eager for adults to hold a purposeful, playful space that engages connection and brings respite within the challenges of the school day. Vibrant programs designed for success support the advisor-as-learner, as well as the advisees. They focus on experiences that develop students’ personal and interpersonal skills. Social-emotional learning (SEL) provides a creative lens for advisory design and connection with students. Students “buy in” when SEL underlies advisory. Our role as advisor can move past leading “advisory as study hall” into advisory as a powerful educational experience.

In their tech-saturated lives, students yearn to express who they are face-to-face with their peers — they want to be heard. Advisory offers opportunities to expand the repertoire of SEL skills. An SEL focus in advisory empowers students to reflect mindfully, speak assertively, listen empathically, and appreciate differences. Take the leap and lead the way!

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Bringing Design Thinking and Innovation Skills to the Classroom: Lessons from 2,000 Staff (Thursday)

Each spring Galileo Learning hires, trains, and leads 2,000 educators to teach innovation and design thinking skills at summer programs throughout California and Illinois. Even with a short start-up runway, these educators are known for creating inspiring classroom environments that nurture the mindset, knowledge and process skills needed for student innovation. Galileo’s Founder Glen Tripp and Director of Curriculum Pamela Briskman will share instructional strategies and rituals that allow educators new to design thinking to bring it to their practice.

Creating an Innovation Ecosystem: Aligning Parents, Educators, and Students to Create a Better World (Friday)

Increasingly, parents, educators, and policymakers are beginning to understand the need for a new kind of education that prepares kids to become innovators. But the common outgrowths of this idea — individual teachers adding design thinking to the curriculum, a new room dedicated as a maker space, parents advocating for schools to add coding to the curriculum — often fall short of the system-wide focus that is required to truly achieve innovation. Glen Tripp’s Galileo Learning, which brings together a community of 2,000 educators and 20,000 students and their parents in the name of innovation each summer, will share what he has learned about nurturing this ecosystem. Topics will include parent communication, mission and values identification, and practices parents and educators can use to encourage kids to courageously pursue a bold vision.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Strategies for Sustaining Innovation: When Hype Turns to Gripe

Despite organizational inertia and competing priorities, how can meaningful, lasting innovation be realized? Learn from The Urban School of San Francisco’s recent innovations in blended learning, a new learning management system (LMS), and the development of an engineering program. Assess your school’s relationship to disruptive innovation and strategize for situations where enthusiasm for new ideas encounters skepticism.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in the High School Academic Classroom

Classroom learning is an inherently social and emotional process, and social-emotional learning (SEL) is spreading as a means of teaching students critical 21st-century skills. Social and emotional aspects of learning remain central in high school as pressures build and students move toward greater independence. Whether or not it is called out explicitly, classroom teachers are central to teaching SEL in high school, and SEL skills are essential to academic success.

This session develops SEL as a framework for how learning happens in high school classrooms and highlights the role of academic teachers in its instruction. As teachers, our awareness of how we teach SEL through classroom activities, assignments, and rituals strengthens our ability to build both the SEL and academic skills of our students.

Participants in this session will come away with concrete ideas for improving their own SEL practice. The presenters will reflect on how they teach social and emotional skills in academic classrooms, specifically English and mathematics, and share best practices. Participants will then share their experiences and challenges with SEL and brainstorm additional strategies to employ in their classrooms.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Oakland Students Find Joy and Play through Learning with Tech: One Teacher's Journey to Achieving 2½ Years of Reading Growth with His Students Every Year

Teaching in Oakland exposes you to the harsh reality that plagues America’s youth living in neglected rural areas and inner cities. The forces of poverty, drugs, joblessness, and systemic racism are all factors in the achievement gap. We often read these words in the papers and sympathize, but what do the headlines really mean? It means our educators are often teaching the equivalent of four grade levels in one classroom, and that developing a growth mindset culture in schools is fundamental if we are to shift students from disengaged to empowered. In Oakland we’re starting to realize that education technology is offering a glimmer of hope because it can accelerate learning, especially for our most vulnerable youth.

In this session, Stacey Wang of Oakland Unified School District will present an effective model for technology integration in inner city learning environments and examine the role that disruptive innovation plays in personalized learning. You will also hear from Oakland teacher Tommy Gonzalez, whose method of teaching reading through a blended, personalized learning model has had great success — moving most students’ reading levels up by 2½ years. He’ll share the journey of a student who began 5th grade at a 1st-grade reading level and ended the year at a fourth-grade reading level, keen on Harry Potter novels. The bulk of the session will be an interactive workshop for educators to experience blended learning firsthand from both the teacher’s and the student’s perspective.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

I-Lab Recess and Informal Conversations with I-Lab Faculty

Nueva’s I-Lab is open to students during lunch and lunch recess each day. Come see the students as they conceive their own projects, use the laser cutter, design on TinkerCad, print on the 3-D printers, and build with hot glue guns! We have created an environment of “Yes!” that empowers students to create and learn by doing. Participants can informally ask I-Lab faculty questions one on one, including Director Kim Saxe (overall program structure/design thinking principles and goals/entrepreneurship), Michelle Grau (design engineering/robotics), and Steve Westwood (design engineering/digital fabrication/woodshop).

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Deep Reading or Fast Reading: The Role of Fluency in Reading Comprehension Related to Prosody — Much More Than Speed

There is growing consensus that accuracy, automaticity, and prosody contribute to fluency — all three influence reading comprehension. Reading fluency is demonstrated orally through ease of word recognition, appropriate pacing, chunking of words into meaningful phrases, and intonation. Accurate and automatic word identification certainly plays a central role in fluent reading, but that is not enough. An excessive focus on rate can interfere with comprehension. Other aspects of fluent reading — phrasing, appropriate pacing, stress — are equally important, and slower reading is sometimes necessary to support the construction of meaning. Moreover, skilled readers vary their pace depending on text difficulty and complexity of the ideas. To become a skilled reader, it is important to learn to be flexible, rather than to simply be fast.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Design Thinking and The Humanities

Many people associate design thinking with STEM classes, but this workshop will show how design thinking can help humanities students create and test thesis statements and engage with literary and historical texts in deeper ways.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Design for School Culture: Working the Levers

The levers of design are powerful tools for innovating and building school culture. But what does design look like in practice? Together, we will explore how to use design to build a purposeful school culture. This session is open to parents and educators who are ready to roll up their sleeves and build the practices of innovation and design into their schools. We will explore quick wins to get started, as well as how to experiment your way toward changing space, time, rituals, and roles.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Identifying Students for Programs Serving the Gifted and Talented: Truth vs. Fiction


Is giftedness the result of nature or nurture? Can you effectively identify students for gifted and talented programs in academic domains without using intelligence tests? What are the best practices for identifying students? And, once students have been identified as gifted, are they gifted for the rest of their lives? There are many misconceptions about the definition of giftedness and how students should be identified. In this talk, Frank Worrell will use contemporary theories and empirical research to provide answers to these questions and dispel myths about giftedness as an educational classification.



Aren’t “Gifted” and “Talented” the Same Thing? Understanding the Rationale for Moving from Gifted Education to Talent Development

In the last decade, there have been many discussions about gifted education versus talent development, and there is a sense that the pendulum is swinging toward the latter term. How does gifted education differ from talent development? Does engaging in talent development provide advantages that providing gifted education does not? This presentation will include a review of the literature associated with the two terms and provide reasons for the recent popularity of “talent development” as a framework for gifted and talented education.

Controversies of Educating the Gifted (Panel)

Gifted education has been a controversial topic since its earliest days, and it remains so today. There are many differing opinions about educating the gifted — from elitism, equity, cultural bias, myths, and a misunderstanding of what the term gifted means. Please join this discussion on gifted education. We will cover the controversies, myths, and biases; what research supports; and what we can do collectively to help move the cause forward to meet the needs of gifted children in our current education system.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

Inquiry Science Workshop and Next-Generation Science Standards

In this inquiry-based science workshop, facilitated by Fred Estes and Lelia Youn, teachers will engage in scientific investigations using inquiry, reflect on the inquiry process and scientific content, and discuss how to implement inquiry-based science into their classrooms. The lesson will exemplify the practices of scientific inquiry, including open-ended framing questions, multiple approaches to exploring a topic question, student involvement with the design of the investigation, using “fair tests” to answer questions and gather data, analysis of results and data, and discussions to make sense of the results and communicate understanding. Rather than any specific set of lessons, inquiry is a process based on increased student involvement, multiple ways of knowing, and sequential phases of cognition. Student-derived investigations make knowledge more relevant and meaningful. Inquiry leads to active construction of meaningful knowledge, rather than passive acquisition, and it incorporates previously learned knowledge. The student-to-student collaboration reinforces assimilation of knowledge, while the teacher-to-student collaboration builds trust for future discovery. In the spirit of inquiry, we truly invite questions, comments, and critical dialogue from workshop participants.

2015 Nueva ILC Talk Title and Abstract

How We’re Shifting School Culture Through Restorative Justice

Ask any educator the one thing they wish for of their students, and I’ll bet it won’t be solving a difficult math problem or reading a challenging book. Teachers will say they want their students to become happy, engaged citizens. That means looking beyond just academics to student behavior and the way we approach discipline.

What is restorative justice? In simple terms, it is working with people to resolve problems. In the restorative approach, we are less concerned with what rules have been broken and more concerned with how people and relationships have been harmed. All the affected individuals come together, including most importantly the offender(s). Working with a facilitator, they move through a set of restorative questions designed to help everyone understand each other’s point of view. Then, together, the group decides how to resolve and repair the situation.