Summer Virtual Meeting
August 6-7, 2020
Keeping it Fierce: Affirming our Commitment to Equity and Excellence
We invite you to join us virtually August 6-7 for an educational conference like no other — SRI Summer Virtual Meeting 2020 — a conference where educators create a community of learners who share their professional practice and learn from its close, public examination. Join the virtual Summer Meeting to practice the skills, habits, and dispositions of professional collaboration and reflective discourse using SRI protocols and resources.
These unimaginable times have affirmed what we have always known. The work of leading, teaching, and learning cannot be done in isolation. We need the power of community to do the deep work necessary to achieve equity and excellence in schools. Together we will renew our commitment to educational equity and excellence, and together, we will rekindle our passion for leading, teaching and learning. Our collective wisdom will help us find the courage and comfort needed to bring our best selves back to our schools and our students. Summer Meeting is an opportunity to access, engage, and be challenged through sustained conversation about what matters most – improving teaching and learning experiences, through a lens of equity, to make schools better places for every learner.
Highlights of Summer Virtual Meeting 2020
- Reflective learning groups — the centerpiece of SRI Summer Virtual Meeting is what distinguishes our meeting from other educational conferences. In these groups, we’ll use SRI protocols to hold us as we engage in complex, challenging, and sometimes, difficult conversations about leading, teaching, and learning; and
- A Keynote Speaker, who will charge us in our work to push for equity in our schools and our practices.
More Information and Registration
Summer Virtual Meeting Facilitators Needed
At the center of our virtual conference are reflective learning groups, the experience that sets SRI Summer Meeting apart from other virtual educational experiences.
Reflective learning groups at Summer Virtual Meeting will provide opportunities for every learner to:
- engage in rich and meaningful conversations focused on equity, and specifically, racial equity;
- place themselves on their equity journey;
- articulate their identities, assumptions, and biases and how they can show up in teaching, learning, and facilitation;
- use SRI tools and practices to make their practice public and sustain challenging and complex learning.
Each virtual reflective learning group is lead by two co-facilitators. Facilitators create the conditions for authentic collaborative and reflective discourse to occur. At Summer Meeting we focus the work of the group through a lens of equity and hold space for conversations about racial identity. We plan and co-design agendas for our group, AND actively participate in the group’s learning. By reading verbal and nonverbal cues that might signify safety or danger, we manage potential anxiety and dissonance in ourselves and in our groups. Learning in these ways together demands that we facilitate for the success of the group without becoming the facilitator-as-expert. Less about us, more about others.
Please consider applying to co-facilitate a reflective learning group. And, if you know someone who would be a terrific Virtual Summer Meeting facilitator and you’d love to co-facilitate with them, please reach out and ask them to apply!
Summer Meeting registration fee will be reduced for co-facilitators. Co-facilitator duties will require you to be fully present online from Thursday, Aug. 6 and Friday Aug. 7.
Please request more information or direct questions and concerns to Deirdre Williams deirdre@schoolreforminitiative.org.
Thank you, in advance, for applying to facilitate at SRI Virtual Summer Meeting. Our learning will be richer because you’ve stepped up.
Apply now through the SRI Site
Leading Powerful Adult Learning Online
May 26, 28, June 2, 4, 2020
Time: 2-5pm Eastern Time
This virtual learning series is designed for leaders, coaches, or those who are often called upon to facilitate meetings or deliver professional development and need support in designing, implementing and supporting adult learning particularly in virtual learning spaces. Using research-based tools and strategies, participants learn how to build community virtually, and nurture ongoing conversations designed to improve leading, teaching and learning. The virtual workshop provides in-depth study of protocols; introduces adult learning theory; builds explicit connections between adult learning and student success; supports participants to ask for and receive feedback critical to their success; and enables participants to design action plans that facilitate the improvement of teaching and learning through the lens of educational equity and excellence. By the conclusion of the 4-part workshop, participants will:
- Gain an understanding of adult learning theory;
- Understand the connection between adult learning and school transformation;
- Understand core considerations when leading in virtual spaces with SRI reflective tools and processes;
- Explore themselves as leaders; and
- Begin to develop and/or deepen the facilitative skills needed to lead educators’ learning
More Information and Registration
#10forSRI
Our goal for 2020 is to help educators remember why they became educators, and to do whatever we can to not only help them to ‘feel’ supported, but to actually ‘be’ supported, and work together to create the schools our students deserve. I hope you will join me and continue to support SRI!
SRI is fiercely committed to educational equity and excellence, and we cannot do this work without your support!
Thank you for your commitment to students, families and communities!
Do you have news to share? Interesting things happening in your area? Please let us know so we can share with our community! Email Chris Jones, chris@schoolreforminitiative.org.
Thank you,
Deirdre Williams and Chris Jones
On behalf of School Reform Initiative
