Weekly Webinars
Please join Elevate member and non-member schools for our weekly webinars. We are hosting webinars each week featuring a short talk followed by an open forum Q+A.
Asynchronous | FRIDAY, October 23, 2020
Collaboration Strategies: Designing Student Groupings
The idea of cooperative learning is nothing new. Researchers have been tracking its success since the 1980s. But putting kids into groups and setting them free is not enough. What accounts for the success of cooperative learning and how might we design for more of it? In this webinar, join Elevate's Sudipti Kumar and Dave Hamilton as they review primary research and highlight five key components of successful cooperative learning. We will discuss facilitation tactics and structures for group work including: designing appropriate group tasks, composing groups, managing class time, and preparing students for productive communication and collaboration.
11AM (EST) | FRIDAY, September 25, 2020
SEED + SPARK: Using Nature as a Model to Reimagine How We Learn & Live, with Sam Chaltain and Trung Le
If 2020 has shown us anything, it’s that the work of our time is bigger than climate change, coronavirus or curricula. The work is to transform the way we learn and live so that we can prepare young people for their future — instead of our past. But how? As it turns out, the answers are all around us — baked into the designs of the very ecosystems our behaviors are endangering. Join Sam Chaltain and Trung Le, co-creators of the upcoming book Seed + Spark, to explore how we can begin to apply those insights to our own schools and school designs, so that we can make 2020 not just the year of unimaginable loss, but also the time we began to build a better world — by letting nature be our guide, and by ensuring that all living systems are designed to affirm each person’s inner spark.
Previous Webinars
11AM (EST) | FRIDAY, September 18, 2020
Remember More! Retrieval Practices for Deeper Learning
“It’s right on the tip of my tongue!” How often do you know something but can’t recall it on the spot? How often does it happen for your students? In this webinar, Elevate's Sudipti Kumar and Dave Hamilton dive deep into the concept of retrieval: the ability to remember information when you need it. They will share research on how active retrieval practice, often conflated as testing, in fact promotes meaningful and deeper learning and supports students in problem solving and drawing new inferences. They will highlight practical retrieval strategies (both formative and summative) for your in-person or virtual classroom that will better help students cement and recall learned information.
11a EST | FRI, September 11, 2020
Inquiry-based Learning in the Remote Environment
What is inquiry-based learning? What skills do students develop? How do we transfer inquiry-based learning from an in-person experience to the remote environment? inquirED supports schools and teachers with curricula and professional learning for implementation of inquiry-based learning. Anne Matz, Director of Partnerships at inquirED, will share Together When Apart, inquirED's interdisciplinary k-8 inquiry-based learning curriculum designed for remote learning.
11a EST | FRI, September 4, 2020 (Rescheduled)
The First Ingredient: Rising to Meet Challenges to Relationships in Fall 2020
What we have seen in our work at EXPLO Elevate over the last months has revealed the immediate, and at times existential, threats to critical school relationships. The justifiable stress accompanying significant decisions is too often chilling the relationships necessary to allow a school to preserve and deepen culture, to serve students, and to prepare for the future. Whether the issue lies in the organizational/managerial culture, change management, or classroom practice, a sort of relationship metal fatigue threatens to weaken the ties that bind a school community together. In the webinar, Ross Peters, EXPLO Elevate’s Vice-President for School Strategy, will provide context for the various threats to relationships and, most importantly, provide strategies both to remediate the challenges and move beyond them to create the good health our schools and classrooms will need to excel in the weeks and months ahead.
11a EST | FRI, August 28, 2020
Redesigning Learning Spaces: Prioritizing Flexibility, Equity, and Deeper Learning
As schools plan to reopen for physical learning, there is a profound opportunity to have equity and flexibility guide the creation of student-centered learning environments. Join us for a webinar with school design experts Nathan Strenge & Randy Fielding of Fielding International - an award-winning education design firm, and Dr. Robert Dillon, author of 'The Space: A Guide for Educators,' on back to school planning do's and don'ts - strategies that can help schools rethink environments in a way that centers learning on the students, rather than the school.
11a EST | FRI, August 14, 2020
Reawakening Humility: Centering Crisis Leadership in this Virtue
From the uncertainties of the pandemic to the cries for social justice and equality, academic leaders must act with strength and decisiveness. They must also act with humility. Humility is a moral virtue necessary for self-awareness, empathy, and engagement. Dr. Karl Haden, co-author of 'The 9 Virtues of Exceptional Leaders' and '31 Days with the Virtues' and President of the Academy for Advancing Leadership and Ross Peters, Vice President of School Strategy, EXPLO Elevate, will discuss not only the relevance of humility for our current predicament, but will explore approaches that can center strategy formulation and decision making in what promises to be one of, if not the, most challenging academic years in memory. Participants will leave this webinar with an understanding of the place of humility in crisis leadership and with tools for applying this virtue to the challenges they face.
10a EST | FRI, August 7, 2020
Designing Slides that Stick
Designing slides and producing short videos are critical for distance learning. In our “new” remote classrooms, we rely on these tools to communicate with our students, our colleagues, or our audience, but few of us are trained graphic designers. Without knowing it, our presentations may clutter and distract from our content. Join this webinar and explore Richard Mayer and Roxana Morena’s research: the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning and its corresponding design principles. We will show a number of examples (good and bad) and highlight 5 key rules for visual presentations that improve clarity of message, memory, and learning outcomes.
10a EST | FRI, July 31, 2020
Design the Future: How Schools can Plan For Uncertainty
Navigating the complexity of school closures, remote learning, learning loss, health and safety and reopening structures while maintaining a clear lens towards equity is challenging work. In these conditions we believe that design is more important than ever–to all educators, across and between schools. Amid the cloud of uncertainty brought to schools by the spread of COVID-19, the ability to look further out, practice flexibility, rehearse critical decisions, and build capacity within school leadership is critical. Presented by Stanford d.school Designer Ariel Raz and Graded–The American School of São Paulo Superintendent Richard Boerner, this webinar will introduce strategies at the intersection of design and futures thinking to enable educators and leaders to work with their communities towards a preferable future.
10a EST | FRI, July 24, 2020
Riverbank Colleagues: The Resource Leaders Need to Take on The Next Rapids
In this webinar, Moira Kelly, President of Exploration Learning, and Ross Peters, Vice-President of School Strategy for EXPLO Elevate, will discuss the unprecedented need for a new brand of leadership support: the Riverbank Colleague. Participants will learn what is unique in this moment pertaining to leadership, and how schools and leaders within them require support outside the normal structures in order to meet the multi-faceted and dynamic challenges ahead. Moira and Ross will explore a concept that they have been working on called Riverbank Colleagues as an alternative to traditional executive coaching.
10a EST | FRI, July 17, 2020
Supporting Educators in Culturally Responsive Practices: A Summer WORKbook
How can educators do the individual work and schools the collective reflection to become more equity-literate so they can better meet their Black and Brown students' needs? Join us for a conversation between Sudipti Kumar, Elevate’s Director of Research and Tamisha Williams, Director of Equity and Community Initiatives at The Potomac School. Tamisha will share tools and resources from her Summer WORKbook for Educators, which uses the framework of the Onward habits (developed by Elena Aguilar) and is rooted in culturally responsive education.
10a EST | FRI, July 10, 2020
Pilot-Programs in 2020--Now More Than Ever Make Some Small Bets
In recent months every step a school leader makes feels existential, and the pressure to move schools forward into an unknown future is only increasing. In this webinar for school heads and leadership teams, Ross Peters, Vice-President for School Strategy, will discuss the strategic purposefulness of pilot programming at this moment in the history of schools. Topics will include: using pilot programs as a means to highlight progress, extend/deepen what is already good, encourage experimentation, and mitigate damage when a new idea falls short. How might we create opportunities for the school community to see the efficacy of the school’s direction as well as the chance to lead and to drive forward key progress in the school?
10a EST | FRI, June 26, 2020
Strategies for Designing Active, Project, and Movement-Based Courses Online, Featuring Author and Teacher Dan Ryder
Transitioning to remote learning is a big design challenge for every teacher. For those who teach dance, theater, science, art, music — any course that depends on movement, handbuilding, or physical interaction — the challenge can feel insurmountable. How do you collect meaningful data from a pendulum motion lab? How do you play off another actor when you cannot see them? How do you learn soccer alone and in your living room? Most importantly, how do you do it in a way that is equitable for all your learners. Join Designer/Author/Teacher Extraordinaire, Dan Ryder (co-author of Intention: Critical Creativity in the Classroom) and imagine strategies and tactics that will keep our active classes as engaging in remote learning as they are in person.
10a EST | FRI, June 19, 2020
Blended Learning In Action: Greenfields Academy
Many schools are seriously considering some form of hybrid learning for students when they reopen. Those programs who utilized blended learning models pre-pandemic may hold some answers to the questions schools are currently grappling with. Join us in conversation with Maggie Baker, Assistant Head of School at Greenfields Academy in Chicago, IL. Greenfields utilizes a flex blended learning approach that prioritizes student agency and ownership over their learning. Hear from Maggie how their model served them well during remote instruction this spring and how their design and structure will help to smooth their transition back when they reopen.
10a EST | FRI, June 12, 2020
Navigating Challenging Conversations: Why We Disagree and How To Understand Effectively
Engaging with our school’s diverse constituencies is a challenging task in normal times; in the context of the pandemic and conversations about racial injustice, it is even more stressful and uncertain. Whether speaking with a faculty member about their commitment, asking a donor for a significant gift, or a parent about a disciplinary issue, we must engage and influence productively. The critical first step is understanding what is important to this person and why -- their unique perspectives, motivations, needs, and concerns. In this webinar, negotiation experts from the Bridgeway Group will introduce the first of a set of conversation tools, the Ladder of Inference, which is essential to uncovering others’ underlying perspectives as we navigate challenging conversations.
10a EST | FRI, June 5, 2020
Beyond Synchronous and Asynchronous: Elastic Proximity
When we talk about teaching synchronously or asynchronously, we are describing what teachers are doing, not what students are learning or what skills they are developing. Students don’t learn synchronously or asynchronously. Students learn and grow…and they learn and grow in varied proximity to teachers and to each other. In this webinar, Ross Peters will introduce “elastic proximity,” an approach to teaching in which the teacher makes decisions about delivery, student guidance, and student skill development based on the ideal proximity of the teacher to students, of the students to other students, and of the individual student to the teacher.
10a EST | FRI, May 29, 2020
Great Management in Times of Crisis: Leading Through COVID-19
Covid19 requires not that we imagine the world will reach a new normal, but rather that we create within our school a new normal regarding how we respond to an ever changing world. In this webinar, incoming Vice President for School Strategy for EXPLO, Ross Peters, will take a deep dive into a change management process called TWO-FIVE-TEN. School leaders and leadership teams face unprecedented and stunningly complex decisions in the quickly evolving context of the Covid19 pandemic. TWO-FIVE-TEN is scalable, replicable and well-suited to frame the expedited change processes demanded by Covid19. Ross will also point out how to use pilot programs and foreshadowing as tools to help constituents understand the direction of the school when so much feels uncertain.
10a EST | FRI, May 22, 2020
Reopening School in a Pandemic: Planning For Fall 2020
The reality is that this fall will be unlike any other start of a school year. School leaders must start putting plans into action now to be ready for this new complicated reality. Join Moira Kelly, President of Exploration Learning, to examine reopening models and the operational and programmatic issues that will accompany throwing open the doors of brick and mortar schools in the Age of COVID. Ross Peters, incoming VP for School Strategy for EXPLO Elevate will walk us through a practical planning process called 2-5-10. This process can be used to clearly frame priorities and broadly taps the strengths of your entire school community. The result of implementing 2-5-10 is that you can walk into the 2020-2021 school year ready to deal with ongoing volatility and uncertainty.
10a EST | FRI, May 15, 2020
Guiding the Emotional Life of Children in the Time of COVID
Helping children navigate the emotional terrain on the path to adulthood is challenging for both parents and educators. Doing it in the time of COVID increases the degree of difficulty tenfold. Join Ben Liston, Director of Counseling at the Rivers School, as he identifies the issues he is seeing and hearing as he helps students and families negotiate the emotional aspects of remote learning; estrangement from friends; reduced privacy and independence; and the loss of end-of-year rituals. Ben will also draw on his own experience as the parent of two school age children. The conversation and Q&A will be facilitated by David Torcoletti, Head of EXPLO Boston, and former Dean of Students at Milton Academy and Northfield Mount Hermon School. This webinar is for educators, parents, and caregivers of children.
10a EST | FRI, May 8, 2020
Evolving Through Feedback
Come hear from Shauna Hobbs-Beckley, Elevate member and Director of Analytics, Innovation, and Research at Graded, The American School of Sao Paulo. She will discuss Graded's process of gathering feedback from stakeholders around virtual learning, share sample survey questions, and reflect on key takeaways in these first weeks.
10a EST | FRI, MAY 1, 2020
Agile Design: Making Courses Work Online and Face-to-Face
In a world where teachers may need to toggle back and forth between online and face to face, designing for both modalities is important. Join Adam Lavallee, teacher at Episcopal Academy, former EXPLO faculty member, and Learning Design Coach with Global Online Academy, to discuss practical structures to help teachers develop courses that have the flexibility to be taught both online and face-to-face. He will share best practices in creating learning opportunities for students and how to support teachers who are creating or converting courses for a completely online experience.
11a EST | FRI, APR 24, 2020
Building Resilience in a Time of Loss: Strategies for Children, Parents, and Faculty
Join grief and resilience expert, Maria Trozzi, as she helps us understand the opportunities for strengthening families, amplifying children’s coping skills, and promoting resilience in a time of crisis. She will share lessons on living with the changes associated with feeling isolated and “too together” all at once. What are the questions to ask? What can we do? Maria is the co-founder of the Good Grief Program at Boston Medical Center, former Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine and author of: Speaking to Children About Loss (Penguin-Putnam). She has worked with schools across nation.
8pm EST | Wed, APR 15, 2020
Hope from the Other Side: Surviving Covid and Reopening in China
Join Anders Hjelm, Elevate member and Executive Principal, Wahaha International School, who will present on lessons-learned from China during remote learning and how they are approaching reopening their school and a return to normal.
10a EST | FRI, APR 10, 2020
Grading in a Crisis and Beyond
Join Dr. Barry Fishman, Professor of Learning Technologies at the University of Michigan and Faculty Innovator in Residence at the UM Center for Academic Innovation to discuss: why going Pass/Fail is a wise choice for independent schools during this time; other grading models in addition to, or in lieu of, Pass/Fail; implications of going Pass/Fail for the upcoming school year; implications of going Pass/Fail for access to college and career. Following a short presentation, participants are invited to ask questions, to discuss, and share ideas for how we might best assess student work.
COVID-19 ANNOUNCEMENT
Due to the evolving nature and impact of COVID-19, we are putting our annual conference (scheduled for the fall) on hold and will reschedule at a later date. In the meantime, please join our weekly virtual gatherings for short presentations and Q+A with Elevate school leaders and other content experts.
Elevate Annual Conference
FALL 2020 | On Hold due to COVID-19
Leading Through Ambiguity and Change
