I am thrilled to announce the roundtable discussion topics that will take place at Frontier 2018! The speakers are approaching collective impact reform through a diverse range of professional experience including teaching and learning, school leadership, ed policy, community organizing, education technology, teacher training and entrepreneurship. At the conference, attendees will sit in on the roundtables of their choice, draw connections between the different topics and think critically about how to begin cross-sector reform. I am eager to see how everyone’s expertise and insights coalesce at the event!
The speakers, Deborah and I will be meeting for a workshop this weekend to begin diving into how the speakers’ experiences and roundtables connect and can be leveraged to begin a city-wide collective impact movement.
Join us April 7th to get in on the action!
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Roundtable Topics
School Integration as a Way To Dismantle Racism
Shino Tanikawa will address school integration in NYC and the racist structures embedded in our education system that keep our schools segregated. Participants will discuss elements of school integration, what school integration means to them, why we cannot continue the public school system as it currently exists and what we have to do individually to begin desegregating and integrating our public schools.
Artistic Activism as a Pedagogy of Possibility
Dipti Desai will discuss artistic activism as a site of pedagogical possibility. Artistic activists not only ask critical questions, critique and comment on the pressing social, political, economic issues of our times, but also design aesthetic interventions to enact social change. In this roundtable participants will explore how their work as educators in collaboration with their students aligns with artistic activism.
PD that Works: How To Support Teachers Successfully with Technology
Kyle Liao will discuss what types of professional development are most helpful to teachers to support authentic technology integration into the curriculum. Some topics will include what good PD looks like, effective classroom support, digital access issues, how to evaluate success, and why you should start with a goal in mind.
The Myths and Realities of Progressive Education and Global Citizenship Curricula in the U.S
Rama Ndiaye will address the extent to which schools engage in progressive education to prepare students for global citizenship. Participants will explore the definition of progressive education and the meaning of cultivating a global mindset in students. Guiding questions include: 1. To what extent do schools follow their mission statements regarding progressive education and global curricula? 2. How easily can public and charter schools follow a progressive and global mission when they are restricted by prescribed standards? and 3. How do we help ALL schools implement more progressive and global elements into their curricula?
One School's Journey: Empowering Young Women to Become Partners in Teaching & Learning
Nicia Fullwood, along with two of her students, will discuss major wins, pitfalls, and compromises as adults and students, at BELA, work collaboratively to co-create the school's culture and classroom learning experiences. In this roundtable, participants will explore the benefits of democratic schools and classrooms, institutional structures that impede co-creation, and emerging promising practices.
Non-Profit Alliances, The Whole Truly is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts
Matthew Phifer will discuss the implications of nonprofits (specifically settlement houses) using their geo-spatial proximity and programmatic alignments to leverage their impact collectively, rather than compete to outperform each other. Participants will review how changing neighborhoods influence agency decision-making, funding priorities shift with economic trends and academic research, and why authentic partnerships with common interests are crucial. By exploring two initiatives, the Lower East Side Employment Network (LESEN), and the Lower East Side Youth Opportunity Hub, those in attendance will discuss the advantages and implicit challenges of collective impact.
The Key Ingredient: How to change policy through storytelling
Taylor McGraw, an educator, activist and media entrepreneur who is amplifying students' voices through his projects The Bell and Teens Take Charge, will explain how to use stories to get the attention of policymakers. In this interactive roundtable discussion, participants will learn how to combine personal narratives and data into compelling arguments for education reform; articulate how specific DOE policies drive racial, socioeconomic, and academic segregation in NYC schools; and craft persuasive arguments for integration.
Youth Entrepreneurship: Democratizing the Path to Building a Better World
Alejandro Crawford will address the need to make entrepreneurship more accessible to ambitious young people. This need is vital not only because success in today’s economy demands that professionals be able to articulate their own ideas and attempt to bring them into being, but also because the future lies outside a small circle of people confirming each other’s ideas. Young people have what it takes to give us breathable air, health care that heals, coastlines that don’t disappear, and food that isn’t poison, but they need access to the tools to make their ideas real. This discussion will focus on the practical steps we can take to create a world where entrepreneurship is woven into the lives of more young people, and on the multiple benefits of creating such a world.
Building Socially Just Schools: A Radical Reform Proposal
Carol Anne Spreen will address how there has been ample changes within the field of education in the past two decades, but little worthwhile transformation. Instead of rethinking education for a new age and to meet the complex social, cultural and environmental challenges of life in the 21st century, schools have witnessed the intensification of worn out managerial approaches to schooling. The field of education has devoted such energy to developing a sophisticated knowledge of change management, top-down planning, standardized assessment, and accountability-based leadership. In this roundtable, participants will re-examine the purpose of education and explore alternatives to education that are not controlled by high stakes standardized testing, commercial curricula, market forces, or the agenda of venture philanthropists or dis-interested governments.
How Can We Develop Innovative and Entrepreneurial Mindsets in Youth?
Tom Gold will address the challenge of making today’s youth ready for the 21st century economy. Research on employment and workforce development suggests that to be successful in the 21st century economy youth need to learn how to be critical thinkers, collaborators and smart risk takers. Modern education systems, though, are not teaching these skills classes consistently. Schools are further hampered by their traditional approach to teaching and learning and their emphasis on test based accountability. This presentation will address these issues and explore how entrepreneurship education can address these challenges.
Additional roundtable topics coming soon!