This week I had the privilege of attending the Deeper Learning Conference at High Tech High in San Diego. This was my third year, or as Marc Chun (of the Hewlett Foundation) would call it “my threequal”. And with this third year came high expectations, which were met with satisfaction and genuine fulfillment.

The conference kicked off with the Keynote speaker Chris Emdin.  If you haven’t heard of this individual or hip-hop education, you HAVE to check out his work. To say he was inspiring is an understatement. He spoke of personal excavations that must lead to institutional excavations-beyond unpacking our identity and filters we bring to our work, and disrupting the status quo and barriers to social justice; he argues for “setting them ablaze”. As an individual who loves theory, I appreciated his numerous philosophic references-from Foucault and Bordeaux to Ladson-Billings. But what I loved even more was that be pushed beyond Critical Theory and Culturally Responsive Pedgagogy by suggesting a “Reality Pedagogy” that goes even deeper into understanding our students, their communities and their story.  He spoke of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as what students are often struggling with from their communities, and then continued to introduce “Poor Teaching Stress Disorder”; which was the bridge to disengagement in our generation of youth-to which was met with “amen”s, finger snaps and standing ovations from the crowd. And just when my inspiration was angsting into a feeling of overwhelmed or helpless,  he turned down the pressure (and volume-dude can yell!). He said “the only population that can truly disrupt is us” [the people in this room-teachers and school leaders]. He then offered some tangible next steps to try out for folks who are ready to take up the charge: Establishing cogentive teaching relationships, co-teaching with students, cosmopolitanism, context, content and competition. If any of these “c’s” interest you, hit him up on Twitter (@chrisedmin) he WILL respond-he did for every participant that reached out to him personally this week.

New this year to the conference were Maker Dens-small areas where participants could sit down and play with materials and learn something new at your leisure. During this time I built at Rokenbok catapult and then learned about circuits and Ohms Law [a little more than i signed up for, but what are ya gonna do?!]  by building my very own!

 

I opted into the Deep Dive (an all day experience of learning) with Bryan Meyer and Sarah Stong of High Tech High, on mathematical modeling. I was immediately struck by how we were welcomed into the room-we were asked to pick strips of paper that identified our strengths. 

We were then seated in a small group with people who had different strengths and asked to actually experience a problem, as if we were students. Our problem related to Daylight Savings Time and developing a recommendation for the “best” use of DST for North America. Like a good problem, this was so open-ended that the 5 groups in the room came up with diverse approaches to defining the actual problem. With inspiring facilitation, we were gently prompted to move throughout the modeling process  by identifying and quantifying variables, researching, collaborating, hearing diverse approaches, re-thinking, persisting and finally coming up with a solution we were proud enough to exhibit to our colleagues at the conference, at the end of the day. As a person who has never identified myself as a “math person” I felt oddly comfortable in this setting. For the first time (possibly in my life) I felt like I had something to offer a math classroom. Not only did i learn about math and daylight savings time but my interest was peaked to explore so many other unexpected topics as we researched and struggled throughout this process. It was a true learning experience-personally and professionally.

I look forward to this conference every year because it is an opportunity to have conversations with like-minded individuals and to be exposed to new ways of thinking and doing school. If attending this conference in the future is not realistic for you I would suggest connecting with folks on Twitter using #deeperlearning-the community is growing (in numbers, geographical location and momentum) fast-it’s an exciting time to hop in!