To learn deeply our brains need to be primed, we need to feel safe, connected, and trust. How do we build a safe, strong classroom community to prime the student brain for learning? Everyone has experienced the last year differently depending on their circumstances. The one thing we have in common, is that we all experienced the same global event. Let’s use this opportunity of a shared experience to prioritize joy, connection, and community to provide deeper learning experiences for students.
For the first time High Tech High Graduate School of Education and Habla Teacher Institute have partnered to design and facilitate professional development for all teachers across all subjects and grade levels. The high energy of both organizations have combined to create an activated mind, body and soul professional development experience.
Found Beautiful Event Agenda
An Inquiry-Based Approach to Building Community
social-emotional and cognitive foundations to learning
Session 1: November 3, 2021
Wednesday @ 1:00-3:00pm PST (4:00-6:00pm EST)
Leads: Collaborative Learning Team (Kurt Wootton, Marimar Patrón Vázquez, Kali Frederick and Nuvia Ruland)
Doing: Community building and empathy are essential to deeper learning. We will find connections between each other and use our new-found community to co-create a definition of beauty that will inspire our commitments to each other and the work we will produce. These collaborative experiences will allow us to imagine, create, and make our learning public (exhibit) in a virtual space.
Seeing the Unseen
a photography and literacy workshop
Session 2: November 4, 2021
Thursday @ 1:00-3:00pm PST (4:00-6:00pm EST)
Leads: Marimar Patrón Vázquez and Kali Frederick
Doing: How do we capture “beautiful”? Models and proximity of community partners are essential to Project Based Learning. In this session we will prepare for the creative process by analyzing models and co-creating expectations for inspiration and products. We will dig into our Creativity Welcome Box to continue this immersive experience beyond the Zoom meeting.
This is not a Stick: Imagining Future Possibilities
fostering creativity in the classroom
Session 3: November 6, 2021
Saturday, Morning @ 9:00-11:00am PST (11:00-1:00pm EST)
Leads: Kurt Wootton and Nuvia Ruland
Doing: How do we foster creativity in the classroom? In this session we will explore the many ways we can stretch our imagination and ideate varied approaches to the same problem through kinesthetic activities and digital design. For the upcoming school year, we can move beyond the idea of the “one right answer” and successfully create with our students what had not been imagined before.
The Word and the World: Multimodal Storytelling
writing through the senses
Session 4: November 6, 2021
Saturday, Afternoon @ 1:00-3:00pm PST (4:00-6:00pm EST)
Leads: Marimar Patrón Vázquez and Kali Frederick
Doing: We will strengthen a practice of revision from the conceptual to the physical. All of our senses will be called upon to create our drafts of our final products. We will introduce the culture of critique and practice structures to support peer-to-peer feedback cycles. Participants will exercise their imagination to see, move, and describe beyond their current reality.
The Portraits of Our Lives
a storytelling, photography, and performance workshop
Session 5: November 8, 2021
Monday @ 1:00-3:00pm PST (4:00-6:00pm EST)
Leads: Marimar Patrón Vázquez and Kurt Wootton
Doing: We will revise and draft our work through the art of portraiture. When we think of portraiture we might think of a person quietly posed in front of our camera. This morning session will explore the ways we can use portraiture to help students (and ourselves) reflect on who we are and imagine “positive social futures.” We will create textual and visual portraits of our futuristic, reimagined selves using digital and analog mediums.
Crossings: Borders, Languages, and Literacies
a multiliteracy experience
Session 6: November 9, 2021
Tuesday @ 1:00-3:00pm PST (4:00-6:00pm EST)
Leads: Collaborative Learning Team
Doing: Our students come to our classrooms with vast cultural and linguistic resources. Inspired by Rob Riordan, student experience should be the foundational text of the classroom. How do we design a learning environment that fully embraces the “lived worlds” and experiences of our students. During this afternoon session we will explore ideas around how we can build translingual, cross-cultural experiences in our schools.
The Exhibition: A Project-Based Performance from Conception to Event
an educational design session
Session 7: November 10, 2021
Wednesday @ 1:00-3:00pm PST (4:00-6:00pm EST)
Leads: Collaborative Learning Team
Doing: Exhibitions of student learning ask that all students demonstrate their understanding in an authentic community setting. As we experience our very own exhibition, we will reflect on the process we experienced and the application to our own contexts. How can we move beyond simple presentations to multimodal exhibitions that fully communicate a student’s understanding?