Specialized Workshops

Specialized Workshops

These workshops are at the specialized to meet specific groups or focuses for professional development.  

Ensuring that students learn is always the most important goal, but sometimes it is difficult to know​ if students really get it. By leveraging key feedback strategies and engaging students beyond typical test prep with rigorous activities that promote critical thinking, students can take ownership of their success on assessments and articulate the steps they need to take to reach their goals.​

This workshop will give attendees:​

  • Strategies to end the use of generic feedback and encourage a more productive struggle​
  • Practical but powerful tools to design and demystify formative assessment​
  • An understanding of how critical thinking concretely connects with the practical tool’s students​ need to be successful on formative and summative assessments​

Underrepresentation of BIPOC students in gifted education persists nationally, even for concerned leaders who are committed to addressing this disparity. Talent development programs in lower grades is an increasingly common strategy to increase identification rates for these underrepresented populations. However, the deficit framing of this approach may limit its effectiveness by seeing their giftedness as something that must be developed rather than an innate asset. To help educators understand how to unleash these unique qualities to fit into our constructs of who a gifted student is, this powerful, but practical workshop provides three strategies help educators leverage BIPOC gifted children’s “because, not despite” assets.​

Students are often motivated most by issues of fairness and justice. But in a time when adults struggle to engage in civil discussion, how can educators ensure that they can discuss controversial topics in school without it going so sideways that they become the controversy? ​

This thinkLaw Workshop covers practical tools and strategies, including: ​

  • Tips for helping students disagree without being disagreeable ​
  • Frameworks for productive group discussions ​
  • Tips for seamlessly integrating these strategies into standards-aligned instruction to avoid backlash, allegations of indoctrination, and other unintended consequences of making learning real for our students. ​