Iyanla Vanzant said, “When you stand and share your story in an empowering way, your story will heal you and your story will heal somebody else.” Come experience how to craft a Moth-style storytelling unit that helps create belonging and prepares MLLs to tell their stories to authentic audiences (i.e. on stage, to small groups, for personal statements and job interviews). In this workshop, you will hear Brooklyn International HS students tell their stories, experience the process of crafting and revising a story, and create and share your own story. This workshop is best suited for humanities teachers, language teachers, literacy teachers, and guidance counselors.

Facilitator(s): Shahzia Pirani Mellstrom 

Audience: Humanities Educators, Support Staff

Are you looking to design or improve a multi-tiered support system for students? In this workshop, participants will explore the social-emotional-learning screener process at Pan American High School-Elmhurst that has been designed to meet the specific needs of their student population and has helped them design a multi-tiered support system. During this session, participants will have the opportunity to share processes their school uses and engage in a problem of practice discussion. This workshop is open to all, but may be especially helpful for counselors, social workers, or teachers working closely with student support and advisory.

Facilitator(s): Karla Pina and Katherine Villalobos

Audience: Counselors, Social workers, Educators who work with student support and advisory

This workshop brings together social workers and school counselors to share successful initiatives, workshop problems of practice and create a collaborative network of resource sharing across schools. Participants will also begin to create a space for sharing resources and problem-solving in our unique INPS schools. Participants will come away with new ideas to implement at their schools to support the socio-emotional and mental health of the students, as well as resources to utilize at their schools.

Facilitator(s): Elena Sullivan and Sara Green

Audience: Counselors, Social workers, School Support Staff 

How can we use Socratic Seminars to create safe spaces for students to engage in challenging discussions? Socratic Seminar is a scaffolded, structured discussion technique that gives MLLs an opportunity to engage in critical listening and speaking skills in a whole-class setting. This technique is also provides a golden opportunity for students to practice supporting claims using text-based evidence. In this workshop, participants will experience the technique firsthand as key steps in the process are highlighted and put into practice. Participants will reflect and consider how they may use Socratic Seminar in their classrooms.

Facilitator(s): Tim Ross

Audience: Humanities Educators

Do you find yourself reteaching, especially around content you thought your students had a good handle on? How often do you hear, “I don’t know how to start?” Maybe you should try a reference binder. In this workshop, participants will have access to various types of reference binders to see all of the instructional possibilities that they afford in regard to competency/outcome development, developing independent learning and reflection, and student collaboration. Then, participants will have the opportunity to start planning and creating their very own reference binders! All educators are welcome!

Facilitator(s): Marc McEwan 

Audience: All Educators

This interactive workshop models the process of creating Mind Mirrors, a collaborative approach to analyzing characters from literature. Mind MIrror posters use descriptions, symbols and direct quotes to develop a portrait of a character from a piece of literature. A portrait’s eyes may be adjectives describing the character while quotes about the character make up the hair and a symbol that represents the character could be the nose and so on. Mind Mirrors that students have created from the novel Frankenstein will be used to model the final result. To try out the activity themselves, participants will split into groups to read an adapted piece of classic literature. Then they will choose a character from what they read and use graphic organizers to create the content for their portraits. Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on the process and discuss implementation ideas through a gallery walk.

Facilitator(s): Wesley Hoffman

Audience: Humanities Educators, Open to all

How can we adapt or design project-based science units to meet the needs of our multilingual learners? This workshop will focus on strategies, activities, and an adapted culminating project based assessment task (PBAT) pertaining to both current and historic earthquakes around the world. This workshop will focus on science activities, however all material can be edited to best suit your classroom content. All educators are welcome! This workshop is offered in the morning and afternoon.

Facilitator(s): Leonard Melzer 

Audience: Science Educators, All Educators 

Whether we are trying to bring families into our school, connect with outside organizations, or simply trying to foster a safe and welcoming environment, building a strong school community is a demanding task. In this workshop, participants explore two facets of maintaining a healthy community: 1) planning and running events that bring families and community members into our schools, and 2) responding in the moment to conflict in order to de-escalate in a way that demonstrates compassion and care. Participants will explore a successful community engagement event, looking at the effort and strategy that goes into ensuring its success. As well, participants will hear from an experienced mediator, learn the tell-tale signs of imminent tension, and rehearse valuable de-escalation techniques. Participants will walk away from the session more prepared to both 1) pro-actively nurture stronger relationships beyond the walls of the school, and 2) ensure a safe and welcoming environment within, even when tensions run high.

Facilitator(s): Mariano Munoz

Audience: School support staff, Open to All

In this workshop, participants will explore a semester-long inquiry project combining heroes and picture books. This process entails examining a variety of picture books, identifying characteristics of the genre, conducting research, creative writing, and finally creating an original page of a picture book. There will then be an opportunity to discuss how incorporating multiple languages can deepen both learning and storytelling. Participants will be able to explore resources and ways in which teachers can collaborate with librarians or other colleagues and leave ready-to-use resources and activities plus have concrete plans to develop authentic project-based learning by incorporating research skills and creative writing in the classroom. This session is intended for teachers of any subject area with research and writing outcomes and librarians.

Facilitator(s): Tracy Post Teixeira and Phoebe Lichty

Audience: All Educators 

In this workshop, teachers will explore and assess the power of the do now while making connections to the real world. STEM and native language arts teachers join forces to provide an unconventional approach to reimagining the do now as a powerful tool in fortifying multidisciplinary subjects while establishing bridges to the real world. Diversifying the use of the do now provides different points of access to diverse learning populations. Participants will walk away with a new insight of utilizing do nows and new strategies to turn key to their school communities. All educators and instructional coaches are welcome!

Facilitator(s): Gracia Guzman and Danica Mendez

Audience: All Educators 

We’ve all fallen victim to the pitfalls of long-term planning. We get overly ambitious, and can’t accomplish everything we wanted to. We underplan, students finish far earlier than expected, and now we have three weeks to fill. In this workshop, participants will have access to planning templates for full-year curriculum maps, unit plans, weekly plans, and a one-page pacing calendar to help them plan out the remainder of the year and/or start planning early for next year. We will also discuss basics for planning a successful unit, creating units that interconnect to maximize and leverage student analysis and thinking, and how to provide multiple opportunities for students to gain competency in a course’s key skills/outcomes. This workshop is intended for any staff members looking to create or aid in teacher reflection and long-term planning, especially around connections between units, providing multiple opportunities for competencies/outcomes, and pacing units.

Facilitator(s): Marc McEwan

Audience: All Educators

Are you looking to design or improve a multi-tiered support system for students? In this workshop, participants will explore the social-emotional-learning screener process at Pan American High School-Elmhurst that has been designed to meet the specific needs of their student population and has helped them design a multi-tiered support system. During this session, participants will have the opportunity to share processes their school uses and engage in a problem of practice discussion. This workshop is open to all, but may be especially helpful for counselors, social workers, or teachers working closely with student support and advisory.

Facilitator(s): Karla Pina and Katherine Villalobos

Audience: Counselors, Social workers, Educators who work with student support and advisory

This workshop brings together social workers and school counselors to share successful initiatives, workshop problems of practice and create a collaborative network of resource sharing across schools. Participants will also begin to create a space for sharing resources and problem-solving in our unique INPS schools. Participants will come away with new ideas to implement at their schools to support the socio-emotional and mental health of the students, as well as resources to utilize at their schools.

Facilitator(s): Elena Sullivan and Sara Green 

Audience: Counselors, Social workers, School Support Staff 

How can we create classroom environments that empower students to design, self-select, and explore their own math-related questions to enhance understanding and cultivate student agency? In this workshop, teachers will experience the facilitation process that will allow students’ voices and learning to flourish over time by adapting the Question Formulation Technique (QFT). Teachers will receive support in planning and developing their class question focus as they begin integrating QFT into their instructional practice. Teachers will leave this workshop with instructional practices that empower immigrant students to engage in direct or indirect social action projects within their communities.

Facilitator(s): Ernesto S. Tabajonda

Audience: All Educators

How can we use Socratic Seminars to create safe spaces for students to engage in challenging discussions? Socratic Seminar is a scaffolded, structured discussion technique that gives MLLs an opportunity to engage in critical listening and speaking skills in a whole-class setting. This technique is also provides a golden opportunity for students to practice supporting claims using text-based evidence. In this workshop, participants will experience the technique firsthand as key steps in the process are highlighted and put into practice. Participants will reflect and consider how they may use Socratic Seminar in their classrooms.

Facilitator(s): Tim Ross

Audience: Humanities Educators

How can we adapt or design project-based science units to meet the needs of our multilingual learners? This workshop will focus on strategies, activities, and an adapted culminating project based assessment task (PBAT) pertaining to both current and historic earthquakes around the world. This workshop will focus on science activities, however all material can be edited to best suit your classroom content. All educators are welcome! This workshop is offered in the morning and afternoon.

Facilitator(s): Leonard Melzer 

Audience: Science Educators, All Educators 

How can integrating the arts into your social studies curriculum unlock new dimensions of understanding and engagement for your students? In this workshop, you will learn about collaboration between a Global Studies teacher who integrated a teaching artist from the organization City Lore into a unit on West African Empires. We will share how Ghanaian dancer Fofoo Attiso and the tradition he represents, was integrated into a unit on the Empires of West Africa. The unit culminated in students creating their own dances/ dramas to represent the life of a West African king. This workshop will guide you through the process of how we incorporated rhythm, dance, and drumming into a unit on West African Empires. Participants will have a chance to brainstorm some units that could benefit from the support of teaching artist and learn about City Lore’s program, as well as have a chance to learn some rhythms and try out a few dance moves from Ghana!

Facilitator(s): Nancy Lewandowski and Fofoo Attiso

Audience: Humanities Educators

This innovative workshop will explore the rich cultural backgrounds that students bring into the classroom, highlighting how these experiences can be used as powerful tools for fostering a successful learning environment. In this session, students from diverse communities will take center stage, sharing their personal stories and educational experiences, both from their home countries and their current schooling. They will offer insights into what they wish their teachers understood about their cultures, traditions, and learning styles. Participants will engage in discussions, listen to students’ perspectives, and reflect on how these insights can help create an unbiased, culturally responsive, and more effective learning environment. Through this exchange, educators will gain valuable strategies for supporting diverse learners in any content area. All are welcome!

Facilitator(s): Sara Said and Ammad Alkhulaidi

Audience: All Educators 

Ruby Chang of Flushing IHS designed this collaborative exercise to enhance students’ oral communication and listening comprehension skills. By engaging in a shared activity with multiple-choice questions, students are encouraged to compare and discuss their responses, fostering teamwork and active participation. The collaborative activity described could be implemented to foster community building and enhance student engagement. For example, students can learn to work together to solve complex problems.

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Amy Burrous (IHS at LaGuardia)  and Hector Ruiz (SVA MFA Design for Social Innovation) collaborate to engage students in Compas, a community-designed alphabet framework that can be used to communicate, develop language and vocabulary, and can adapt to any community group in the Internationals Network. Amy and Hector’s students at IHS LaGuardia have used Compas to write about their lived experiences and to make visual poetry, combining the skills of language and design.

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Angela Papageorgiou of Flushing IHS created an explicit mini lesson for her students on simple past tense vs. present irregular and regular verbs. In the midst of integrating content and language instruction, it is important to embed explicit activities to support the language students are using in the classroom.  This is a great activity to include to support students in developing metacognition on verb conjugation in the English language.

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Amanda McKenna of Brooklyn IHS designed a Word of the Week (WoW) activity that engages students in soundwork, parts of speech, recording definitions, practice using a dictionary, and reviewing the meaning of the word by answering a question that requires comprehension of the word. This activity has helped to develop a class culture in which students know it’s okay to not know what every word means. Word of the Week allows students to take their time learning and understanding a word instead of using the internet for an immediate translation. This activity has also resulted in positive risk taking with English in the classroom and has built students’ confidence with using dictionaries prior to taking the Regents exam.

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Tim Ross of Claremont IHS shared the story of how a podcasting club, inspired by his class, expanded into live audio streams and video news coverage of Claremont’s community and events.  The podcast started as an idea from student government, and just as it was getting started, the pandemic hit and we developed the podcast in a remote setting. Now that we are back in the building, students have modernized the format to include video features and interviews. Tim continues to create a safe space for his students to pursue their interests and has encouraged them to develop a new “spinoff” podcast series that reflects student interests in content and style.

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