MOmentum

This session offers a guided exploration of the 2025 ebook release on the 12 Big Questions, following the popular 9 BIG Questions Schools Must Answer to Avoid Going "Back to Normal" (*Because "Normal" Wasn't That Great to Begin With) by Homa Tavangar and Will Richardson. The big questions are being used as a provocation to drive meaningful and fearless inquiry around school change and efficacy in the midst of volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA) conditions in the world and in education. Through probing, interactive activities we will audit and explore questions such as What is Learning? Why Do We ______? and Who is Unheard? as well as the three new questions: What is Your Story? What is Success? and What is Your Legacy? Embarking on a systematic interrogation of key questions, our “why” becomes clearer, to unlock new “how’s” for steering schools through crisis and uncertainty.

The future isn’t something we predict; it’s what we create. Futurists from some of the most prestigious research institutions tap into particular tools like sense-making imagination infrastructures, urgent optimism and evidence-based imagination. Learn how these can help make you not only a better leader, but also a more hopeful one.

The goal isn’t consensus—it’s understanding. This highly interactive session explores why disagreement is necessary for learning and how to challenge ideas without dehumanizing people. Act as a "provocateur" alongside our facilitators as we tackle education’s most controversial topics in real-time. Practice the discomfort of honest dialogue and learn to build stronger communities through the art of the "passionate disagreement."

Some students are ready for the first steps of a topic and others are ready for advanced assignments and assessments in that topic. How do we tier assignments and assessments to maximize their learning? Explore a practical and thought-provoking look at what constitutes mastery, and how we can increase and decrease complexity while meeting the needs of standards and their benchmarks. We will include two helpful lesson sequences: the Anchor and the Football, as well as great attention moves, student "orbitals," personal agendas, tips on how to get students to work autonomously and much more. This is a "how-to" and "why-we-do-it" workshop for those just getting their feet wet with tiering assignments and assessments or those already swimming in differentiated instruction who want more ideas.

"No time for breakfast, Mom. I have to get to class on time. Today we open the box!" What is this…a Hollywood movie fantasy? No, it's from a real classroom with real students. Attitude can change a blob of sand into King Arthur's castle. Tenacity is a virtue, but the personal fortitude to stick with an arduous task takes time and experience to mature. Many students grow impatient with content not parsed into soundbites, and reading extended, logical rhetoric through each argument to its ultimate conclusion is almost unheard of. On the other hand, if the story is good, students will read books of more than 700 pages. They play online games working their way through 12 levels of difficulty for six hours, and they stay after school into the evening to practice for theater productions, get ready for sports tournaments and conduct fun science experiments for the public. Join us for a compelling session on the specific tiles to include in the strategic mosaic that helps students find the reserves to stick with projects and tasks, be they physical or intellectual. Examine the role of dopamine, goal-setting, descriptive feedback that does not invoke ego, meaning-making, executive function, constructive responses to anxiety/depression, teacher-student relationships, agency, and more. There is no such thing as laziness. Our students want to do demanding, complex learning, they want to persevere! To this, our students aspire; with this, our world was built. And what was in the box, you ask? Why, of course, it was a—Oh, darn. No more space. Join us to find out.

We can’t innovate and be effective with what we don’t have. Some of us think narrowly, thinking there are only two ways to assess a topic when there are actually a dozen. Some of us get bogged down in students taking a test in a particular format rather than demonstrating genuine learning. Others wonder if can breathe life into more traditional assessment prompts. Opening the door to alternative ways to demonstrate mastery of subject content while holding students accountable for specific evidence and real learning ignites excitement in all of us! Join us for a quick tour of both traditional and innovative assessment possibilities when chasing evidence of learning, not merely of compliance from students. We’ll also discuss student ownership with their learning and assessments, the decrease in student excuses and deflection, where students find validation, and much more. It’s time to expand our repertoire, helping students find meaning and just as importantly, create accurate expressions of what they know and can do!

Talk, Read, Talk, Write (TRTW) is a practical approach to classroom instruction that helps students meet and exceed the state standards for learning in the core classes while also developing the literacy skills needed for success in the 21st century.  Experience the routine as a learner and leave with a planning resource that can be used right away.

Explore one of the nine dimensions of scaffolding introduced during the keynote. Linguistic scaffolding is necessary for all learners to engage in academic discourse and to develop disciplinary literacy, but it is a lifeline and a nonnegotiable for MLs. Supporting students to access complex academic language and to meet language-based expectations along with grade-level academic content attainment is no small feat! Review and evaluate key linguistic scaffolding techniques connected to the three levels of academic language (word, sentence and discourse) and multiple modes of communication (listening, speaking, reading, writing, and visually accessing and representing). Gain tips to apply them to your own planning, instruction and assessment practices.

Discover research-based sheltered strategies that offer the biggest bang for their buck in Content Classrooms and explore examples from the field. Top tips will be shared based on what is practical in diverse classrooms. The focus is on inclusion of newcomers and SLIFE (students with limited education), while  content teachers will appreciate that these strategies boost the achievement of the entire class.