NYSCATE 2023

The fundamental human drive to create meaning in the form of stories can be a powerful tool for learning. Not only does the act of storytelling allow learners to build vital interpersonal connections, it allows them to develop rhetorical and technical skills that are directly transferable to a variety of educational contexts. In this panel, we will share our experience with student-led storytelling workshops that promoted intergenerational learning and culminated in a Moth-style story hour. We will also share a variety of technologies that can be used to facilitate storytelling, as well as explore the ways that learners can apply their storytelling skills to other academic disciplines. 

In 2022, a French educator and a STEAM educator launched an interdisciplinary school-within-a-school in a rural high school. After only one year, the program doubled in size. In this presentation we will showcase work completed by our first two cohorts of learners, who currently receive credit for a STEAM elective, a French elective, and a required Equity credit. In addition to sharing our process for ensuring the continued growth of the program, we will use student voices and examples of student work to explain how we structure our time together, how we create a strong learning community that fosters joy and creativity, and how we ensure that student outcomes reflect NYS World Language Standards, ISTE standards, and Learning for Justice’s Social Justice Standards.

If done correctly, effective feedback and reflection can boost student engagement and help to develop essential success skills. It can also make the incorporation of ePortfolios powerful and engaging. As learners become skilled at giving and receiving critical feedback, they also develop cognitive skills such as the ability to ask clarifying questions, to summarize and paraphrase, to analyze and apply classmates’ comments to their work, and to recognize and evaluate their own patterns and habits. In this session, we will present participants with our feedback, conferencing, and reflection protocols, developed as part of Dell’s Innovator Accelerator program, and show how this protocol can be used in any subject area to support student-led learning. Participants will leave with actionable resources to help build a strong culture of feedback and reflection in their classroom.

In our second year of The Maple Syrup Project we realized our goals of expanding our sugar bush from 12 to 46 trees with 81 taps, building a K-12 program, fully integrating the French program, creating a tree-to-table opportunity, and engaging the larger community. Listen to our continuing story and our plans for incorporating English, History and Science into this school-wide project and how we use it to help build our Farm-to-School program. This session will also include a hands-on tree tapping experience and actionable resources to implement a maple syrup program in your classroom.

Looking to incorporate creative problem-solving into your and your students' learning? Join us as we explore the design process, a framework to practice creative problem-solving for students of all ages. During this session we will experience the what, why, and how of design thinking. After a rapid empathy-based design cycle, we will connect existing digital design resources with curricular-based projects that span K-12.  From short-prompts that will deepen student understanding of a problem to inquiry-based units of study, the design process and design thinking are pivotal to the integration of SEL and success skills into your classroom. Prepare to see your curriculum differently, through the lens of design and empathy!