2027 TransformEd: Teaching & Learning Conference

Encouraging young students to take responsibility in the process of learning begins with conversation rooted in asking rather than telling. Provide a path for them to connect to learning and resources to which they can speak and share collaboratively with peers and parents. Help guide goals, objectives, and feedback for continued learning. This session provides an opportunity for teachers to gain insight into successful strategies that shape independence and build learners who understand the goals for producing, transferring, and leading their own learning.

Research from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University tells us that brain architecture is shaped over time by genetics, relationships, experiences, and environments. Because brain development is especially rapid during the early years, educators have a powerful opportunity and responsibility to build strong foundations for future learning and well-being.

In this interactive session, educators and school leaders will examine how everyday interactions, instructional choices, and classroom environments shape young children’s developing brains. Participants will explore how to design deep, complex, collaborative learning experiences and environments that foster belonging, connection, beauty, independence, and exploration.

Drawing on research, reflection, and real-world examples, participants will evaluate their current practices and leave with a practical framework and actionable strategies to strengthen relationships, deepen thinking, cultivate curiosity, and prepare young children for future learning.

Creativity is often viewed as something reserved for artists and musicians, but, in reality, it is one of the most valuable skills students can develop. This session will explore why creativity is a form of intelligence that strengthens critical thinking, problem-solving, innovation, and resilience across every discipline. Discover practical, classroom-ready strategies that intentionally develop creative thinking in students, regardless of your subject area. Experience engaging exercises that encourage divergent thinking, collaboration, and thoughtful risk-taking, and leave with adaptable resources that can be implemented immediately.

We are at a turning point in education, where artificial intelligence is reshaping the classroom. Students are reading less, and the temptation to rely on AI as a shortcut is growing. At the same time, teachers are often working in isolation and need meaningful data to assess student growth.

We must respond with urgency and intention. Rather than resisting AI, we can use it as a tool to enhance instruction, increase efficiency, and improve student outcomes.

In this session, discover strategies and resources used to rethink assessment practices, including AI prompts that have been helpful, as well as resources/articles to think through the philosophical and pedagogical implications of active AI use in the classroom. We'll discuss how to shift a school’s culture around AI use, both for students and for faculty. 

Explore how embodied cognition research and John Dewey's philosophy of experience converge to reshape instructional design in elementary classrooms and libraries. Examine spatial layout, tactile engagement, and movement-based routines as engines of deeper, more personal learning, not peripheral management choices. Investigate the difference between learning done to students and learning done with them, using real classroom and library spaces as working case studies. Practice translating abstract concepts into embodied, hands-on routines that build metacognitive awareness and visible thinking. Leave with a framework for auditing your own instructional space through an embodied-cognition lens, plus concrete strategies for redesigning instruction, so students physically participate in constructing meaning rather than passively receiving it. Ideal for teachers, librarians, and instructional coaches ready to rethink how bodies, spaces, and minds work together in learning.

When it comes to giving academic feedback, how do schools craft and share an assessment “language” that reduces perfectionism, increases agency, and fosters growth in students, teachers, and families? 

At Durham Academy Middle School, we have ceased using traditional grades and transformed our teaching and learning to a competency-based approach that focuses on skills and growth over perfection. We’ll share how the vocabulary and systems we use for this model prepare our students to succeed even as we send them to an upper school with letter grades. Of course, there have been hard lessons we’ve learned as well, particularly when it comes to finding a learning management system that worked for us. We’ll pass those insights along too.

Participants in the session will leave with the big picture of why a focus on skills and proficiency helps students improve their metacognitive learning skills and how competency-based rubric design helps students and teachers keep skills and progress at the center of their practice. We will provide strategies for teachers to implement small and meaningful changes in their assessment approach, changes that can be used both in traditional numerical grading and competency-based assessment systems. Finally, we’ll show the ways that adopting competency-based language for even a few years can benefit students through graduation and beyond.