Welcome/Keynote - Gender Dreaming for Kids

Leading Beyond Access: Making Inclusivity a Part of Your EdTech Strategy

Join Diana Gross, CDWG's Learning and Innovation Strategist, for a discussion on the neuroscience that underlies our diverse ways of learning, and how leaders can apply this knowledge to foster school communities and learning environments that meet the needs of all stakeholders. 

TOPICS:

    1. A brief overview of Neuroscience of Learning
    2. Applying Universal Design for Learning for All Stakeholders
    3. Insights on Hot to Leverage Technology to Promote Inclusivity"

How to Make Sure Your Website Reaches Everyone

Your website is an important tool to keep families informed and recruit prospective families. It not only needs to look great—it also has to be accessible to everyone in your community, including people with disabilities. It also has to be findable by search engines so it doesn’t get lost in the noise. Join us to learn:
·      How to create a website that is both accessible and compelling for families
·      What to look for in a CMS to make sure it’s easy to use, easy to update and will stay accessible for the long haul
·      How to make sure your website works for everyone—including visitors with and without disabilities and search engines

Digital Organization with Google Drive

Organization comes in many forms, but how does it show up digitally? Join us for a discussion around the best organizational practices of Google Drive — tips, tricks, hacks, and more! At the conclusion of this session, you will come away with ideas for how you could better organize your Google Drive for you and/or your team

Augment Your Reading Lists to the Next Level

Join TeachingBooks.net for an interactive session learning how to use the NYC DOE-provided TeachingBooks tool to augment your reading lists for diversity, genres, and the just-right books for your students. Examine the titles in your classroom collection and immediately receive a report revealing the cultural areas, genres, word count, reading levels, and more! Then, receive a collection of dynamic audio and video resources that deepen students' connections to these very titles. Attendees will leave this workshop ready to use these tools to ensure that selected titles meetinstructional, personal, and cultural needs.. If possible, bring a spreadsheet or listing of the books used in your classroom or school.

Preparation Note Sheet

NYC History is LGBTQ History: Teaching LGBTQ+ Stories with the Museum of the City of New York

From art to politics to activism, LGBTQ+ New Yorkers have shaped the city around us, influencing not only the social, political, and cultural landscape of New York City, but also reshaping norms around gender and sexuality. Join the Museum of the City of New York for this workshop examining the impact of queer New Yorkers throughout the 20th century, from Bayard Rustin and Pauli Murray to Martin Wong and Sylvia Rivera. Drawing on the Museum’s Activist New York exhibition and the DOE’s LGBTQ Hidden Voices curriculum guide, MCNY educators will model ways of incorporating LGBTQ+ stories into their curriculum, and participants will engage directly with primary sources that bring these extraordinary New Yorkers into the classroom.  

Workshop with Promethean
This workshop we will tour the features and functionality of our ActivPanel Elements series. You’ll learn how the Promethean solution inspires collaboration, ease of instruction, student engagement, and creates a love of learning.

Google Accessibility Features for Diverse Learners    

Join Google for Education for a tour of the many features available in Google Workspace for Education and Chromebooks to support diverse learners and facilitate the creation of inclusive learning environments - whether in-person, virtual, or hybrid.

Human Connection in Digital Learning    

Digital learning is not only here; it’s here to stay. With digital learning and technology comes speed and enhanced capabilities; however, the human connection of teaching and learning is often missing.  This session will dive into the research to understand how to keep a human connection in a world of digital learning through authentic literature and the human voice.  Technology is a game-changer in learning, but a human connection combined with technology is a force multiplier when it comes to the positive influences on education and social and emotional growth.

Using Technology to Make Inclusive Classrooms

The pandemic has given us the opportunity to being education into the digital age. Join folks from the NYCDOE Center for Assistive Technology as they share tips, tools, strategies, and resources to empower you to leverage instructional and assistive technology to create a more inclusive classroom environment.   

Summer Reading with SORA

Join Overdrive and NYC DOE Dept. of Library Services for an introduction to the Citywide Digital Library (CDL). Learn how the CDL can be used to encourage and promote reading of CR-SE aligned texts through Summer Rising and beyond.

Dear Teachers: Our Identities are Not a Debate

Led by teens in InterseXtions, Brooklyn Museum’s paid LGBTQ+ teen internship in queer art history and community programming, and Teen Programs Manager Lindsay C. Harris, this workshop will provide best practices for being a supportive adult in school for queer, trans, non-binary, and questioning students. Based on their own experiences, LGBTQ+ youth will share ways adults can create an inclusive environment, where students feel validated and can express themselves. Participants will also learn about ways the Brooklyn Museum can be a resource for learning about gender and sexuality through art.

Discovery Education: Accelerating Learning through Summer and Beyond

Join Discovery Education as we explore actionable strategies and resources that can be used to support academic programs that build the bridge back to school. See how we help NYC teachers engage students in meaningful learning experiences during Summer Rising and Back to School with NYS standards-aligned content, social-emotional learning resources, ready-to-use student activities, and instructional strategies for all subjects and grades.

LUNCH

During this lunch session, featured speakers include students who read their poetry and children's book authors who talk about their writing experiences, as well as share information about the the Ezra Jack Keats Bookmaking Competition (Read more at ezra-jack-keats.org). 

Empowering students to create accessible, creative websites with Wix Education

How might we equip students with essential technology skills while empowering them to build creative, accessible websites? In this session, we'll explore Wix Education — the free platform and suite of resources to teach web creation in your classroom. We'll focus in on our accessibility lesson plan, where students learn about the whys and hows of building accessible sites while expressing their creativity with playful digital tools. This session will also include information about how to get started with Wix Education's free resources in your classroom.

Discovery Education: Accelerating Learning through Summer and Beyond

Join Discovery Education as we explore actionable strategies and resources that can be used to support academic programs that build the bridge back to school. See how we help NYC teachers engage students in meaningful learning experiences during Summer Rising and Back to School with NYS standards-aligned content, social-emotional learning resources, ready-to-use student activities, and instructional strategies for all subjects and grades.

Connecting School to Home: Tools and Resources to Empower Families

Support students means supporting families. Learn more about resources created throughout the pandemic to push beyond engagement and into empower of families of students with IEPs. These resources can be added into your toolkit to help you support families at the school, district, borough, or central level.

Improving LGBTQIA+ Representation in our School Materials
LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC representation in publishing has improved significantly in recent years, and we need our schools to reflect that representation! This presentation will offer strategies and resources to help school staff change with the times, along with encouragement and strategies for removing materials that are no longer relevant or appropriate

Workshop with Karleen Pendleton Jimenez

Reimagining your required reading: How digital makes a difference

Learn how the Citywide Digital Library provides access to over 17,000 ebooks and audiobooks readily available for your staff and students. From ELA favorites to digital class sets and more, let OverDrive Account Manager Regis Coustillac fill you in on how the Sora reading app can help set your students up for required reading success. Attendees will discover the benefits of creating school-specific digital collections and how powerful Sora tools like notes, highlights, definitions reading data are making a positive impact on reading engagement. Join us in the digital booth to learn more!

Supporting Differentiation and Accessibility with BrainPOP

Do you have a diverse group of students with a variety of learning needs? Join the BrainPOP Educators team as we demonstrate the many ways you can use BrainPOP features and creative tools to provide multiple entry points to engaging learning experiences. We will also model how to build differentiated pathways based on a student’s learning profile using BrainPOP’s Assignment Builder.

3 Easy Ways to Mix Coding and Play

Block-based coding is a great way to introduce K-8 students to computer programming, but what are some playful and engaging activities to get started? In this hands-on workshop, Lauren from the Unruly Splats team will share 3 easy activities that combine coding and play and share a few stories of how other educators are incorporating coding and play across their curriculum. There will be games, there will be code, there will be fun!

In this session, you will learn:

- How to use our Quiz Show! slide deck to play a competitive, coding-themed trivia game—we’re playing live!

- How to combine math and coding with our Lucky Splats game – we’ll play that live too.

- Tips from fellow educators on how to incorporate movement into coding activities.

Examining implicit bias and the impact on special education 

In order to better serve our students we need to  recognizing that there are implicit biases at play. We also need to know how to confront them to ensure equity for all students. This session examines implicit bias and how it impacts special education.

Introduction to Digital Accessibility

Looking to learn what accessibility is and how to do it? This class will go over what accessibility is and how it's different from inclusion. You'll learn why this work is so important, who is affected, and what elements must be included when creating accessible content. We’ll go over how our compliance deadline impacts all schools and the content they create. Participants will also get a chance to practice checking accessibility and fixing errors.

ELA for SEL: Poetry and Renewal

Emotionally satisfying learning can renew us—opening up our curiosity, motivating us to master new skills, and allowing us to see freshly.  Join Elisa New, host of the PBS series Poetry in America, Professor of American literature at Harvard, and creator of online educational content now in use by learners of all ages all over the country (including in New York City Schools!), to consider the future of online and blended learning, with a particular focus on curricula designed to renew students mentally and emotionally.  Lisa’s demo lesson—to include “plug and play” video content and a lesson plan—will focus on Richard Blanco’s lovely poem of family vacations, “Looking for the Gulf Motel,” which would make for a great back-to-school activity in ELA, Social Studies, and Art classes next year.

Beyond Safe Schools: Infusing Gender Equity and LGBTQ+ Inclusion Throughout Your School

Remote Learning and Hybrid Learning has stretched us all in so many ways. We've seen so many innovative ways that teachers have taught, librarians have provided resources, and every member of the school community has dug deep within themselves on behalf of students. In this workshop we will create a stimulating space for us to think deeply about supportive and inclusive pedagogy and learning environments. Emphasis will be put on practical, easily implementable tactics you can use in your everyday work, but will also share several more intentional ways to advance inclusion.

Closing Remarks & Prize Giveaways