Workshop - June 4-5, 2018
Tools for Transformation: Creating Classroom Cultures of Thinking

In a fast-paced, rapidly changing world, how can teachers insure that the content of instruction today will serve our students in the world of tomorrow? How can we prepare students to live, work and thrive as global citizens in a world as yet unimagined?

In this course we will venture beyond curriculum, standards and benchmarks to explore the tools and techniques that support the greater purpose and promise of education. Join your fellow educators in taking advantage of the opportunity to learn, practice and apply transformational methods to build a culture of thinking in the classroom.

To create a culture of thinking is to:

• focus on learning vs. the work
• teach for understanding vs. knowledge
• encourage deep vs. surface learning
• promote independence vs. dependence
• focus on growth vs. grades

Presented by Brenda Major.

Join High Meadows School art teacher and STEAM integrator Brenda Major as she highlights strategies to weave thinking skills and attitudes through the fabric of all content learning. Brenda has a BA and MA in art from Georgia State University.

Date: June 4-5, 2018 - Download Flyer
For: Teachers 
Location: High Meadows School
Time: 8:30 am - 3:00 pm
Cost: $150 (lunch provided)

Discounted pricing for registering 4 or more.

Past Event

Workshop Feedback

“This workshop offered new ways to think and share routines and documentation.”
- JBecky Yardley, High Meadows School

“Rather than add more to what we do as teachers, [this workshop] provided real, useful strategies and tools for doing better.”
- anonymous

Workshop - June 4-7, 2018
Lifting the Level of Student Writing

Come learn with us as we discuss how implementing a writing workshop as part of a balanced literacy framework can elevate every aspect of your students’ writing. Appropriate for both writing workshop novices as well as experienced workshop teachers who want to heighten their practice, this workshop will cover the following topics:

• philosophical foundations of a writing workshop
• key aspects of writing workshop (what it is and what it is not)
• the assessment-planning-teaching cycle in a writing workshop
• writing process and how students move through the process
• the reading-writing connection and the importance of mentor texts
• the structure of a daily writing workshop
• principles of workshop management
• ways writing can be assessed
• potential unit planning process

Presented by Annie Swanlaw.

High Meadows teacher Annie Swanlaw has 13 years of experience teaching children and writing. M.Ed. with focus on literacy, literacy coach, and graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University.

“As we move around the room hearing our students’ stories, our teaching changes our children – and it changes us. Each child becomes infinitely precious to us.... When we feel this way, we stand a chance of making a difference in their lives.”
- Lucy Calkins

Date: June 4-7, 2018 - Download Flyer
For: Teachers 
Location: High Meadows School
Time: 8:30 am - 3:00 pm
Cost: $400 (lunch provided)

Discounted pricing for registering 4 or more.

Past Event

Workshop Feedback

“What can you do in order to raise a class of writers who will write for life…attend this workshop!” 
- Tiara Wynn, High Meadows School

“Annie is a dynamic and passionate learner who has a wealth of knowledge to share. The environment in which she taught is admirable and worthy of emulation.”
- Kristin Barnett, Athens Academy

Workshop - June 7-8, 2018
Learning with Inquiry and Innovation

How do educators increase student engagement, prepare students for the future and develop student agency? Come learn how an inquiry pedagogy and classroom culture of innovation has the capacity to take student thinking to a higher level, engage all learners, and encourage conceptual understanding and connections between skills and knowledge of multiple disciplines.

Appropriate for early elementary, elementary, and middle school educators, this workshop will explore:

• creating an environment for inquiry and innovation
• inquiry models
• integrated learning
• structures to support inquiry and innovation
• role of provocations
• assessment to support inquiry and innovation
• instructional strategies
• teacher’s role and stance

Presented by Kerri Irwin and Martha Lee Thwaite.

High Meadows teacher Kerri Irwin earned her MAT degree in Early Childhood Education from Oglethorpe University. She has fifteen years of teaching experience in private, public, and Montessori environments. Martha Lee Thwaite holds a BA in Early Childhood/Elementary Education from Converse College and a MEd from Columbia College in Divergent Education. She has 33 years of teaching experience in Independent Schools and has completed three courses through the Stanford dSchool.

Date: June 7-8, 2018 - Download Flyer
For: Teachers 
Location: High Meadows School
Time: 8:30 am - 3:00 pm
Cost: $150 (lunch provided)

Discounted pricing for registering 4 or more.

Past Event

Workshop - June 7-8, 2018
Teaching for Civic Responsibility and Social Justice

How can teachers activate their intellectual empathy to build active, compassionate, responsible, global citizens without being political? Learn how to layer learning to teach differently, not teach more. In this course, we will support teachers acquiring the skills and dispositions to facilitate classroom learning where students become aware of the world, engage in current events and issues, and are involved in their communities. Foundational skills of reading, writing, and questioning work alongside social-emotional skills of empathy building, open-mindedness, and reflection to develop critical consumers of knowledge.

To teach for civic responsibility and social justice is to:

• create safe emotional spaces for sharing perspectives and critical listening
• provide opportunities for student voice and discourse
• utilize rich content to engage students
• promote research and critical thinking
• examine your own bias and ability to remain an impartial facilitator

Presented by Vivien Rosa-Vaccarelli and Kirsten Fournier.

High Meadows teachers Vivien Rosa-Vaccarelli and Kirsten Fournier have a combined teaching experience of 23 years. Vivien holds a B.A. in Art History from Barnard College of Columbia University and a M.A. in Spanish Language and Literature from Middlebury College. Kirsten holds a B.A. in Child Development and Education from Vanderbilt University and a M.ED. in Reading Education from the University of Maryland at College Park.

Date: June 7-8, 2018 - Download Flyer
For: Teachers 
Location: High Meadows School
Time: 8:30 am - 3:00 pm
Cost: $150 (lunch provided)

Discounted pricing for registering 4 or more.

Past Event

Workshop Feedback

“The sharing of tools, resources and books was most powerful. Wonderful way to learn how to incorporate social justice into curriculum.”
- Javonne Stewart of Trinity School

“Explore progressive education and how we can use the pedagogy to teach social justice.”
- Heather Schilling of Manchester University

“Build community by giving students a safe space to share their stories.”
- Jen Murphy of The Lovett School