Complete Workshop List   

Below you will find the compete workshop schedule and descriptions.

Session 1 - 10:25 to 11:45am

Session 2 - 12:55 to 2:15pm

Session 1
10:25 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.

Strand 1: Classroom Teaching and Learning

Inviting Students’ Lives into the Classroom
Presenter: Elena Aguilar, ASCEND
Description: This workshop will explore the academic and social values of inviting students’ lives into the classroom. Participants will learn how journals, poetry, and photography can engage students, teach standards, and build community between students and their teachers. Participants will appreciate how this can also increase teacher sustainability.

Literacy & Death: The Making of Rest in Peace T-Shirts
Presenter: Lanette Jimerson, Teachers Actualizing Possibilities
Description: This workshop evaluates the literacy skills employed by youth who create Rest In Peace t-shirts. The engagement of youth in co-construction of text, identity formation, developing evidence for claims of characterization, and social and political discourse in the creation of RIP t-shirts has profound implications for classroom methodology.

Discipline, Toward a Social Justice Perspective
Presenters: T.R. Amsler and Pui Ling Tam, Teachers 4 Social Justice
Description: Investigate ways of approaching discipline as an opportunity to teach, rather than punish. Join Teachers 4 Social Justice in exploring the issues involved in classroom discipline and ways of supporting student development as well as community and relationship building. This workshop is an off-shoot of T4SJ’s 2008 Discipline Study Group.

Advisory: A Design for Personalization
Presenters: Beth Silbergeld and Mark Segado, San Francisco Coalition of Essential Small Schools
Description: Advisory: How do we structure time to honor teachers’ knowledge, experience and voice so that they may collaborate to best serve our students and close the achievement gap? Is your Advisory program just getting started or is it in need of a jumpstart? This workshop will provide you with an example of a successful Advisory program that is designed from the school’s mission and vision, leading to student support and core curriculum across four years. You will have time to organize your own ideas and document them using the same planning backwards process we successfully use for other core classes. Finally, you will use the Consultancy protocol to get feedback and support on your plans before taking them back to your school site. Come to this session with your school’s mission and vision statements as well as any key Advisory documents.

Bridging the Gaps: Using Community-Knowledge as Resources for Culturally Authentic Assessment
Presenters: Joyce King, Georgia State University (GA) and Yetunde Reeves, EXCEL High School
Description: Teachers, parents and students in this hands-on workshop will use community-knowledge as resources to develop culturally authentic assessments for selected model lessons. Materials will include: 1) Community elders’ memories (West Oakland oral history); 2) “Criterion Standards for Contextualized Teaching & Learning About People of African Descent”; and 3) CA ELA / Social Studies Content Standards to facilitate teachers’ Cultural Knowledge and students’ Heritage Knowledge.

Differentiated Instruction: A Data-Driven Approach
Presenters: Andrea Brown-Thirston and Christine Poindexter, Chicago International Charter School
Description: Participants will learn how a multi-site charter school uses test data to improve instruction. This interactive workshop will demonstrate the use of student achievement data to determine the level of classroom and individual student instruction. Participants will discuss methods for grouping students and how to deliver differentiated instruction in the classroom to address a variety of student needs. Participants will also engage in a simulated differentiated lesson and share feedback on the process and outcomes of the "lesson".

Mastery Objectives Systems: Clarifying the Path to Student Achievement
Presenters: Seneca Harberger, EXCEL High School, and Karen Pezzeti, Youth Empowerment School
Description: Come join us for a discussion about mastery objective systems as a way of focusing, organizing, articulating and tracking the skills that we expect our students to master over the course of the year. Learn how two teachers have implemented new systems in their schools. EXCEL High School initiated an across the board system of grading for mastery of specific objectives. English teacher Karen Pezzetti, a teacher in her fifth year working in a small school in East Oakland, will explain a new assessment system that has revolutionized her teaching. Participants will learn how and why this system was implemented, what results it has yielded, talk with colleagues about the advantages and disadvantages of such a system, and reflect on their own planning & assessment practices. Specific attention will be paid to grading systems, routines and technology to assist in implementing a mastery system.

Performance Assessment: Moving Beyond the Bubble Tests
Presenter: Matt Alexander, June Jordan School for Equity
Description: Do you think standardized testing is an inadequate way to measure student performance? June Jordan School for Equity in San Francisco has a schoolwide performance assessment system that is designed to ensure real, public accountability for student achievement. We use portfolios, rubrics, and graduation committees, and we have chosen schoolwide tasks that are tied to the skills necessary for college success. Come to this session and join a conversation about how to move beyond the bubble tests.

Academic ACES in High School Mathematics
Presenters: George Gagnon, Pre-Engineering Partnerships and Andrew Gordon, LPS College Park
Description: The purpose of this session is to promote academic excellence in mathematics learning by describing a program designed to offer high school students two years of math in one academic year. Students who begin ninth grade will never reach calculus or be competitively eligible for admission to selective institutions without access to this coursework.

Beyond Test Prep: Teaching for Deep Learning That Also Moves Test Scores
Presenter: Margarita Florez and Amanda Klein, Think College Now Elementary
Description: Over the last three years, these TCN teachers have worked cohesively and strategically with their school site to support increases in API (235 points) and Proficiency on the CST (39% in Language Arts and 25% in Math). Their rigorous instruction is standards-based and focuses on deepening academic skills and providing students access to learning experiences beyond their classroom and community.

Organizing Schools and Communities to Close Achievement Gaps
Presenters: Dr. Marcella Dianda, National Education Association
Description: What role do families play in closing student achievement gaps? How are effective schools organized to engage community stakeholders in success? In this interactive session, participants will use tools and learn strategies the National Education Association (NEA) advocates its affiliates and members use to help close achievement gaps in communities that serve low-income and culturally diverse students.

CLOSING THE GAP: Parent Involvement with their Child's Education
Presenters: Dee McConico and Sebrena Jeffries, Sisters' Keeper Liaison
Description: There is no topic in education on which there is greater agreement than the need for parent involvement. The workshop will give parents and guardians the tools to enhance the involvement in the education of their children. Empowering parents and encouraging their leadership rather than "training" them on how to be good parents. Taking a look at how violence effects the learning of a child. Parents must take the lead to be involved; remember parents are teachers too.

Strand 3: Students

Get Organized! Examples of Student Leadership and Voice
Presenters: Tim Bremner and Students, Youth Empowerment School, Oakland
Description: Youth Empowerment School (YES) students will present the Student Unity Council, where leaders of all types work together through distributed leadership and shared responsibility to organize for student voice and Youth Court, an example of student-run restorative justice in action.

Youth Speaks – Participatory Workshop for Students: I Am Not Who They Think I Am
Presenters: Youth Speaks
Description: I am not who they think I am. In this workshop, young folks will have the opportunity to define who they are using the power of the written and spoken word. One of the greatest problems in education is that young people are undervalued and put into boxes that predefine them before youth have an opportunity to speak for themselves. This workshop will be specifically designed to help student find, develop, and publicly present their voices. The voice of youth must be present in all discussions, in and out of classrooms, and this workshop will help give youth access to that power.

Cultivate & Be a Positive Force of CHANGE in Your Community! Service Learning Can Take You There!
Presenters: Fabiola Zepeda-Alejandre and Olina Paul, June Jordan School for Equity
Description: Be a positive force of change while building stronger connections in your community! Come explore how small schools by design can carve space for social justice practices via Service Learning. Learn why, how and where you can begin to develop leadership, mentorship and professional skills. Facilitated by staff & featuring youth testimonials.

Creating a College Going Culture
Presenters: Wyn Skeels and Annie Johnston, Community Partnerships Academy at Berkeley High School
Description: 92% of Community Partnerships Academy graduates go on to 2 and 4-year college, the vast majority of whom are from historically underrepresented socio-economic groups. Workshop attendees will take away applicable strategies, techniques, and approaches that have contributed to the successes of our college going culture.

New School Development: A Systematic Strategy for Addressing Chronically Failing Schools
Presenters: Hae-Sin Thomas and Monique Epps, urbanED solutions
Description: This is a workshop for those who are looking for a bold and powerful way to deal with chronically failing schools in their communities versus an incremental improvement approach to school change. This workshop will highlight a transformational, thoughtful and inclusive strategy that focuses on replacing dysfunctional schools with promising new schools.

Ghosts in the Machine: The Pedagogy and Politics of Whiteness in Urban Small Schools
Presenters: Jackie Jenkins, Arise High School/Stanford University and Shane Safir, Stanford School Redesign Network, Envision School, and June Jordan School for Equity
Description: This workshop asks participants to explore how “Whiteness,” a historically unnamed and invisible racial category, matters in the design, leadership, teaching, learning, mentoring, and collaboration that happen on a daily basis at urban small schools. We will attempt to move beyond limited, singular understandings of White identity (as monolithic and racist) to examine and rethink whiteness as an ideology and social location of both critique and possibility as we work to reform urban schools.

Emotional Balance and Conflict Resolution
Presenter: Loma Flowers, M.D. and Ruth Thomas, Ph.D. Equilibrium Dynamics
Description: This interactive workshop will present an overview of the basic dynamics that we all experience in coordinating feelings, thinking, judgments and actions in everyday life. These skills are known as emotional competence. This coordination, when it is skillfully done, can support our emotional balance, improve communication and help manage stress and conflict.

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Strand 1: Classroom Teaching and Learning

Developing Critical Thinking through an Inquiry Approach
Presenter: Dickson Lam, June Jordan School for Equity
Description: In our high-stakes testing era, teaching students how to think critically is becoming a lost art. Come to this workshop and learn about addressing this through the inquiry approach adapted at June Jordan from Urban Academy in NYC, focusing on discussion as a way to challenge student opinions and improve them. Sample activities and units will be presented.

 

Portfolios & Exhibitions
Presenters: Jessica Gammell and Mark Isero, Leadership High School
Description: How can we authentically assess students meeting our high academic expectations? In this workshop, you will be introduced to portfolios and exhibitions as examples of authentic assessment. You’ll gain a toolkit of best practices and practical skills to develop authentic assessments, consider how portfolios and exhibitions can promote equity, and create beginning plans for authentic assessments at your school.

Professional Development: How do we structure time to honor teachers’ experiences and voices so that they may collaborate to best serve our students?
Presenter: Tony Johnston, SF-CESS
Description: Before we can work towards closing the achievement gap for our students, we have to learn to how to be and work together as adults. Participate in a workshop modeled after a weekly professional development meeting as we share our lessons learned about fostering communities of learners where the voices of teachers, students and parents matter and influence.

Factors that Sustain Teacher Commitment to Struggling Students in Urban High Schools & Sustaining the Stress of First Year Teaching
Presenters: Rebecca Cheung, Berkeley Unified / UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education & Cara Johnson, EXCEL High School
Description: What compels accomplished teachers to stay in the urban classroom? This presentation includes a discussion of the results of a dissertation study which identified the factors that sustain teacher commitment to struggling students in urban high schools. Organizational support, development of teaching skills, and teacher attitudes will be discussed. In addition, a panel of teachers from EXCEL will speak firsthand about their experiences as first-year teachers working in an urban environment addressing the stressors, expectations, support, and coping strategies that new teachers face.

Utilizing Students' Strengths: Reading Strategies for ELLs and All Students
Presenters: Noah Borrero, University of San Francisco
Description: This workshop will focus on literacy strategies for classroom teachers. A strength-based approach to student diversity will be discussed as a way to envision the success of all students in mainstream classrooms. Reading strategies for different contexts and content areas will focus on priming activities to engage students’ prior knowledge, processing activities to aid in comprehension, and retention activities to promote deeper-level understanding.

Leading Through Instruction: Maintaining the Focus on Classroom Instruction Within the Demands of Site Administration
Presenters: Anakarita Allen, Antonio Cediel, Jaguanana Lathan, Mina Hutchins, and Heidi Gill; Emery Unified School District Administrative Team
Description: Small districts working on educational reform share the overwhelming organizational demands of small schools. As a two-school district, Emery Unified School District's administrative team works collaboratively to provide direct support to the growth of instructional practices within their schools. The team consists of the assistant superintendent of instruction, site administrators from both schools, and the director of coaching and professional development. Join this team to participate in an interactive conversational café about the dilemmas, choices and practices these leaders engage in to keep classroom instructional practice at the center of their work.

Black Child Development: Teaching Self-Love for Resilience and Academic Success
Presenter: Francine O. Shakir, ASCEND Institute for Educational Change
Description: This workshop focuses on African American children and analyzes how their identity-development, culture, and academic engagement are shaped by the American experience. Participants will explore ideas and themes relative to the unmet educational needs of these students, and create a project or mini-curriculum for classroom use.

Language, Identity, & Classroom Learning: Understanding How Language and Science Learning Intersect
Presenter: Bryan A. Brown, Ph.D., Stanford University Graduate School of Education
Description: Studies of minority students in science have sought to frame science learning as a byproduct of students' cultural conflict with science. Many of these studies have framed this conflict as sociocultural, but most lack empirical study of how students' language practices impact science learning. This presentation and training explores how language and identity impact science learning by exploring two learning perspectives Discursive Identity and Conceptual Continuities. Each of these positions examines how language frames opportunities to learn in science, while helping teachers understand how to access the cultural resources that students bring with them to the classroom. The research presentation explores the impact of these theoretical positions and their empirical impact on students' learning.

Strand 2: Parent Engagement, Advocacy and Leadership

The Power of Parents to Improve Schools
Presenters: Tara Kini, Public Advocates and Maribel Heredia, Parent Leader
Description: This workshop will inform parents and community members about new rights to sufficient textbooks, safe school facilities, and qualified teachers under the Williams settlement and how to use the complaint process to improve local schools. Parents and advocates will share best practices for effecting change based on lessons learned from recent campaigns in the Bay Area.

Parents’ Roles in Small Schools
Presenters: Mark Gordon, BayCES Emeritus; Lillian Lopez, Oakland Community Organizations; and Eve Gordon, MetWest HS
Description: This workshop is designed for teachers, school leaders, and parents to gain a deeper understanding of how parents can work with staff to directly impact the success of our schools, and to share strategies that have enabled parents, teachers, and school leaders to work skillfully and supportively together for the benefit of our students. From Design Team to 5th year (once your founding families' children have graduated) and beyond, parents have crucial knowledge of our students that can help us better serve them if we can successfully talk. A panel of parents will share their experiences of contributing to and being shut out of their children's schools. We will then discuss structures and practices that build and maintain trust with families across lines of race, ethnicity, class, and education levels. We will also look at how creating real relationships can counteract some of the negative emotional effects of the poisonous "accountability" environment many teachers are working in and help us reframe our focus onto what each student really needs to be successful.

 

Strand 3: Students

Demonstrating Their Learning: Family Math Night and Student-Led Conferences
Presenters: Geeta Makhija, ASCEND and Laura Robell, Elmhurst Community Prep
Description: This workshop will present two ways in which students demonstrate learning to their families. The workshop will focus on creating opportunities for students to share what they've learned, to demonstrate understanding and to design a forum for metacognitive, academic discussions with families. Participants will see and hear about two student-facilitated workshops: Family Math Night at ASCEND and Student-Led Conferences at Elmhurst Community Prep. Presenters will provide materials, step-by-step instructions, and examples, including video excerpts, so that participants can implement a similar practice at their school site. Administrators, teachers, parents, and anyone interested in implementing opportunities for student-led learning demonstrations are encouraged to attend.

Peer Influence in Building a College-Going Culture
Presenters: Panel of Five OUSD Students and Alumni, Felicia Martin and Diedra Barber, College Summit
Description: Research has shown that peer influence is a key variable towards the decision to enroll in college. In this session, we will hear the voices and expertise of select College Summit Peer Leaders as they bring to life the actual & potential role of peer influence in raising overall expectations of going to college.

Youth Speaks – Participatory Workshop for Students: Spoken Word as a Tool For Social Justice and Societal Change
Presenters: Youth Speaks
Description: In this workshop, hands on activities and much discussion will get young people talking about the issues that are critical to their - and all of our - lives. Through spoken word, we will explore ways in which young people can help shape dialogues around issues that effect them in and out of school. Students will be encouraged to stand up and speak out!

Strand 4: Culture and Rituals

Developing an Equitable Learning Culture
Presenters: Judy Billingsley, GENESIS Charter High School and Allegra Alessandri, Social Justice Waldorf Methods High School
Description: As part of a 10-year effort to bring equitable education to all students, Sacramento City Unified School District partnered with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation to reform all district high schools. Participants will learn from current Administrators, who were involved in the very beginning the reform efforts, about the development of school culture fostering equitable learning resulting in high achievement for all students. The panel of current small theme based urban high school Principals will discuss strategies used to develop school wide culture among all stake holders that focused on the whole student resulting in significant test score gains.

Creating a Culture of High Expectations
Presenter: Yetunde Reeves, EXCEL High School
Description: This workshop will give participants an understanding of how EXCEL High School has created a culture of high expectations. The presentation will cover semester syllabi, teacher evaluation, emphasis on instruction, college support/exposure, as well as school policies that have impacted school culture. Participants will also view a video of teaching and learning at EXCEL HS.

Considering Students with Severe Disabilities in a Small School Design
Presenter: Claire Davenport, June Jordan School for Equity
Description: Did you consider students with Down Syndrome, Autism, Cerebral Palsy and Significant Cognitive Delays when you first dreamt of changing the world through education? It’s not too late. This session encourages educators to re-imagine, re-evaluate and reform their ideas of equity and diversity to include students who experience severe disabilities, and to think about how students, disabled and nondisabled alike, benefit from a school culture that is ability AWARE. Workshop content includes Disability Rights, Ability Awareness, and Inclusion Practices, and is led by teachers from a small school by design that integrates students with severe disabilities into the community and classrooms.

The 100 Black Boys Project at EOSA High School
Presenter: Matin Abdul-Qawi, Principal, East Oakland School of the Arts (EOSA), Oakland
Description: To counteract alarming academic achievement, graduation, and college-going trends among African American male students, EOSA principal Matin Abdul-Qawi sent an impassioned letter in November 2007 to 30 local community leaders requesting support for an initiative to increase the college-going rate of African American males. Over 100 leaders responded to the call. On December 13, over 75 convened at the kick-off meeting of the EOSA 100 Black Boys Project. This convening was a powerful demonstration of the Oakland community's commitment to getting these 100 Black Boys to college. The primary goal of the project is to connect all 100 Black Boys at EOSA with available services, including a qualified mentor. These mentors will be responsible for connecting the boys with organizations throughout the Bay Area that have a history of working directly with Black Boys and assisting them with overcoming the effects of racism and poverty. Mentoring has been proven to dramatically enhance positive youth development.

"Mata Masie: The Explore Story." A Documentary of Explore Students Preparing for High School
Presenters: Jennifer Garcia, Former Founding Teacher at Explore Preparatory School; Kwesi Johnson, Filmaker ; Doraius Lacy, Jantelle Worthington; Dejuana Brown and Diante Patterson, Explore Graduates
Description: "Mata Masie: The Explore Story" recounts the founding and journey of Explore College Preparatory Middle School in their first three years. It highlights the educators, families and young people determined to revolutionize small schools in Oakland. This workshop will include the premiere of this documentary film and a dialogue with students - some featured in the film - now freshman in high school. Discussion will include best thinking and work on preparing our middle school students for success in high school and beyond.

 

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Strand 1: Classroom Teaching and Learning

EXCEL High School Law Academy
Presenters: Ina Bendich, EXCEL High School Law Academy; Elizabeth de Rham and Jill Ratner, Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment: New Voices Are Rising Program
Description: Participants may use the information we present to develop their own lessons and curriculum addressing local issues. These lessons/curricula will provide students with opportunities to learn advocacy skills while mastering persuasive writing and analytic thinking. The materials presented will focus on Environmental Justice issues.

Building Racial and Cultural Competence in the Classroom: Strategies from Urban Educators
Presenters: Jennifer Obidah, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados and Karen Teel, Holy Names University
Description: The panel will engage audience in a conversation about the definition and significance of educators’ development of racial and cultural competencies and the impact on students’ academic achievement, particularly African American students. The presenters are educators whose life work and scholarship revolves around helping K-12 teachers develop these competencies.

Advice on Advisory
Presenter: Christina Villarreal, Elmhurst Community Prep
Description: This workshop is designed to provide teachers with some effective practices and activities for them to use in their advisories. Participants will examine the role of advisory, advisory design and structure, advisors’ roles and responsibilities and finally, advisory curriculum and activities. The workshop will also interactively engage participants in actual advisory activities, including various icebreaker games, a Socratic seminar based on a reading excerpt (“Are advisory groups essential? What they do and how they work”), and a series of fun, community-building activities for participants to take home. The workshop includes a packet of readings on advisory, samples of advisory curriculum, and a bibliography with suggestions for further reading.

Celebrating Thriller 2008! Lessons Learned Using this Popular Force as Emancipatory Pedagogy
Presenters: Aiesha Kareem, Delta Charter High School (Tracy, CA) and Dr. Joyce E. King, Georgia State University
Description: This presentation will demonstrate emancipatory pedagogy: Lessons learned using Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” a popular cultural force, to place unmotivated students at the center of their own learning. This pedagogy built strong relationships between the teacher, diverse students, families and communities and facilitated emancipatory learning outcomes, including academic achievement, personal and group liberation.

Making Learning Visible: An Alternative Assessment
Presenters: Jayeesha Dutta, ACOE Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership and Arzu Mistry, Harvard University's Project Zero
Description: Making Learning Visible (MLV) is a dynamic and innovative arts-based practice designed to help students, teachers, parents and administrators reflect the process of inquiry-based learning in any subject area. Come learn about several types of MLV practice, participate in a hands-on arts experience and create a Making Learning Visible "Thinking Wall". You will experientially learn how Making Learning Visible can provide a creative means for alternative assessment to traditional methods and tools.

Interactive Instructional Practices That Energize Student Learning
Presenters: Connie Davidson, Ed Learning Communities
Description: It is possible to successfully teach in diverse urban schools, but it takes a lot of work. These quantifiable behaviors are theory-based and evident in classrooms and schools that are successful in improving student achievement. These pedagogical practices are built around interaction, relationships, trust, and shared-caring. Participants will learn how to change other peoples’ children into their children, and how to make teaching relevant.

From Deficit to Asset: A New View of the Learner
Presenters: Dr. Marcella Dianda, National Education Association
Description: All students, including low-income and culturally diverse students, bring a wide array of assets to school that can help them succeed academically. How can you capitalize on these assets? This interactive workshop presents an “Asset Model” of learners and focuses on classroom and school applications of research around four key student assets: Culture, Abilities, Resilience and Effort.

Practicing Democracy and Equity in Schools
Presenters: Mara Benitez and Kyle Meador, Coalition of Essential Schools
Description: The CES Common Principles and progressive pedagogy come to life with real stories and tools from today’s most successful CES small schools in the Essential Visions DVD Series. This session will use one of the DVDs as a tool to engage in an in depth exploration of the 10th Common Principle, Democracy and Equity. Using the case study of a CES small school, participants will explore how one school’s conscious commitment to democracy and equity manifest in both its governance, classroom practice and overall school culture. Using the case study as a catalyst for reflection participants will look to define what a democratic and equitable education would look and feel like in their own schools.

The Organized Binder: Structuring the Classroom for Equity and Success
Presenter: Mitch Weathers, Sequoia High School and The Organized Binder
Description: The Organized Binder is equity in the classroom and the glue in many urban school reform programs. Commonly overlooked, this system offers students and teachers identical classroom routines and organizational structures regardless of subject. This system improves classroom management, offers a starting routine, quarterly goal setting, review of the previous day's standards, time for reflection at the end of each class, and much more. Upon implementation schools have experienced more positive classroom and school environments, not to mention API gains over 100 points.

Using Standards Based Assessments and Sustaining Quality Instruction
Presenter: Vanessa Flynn and Lissette Averhoff, ACORN Woodland Elementary
Description: How do we maintain instructional integrity, while using standards based interim assessments to inform teaching practice? How can we ensure that using standards based assessments enhance our teaching and learning communities in a way that ensures both equitable learning outcomes and equitable learning experiences? At AWE we systematically use standards based interim assessments to inform instruction. Yet, we maintain a commitment to ensuring that teaching and learning is anchored in authentic teaching practices guided by differentiation, student engagement, and mastery as opposed to learning best strategies for test performance.

Transforming Kensington High School: Protecting and Sustaining Small School Reform
Presenters: Eileen Maicon Weissman, Kensington International Business Community and JoAnn Caplan, Mid-Atlantic Coalition of Essential Schools
Description: This workshop will be to analyze the skills and structures required for reforming a large urban high school into 3 small schools in one year. We will share our experiences from Kensington High School which was on the Federal "persistently dangerous" list and had never made AYP. The focus will be on the inherent struggle of restructuring a large high school with a clear vision and mission responsive to student needs; utilizing research; and proven practices. There will also be an opportunity to share current practice and dilemmas.

 

Strand 2: Parent Engagement, Advocacy and Leadership

Data-Centered Parent Engagement
Presenter: Michael Gonzales, Yoruba Communications
Description: This workshop will provide schools with the tools to engage parents in meaningful dialogues concerning student data. By engaging in demonstrations and receiving an overview of a process, parents and teachers will be able to develop a manner in which each will be able to support the other using benchmark assessments and CST data.

The "Three Rs" of Powerful Parent Partnerships
Presenters: Rhina Ramos and Veronica Neal, Bay Area Parent Leadership Action Network (PLAN)
Description: Respect, Reciprocity, and Representation: these are the three Rs of building powerful parent partnerships in schools. Creating and sustaining parent partnerships is hard work. Putting these three Rs into practice ensures that parent partnerships are built on a strong foundation of trust, authentic parent voice, and mutual accountability.

Strand 3: Students

We Have the Mic: Youth-Centered Events at Brooklyn's High School for Global Citizenship
Presenters: Noni Fernandez, Amana Kazkazi, and Jessica Bartolini, High School for Global Citizenship and Global Kids (NY)
Description: What does youth leadership look like in a small high school? How can students step up to help build a culture of social justice and international citizenry and how can adults support youth to take on increased leadership? This student-led workshop will be a hands-on exploration of how one Brooklyn school—the High School for Global Citizenship—has created programs and practices that provide a range of opportunities for youth to “have the mic” and be heard. Participants will experience interactive activities that HSGC students lead in their school.

Student Voices: Thriving In Small Schools
Presenters: Students from June Jordan School for Equity and Leadership High School; Matt Alexander, June Jordan School for Equity; Elizabeth Rood, Leadership High School; and Diane Friedlaender, School Redesign Network at Stanford University
Description: This session is primarily a student panel featuring students who were struggling and likely to face failure in high school but whose educational opportunities were turned around by attending the small schools Leadership High School and June Jordan School for Equity in San Francisco. Student panelists and their principals will identify the factors that contributed to their success. The session will be facilitated by Diane Friedlaender, who will distill some of the issues raised by the students in a summary of the key design features identified in "High Schools for Equity," a study by the School Redesign Network that examined the design features of exemplary schools serving low-income students of color in California.

High School Internship Programs
Presenters: Linda Stevenin, G-4 Consulting and Heidi Hamler, New Technology High School
Description: Learn about the why, what & how of high school internship programs: why high schools have internship programs and how they benefit students. Profiles of two successful models will be shared and we will close with a panel of students and mentors sharing their experiences.

Getting Beyond the College Banner on the Classroom Door: Deepening College Going Culture
Presenters: Gail Kaufman, UC Berkeley Center for Educational Partnerships, Teachers from Acorn/Woodland Elementary School and Coliseum College Preparatory Academy of OUSD and Richmond High School in West Contra Costa Unified School District
Description: UC Berkeley’s Center for Educational Partnerships works with Bay Area small schools and learning communities to build and strengthen a college-going culture for ALL students. Hear K-12 teachers discuss the joys and challenges of developing a culture of high expectations, and learn of available web-based resources and best practices to implement Monday morning.

Leading through Consensus: Teacher Voice Matters
Presenters: Nicky Ramos-Beban, Stanford University and Seth Leslie, East Palo Alto Academy
Description: Revolutionize the teacher culture at your school with an elegant and effective process that leads to high rates of teacher ownership and satisfaction. The technique of consensus can be used by staff to define school guiding principles, craft school structures, write curriculum and tackle the toughest school-wide problems. The process of consensus also leads to the building of a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility for school progress, and the development of a dedicated and skilled core of teachers. This workshop will focus on how to implement a consensus model for leadership and decision-making at your school. Questions we will consider are: Why use consensus? What are the benefits of implementing a consensus model? What is the process for reaching consensus? For what types of decisions should you use consensus?

The Unexamined Whiteness of Teaching: How Seemingly Innocent Understandings Maintain Racial Inequality
Presenter: Dr. Bree Picower, New York University
Description: With record numbers of White teachers in the field, it is imperative for school communities to examine the ways in which understandings about race impact how teachers see themselves, their students, and urban schooling. This interactive workshop uses research on White teachers constructions of people different than themselves as a jumping off point to explore the ways in which Whiteness shapes their understandings and assumptions about urban schools, students and communities. By carefully examining the seemingly race-neutral comments of White teachers, session participants will develop skills for critically analyzing instances of racialized assumptions of people in their own school communities. Using popular and original media clips, participants will use critical media literacy tools to examine the ways in which these understandings are shaped by the world around us. Most importantly, the session will provide time to discuss institutional and individual responses to these dominant and problematic assumptions that have real-life consequences for students of color in urban public schools.

Leading for Equity
Presenter: Victor Cary and Lisa Lasky, BayCES
Description: This workshop seeks to build the will, skill, knowledge and emotional support of leaders to engage such questions as "How does individual and institutional bias impact teaching and learning in my classroom or school?" and "How can we individually and collectively take action to create equitable schools?" You will have the opportunity to reflect on how issues of equity played out in your life and the lives of your students' and families'. Learn about and discuss strategies for creating democratic and equitable school communities.

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