 |
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
| Session 1: Being the Change: Centering Identity and Inquiry to Co-Construct Social Comprehension in our Schools (All Levels) |
|||||||||
| Drawing from Sara's books, Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension and Upstanders: How to Engage Middle School Hearts and Minds with Inquiry participants will spend time unpacking social comprehension principles through a lens of inquiry: exploring personal identities, listening actively, being candid, becoming better informed, finding humanity in ourselves, and facing crisis together. Using an inquiry stance, we will use questions as a guide to explore our own social identities and begin to make connections on how those markers impact the way we make sense of the world around us. This personal exploration will lead us to inquire into the humanity of our learners which will open pathways for their learning. We will discuss how being candid as we notice and reflect on our beliefs, biases, and perspectives help us consider the ways we respond to our respective worlds-- the classroom, playing field, social media, or our own dinner tables. Come prepared to consider your own identities, your students’ identities, and how social comprehension directly impacts all that we do as educators and human beings. Overall, come prepared for nonclosure as more questions than answers will carve this new path. |
|||||||||
| Session 2: What elevates us to participatory communities? Leveraging our lives as inquirers, thinkers, collaborators, and researchers to build spaces of belonging. (All Levels) |
|||||||||
| As educators, what are the ways we participate, and ask our students to participate, in our office of global citizen? I’ve been thinking a lot about how we gather and our society’s ability to talk (and listen!) to one another. How do we spend time thinking about rights and responsibilities, borders, boundaries, and moving? How are our gatherings co-created? Join me to explore the ways we gather in schools, around the table, and in our global communities. We will examine the implications on our ability to converse, build common ground, and ultimately, participate in society as co-architects of belonging in our schools. From the early moments we begin to congregate, in our respective school communities, the gathering takes on many vessels: the bus, the parking lot, the playground, the staff workroom, the morning circle. In Priya Parker’s book, The Art of Gathering, the author makes a case that our traditional gatherings have been repeated so much over time that we attach ourselves to the form even though it doesn’t accurately reflect our values, missions, or belief systems of the participants. Where might we see this happening in our schools and how do we navigate it as initiatives, social climates, and collective purpose constantly shift--sometimes in direct conflict with one another? Sara is inviting participants into a think-tank session where our questions will guide us. Through reading, writing, collaboration, and some dreaming, we will identify and interrogate past practices, while ideating ways we could gather in schools and classroom ecosystems: morning meetings, read-aloud, lunch, small group work, book clubs, on the playground. And because schools are social environments, learning is social, kids are social beings, and we will keep them and their voices at the center of our work together. |
|||||||||
| Sara K. Ahmed | |||||||||
| Sara K. Ahmed currently serves as the Director of Curriculum Integration and Innovation at Catherine Cook School in Chicago. She has taught and coached in public and private, local, and international schools, where her classrooms were designed to help students examine their own identities and see the humanity in others. When she is not in the classroom or meeting with teachers, you can find her coaching the soccer/football teams at school. Sara is the author of Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension and coauthor with Harvey "Smokey" Daniels of Upstanders: How to Engage Middle School Hearts and Minds with Inquiry. She is an international speaker and staff developer in schools around the world-- bridging literacy, inquiry, and social identity work through curriculum development, professional growth meetings, and lab classrooms. Sara has also served on the Teacher Leadership Team for Facing History and Ourselves, an international organization devoted to examining and confronting the choices we’ve made in history-- individual and society. Sara has just returned to the States from Bangkok, Thailand where she served as a literacy coach and consultant-in-residence at NIST international school. These days you can find her running, playing tennis, reading, or writing her way through a rediscovery of her hometown, Chicago. |
|||||||||
| DATES & VENUE: 27th & 28th April 2024, Bangkok |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
