Don Berg – Schools of Conscience
We Are NOT Robots! A Respectful Paradigm for Learning
The dominant paradigm of learning as content delivery has been thoroughly critiqued and discredited, but an equally compelling alternative paradigm based in both the behavioral and cognitive sciences has not arisen. Workshop presenter Don Berg, an education psychologist and author, will share with you a new synthesis of the current science on learning and motivation that can better guide both educational policy and practice. Let’s discuss whether or not it is sufficiently compelling to become a new paradigm.
Josette Luvmour, PhD – Summa Institute
Working with our students families: What every Holistic Educator needs to know
All children come with parents—all parents are part of their child’s education. The future of teacher training for Holistic Educators must include preparation about how to work with parents. We will discuss the importance of collaboration with our students’ families that is mutually respectful. Our students are continually adapting to the relationships and communications among primary caregivers. When educators, parents, and students are on the same page, a synergy emerges that allows for an explosion of learning. These key relationships have a large effect on children’s educational experiences. Moreover, parent and child grow together. With knowledge attention to attuned relationships with the child’s family, Holistic Educators can create educational environments that match our student’s needs Academic excellence results. We will at look rejuvenating experiences in teacher/family interactions because this partnership is the crucible of our student’s well-being and happiness.
Lindie Keaton – Antioch School
A Year in the Life of a Forest Kindergarten
Come hear about the adventures and misadventures of the first year of a Forest Kindergarten. Share your own ideas and get new ideas from others about how children benefit from spending time with nature and how adults can help increase children's opportunities to be outside.
Samantha Matalone Cook – Curiosity Hacked
Hacking the Future: Creating a Learner Centered Education
Join Samantha Cook, Founder and ED of Curiosity Hacked, learning about creating/supporting a more learner-centered educational environment through mentorship, hands-on making, and hacking to integrate skill building into new or existing schools. Dive into how a hackerspace became a catalyst for self-determining and self-directed learning through a variety of programs designed to meet different needs. See concrete examples of how hard and soft skills, low tech and high tech projects, and leveraging local and global community can create an environment of possibility. Participants will be gaining new skills, work with a variety of materials, and discuss relevant ideas and examples to enhance their own visions as well as those of their students. Time will be given for personal and site specific ideas.
Barbarah Nicoll – Ubuntu Learning
This Body of Knowledge
In this workshop we will explore our self knowledge through body mapping, responding to guided activities to discover and map on our own body outline what we know of ourselves and what is important to us. Participants will be guided through an interactive and artistic experience that will include somatic awareness, working with the wisdom of the 4 directions (which includes life phases, seasons and inclinations) body mapping and group poetry writing. These activities are suited for youth (14 to 19), and of course adults of all ages. These activities invite participants to employ their “soft will”, a way of looking inward with courage to see oneself, in contrast to the “hard will” that is often engaged when one is given a task to fulfill, often with an overt or hidden requirement to please an authority figure. This holistic and artistic engagement includes improvisation, somatic awareness (coming to know our own bodies as a source of knowledge), expressive arts, biography questions, journaling and group poetry. This workshop is fully interactive and invitational.
