Conference: What Works in Urban Schools?

As part of an ongoing effort to build bridges among charter and district school educators, KIPP NYC announced today it will host the second annual What Works in UrbanSchools conference on Saturday, January 5, 2013. Registration for the conference opened this week and KIPP NYC expects to double attendance over last year from 400 to 800 teachers.

What Works in Urban Schools is a daylong series of panels and workshops led by some of the nation’s most prominent education practitioners and thinkers.  The day is organized to encourage participants to learn with and from each other by sharing their experiences and building a new knowledge base to take back to their classrooms.

This year, key panelists and speakers include:

·      NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott
·      KIPP Co-Founder Dave Levin
·      Scholastic Education Consultant Dr. Maria Elena Arguelles
·      Leading hip-hop generation activist Marc Lamont Hill
·      Roses in Concrete leader Jeff Duncan Andrade
·      Culham Writing Laboratory founder Ruth Culham

Session highlights include:

·      Christopher Emdin: “Exploring the Potential of Social Media in the Classroom”
·      Debon Lewis and Orpheus Williams: “Working with the Teacher Next Door…It Takes a Village”
·      Brent Maddin: “Preventing Rigor Mortis: Cultivating a Culture of Rigor.”

In January 2012, more than 400 city teachers attended 30 workshops spanning K-12 content areas at the first What Works in Urban Schools conference. Educators shared classroom challenges and talked about writing, STEM education, character, the Common Core, college readiness and more.

In addition to KIPP, other sponsors include TNTP, New Visions for Public Schools, Google, Teaching Matters and Scholastic. A full list of panelists and workshops is available at www.whatworksinurbanschools.orgRegistration is open until December 31st, 2012, or on reaching capacity.  Fees are $35 per participant through October 31st, 2012 and $50 thereafter.