Every year, the SXSW EDU Conference & Festival brings together a global community of optimistic, forward-thinking, purpose-driven stakeholders with a shared goal of impacting the future of teaching and learning.

New Profit team members and grantee-partners are proposing a number of sessions for the 2020 SXSW EDU Conference being held March 9-12 in Austin, TX. We need your help us get these sessions selected so that our community can share insights and lessons learned from our work to create and spread high-quality learning environments and to empower and activate students, parents, teachers, and communities in designing these learning environments. Between now and August 23rd, we invite you to participate in SXSW EDU’s public voting process and to “vote up” the session ideas that you that you want to see at SXSW EDU 2020 (please note that you will be required to create a free SXSW EDU Panel Picker account in order to vote).

Keep reading for more details on the proposed panels and click the links to vote!

Shifting a System: The Reimagine Learning Network – Shifting a system showcases a cross-sector network that coalesced behind a shared vision for K-12 education. Over 6 years, the network created learning environments that unleash creativity and potential in students, including those who have been historically underserved. By scaling models and advocating for policies focused on social and emotional learning, learner diversity, and trauma in classrooms and beyond, this network reimagined how learning happens for over 7 million children nationwide. Click here to vote!

Parent Power: Key to Transforming Education Systems – All communities care equally about the education and future of their children. But caring is not the same as power. Most parents in underperforming school systems have neither the economic power to move to better school systems, nor do they know how to exercise their personal and political power to influence change. This session explores: (1) how parent leaders organize their community and activate their power to drive change; and (2) how as their allies we need to overcome our biases to forge common values that then enable change to happen. Click here to vote!

Just Do It! Partnerships for Scaling Impact – New Profit Partner, Angela Jackson, will join Vanessa Wilkins of Future School Lab and Thuan Nguyen of AVID, to share how business and philanthropy can scale impact by partnering with educators and nonprofit leaders. NIKE led a unique public-private partnership to scale AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) statewide in Oregon. NIKE leveraged its talent and resources to amplify impact. Local foundations collaborated for scale. AVID helps 7,000 schools across the US shift to a more equitable, student centered approach, training 80,000 educators annually to close the opportunity gap. Click here to vote!

Big Picture Learning

Building Social Capital @Scale Through Internships – Across the United States there is momentum building to provide high-school-aged students opportunities to engage in interest-driven career exploration including internships. These experiences contribute to progress in academic skills, vocational readiness, and development of social capital known to support successful entry in post-secondary education and work. Come learn from leading examples in the field who are demonstrating early success implementing a variety of programs at regional scale. Click here to vote!

We Want In! 21st Century Educational Inclusion – The 21st century demands all students, not just those with inherent privilege to have transferable skills. Failing this imperative for all learners short changes those students, their communities, states, and nation. Our panel will share learning from work with 7 national networks focused on 21st century learning to identify how policies and practices can empower all students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions essential to college, career, and civic life. Click here to vote!

Highlander Institute:

Pathways to Personalization: School Redesign – Everyone is rethinking schools right now. The movement toward increased personalization is gaining momentum, but many leaders don’t know where to begin or how to scale practices beyond early pilots. This session will help school leaders design & scale personalized learning initiatives across a school/district by diving into Highlander Institute’s linear framework for guiding school redesign, which helps determine readiness, create a vision, launch & evaluate pilots, and scale best practices. Click here to vote!

What Happens When K12 and Ed Prep Combine Forces? – Too often, education preparation and K-12 education efforts are siloed–with the great learnings from one sector not transferring well to the other. Come learn about two efforts piloted in RI to fix that: An Ed Prep Design Challenge partnering K-12 educators & ed prep programs on better preparing ELL educators and a fellowship for faculty run by K-12 coaches to embed personalized learning pedagogies into courses. This session will share work & explain how you can replicate in your own contexts. Click here to vote!

Transforming Austin ISD Through Personalization – Learn about how (x) school in Austin ISD has transformed their school model by deeply engaging in Highlander Institute’s Pathways to Personalization framework. Hear from local district administrators, principals, teachers, parents, students, and community members about forming a design team, crafting a shared vision, and the pilot initiatives that are currently underway at the school. Click here to vote!

iNACOL

A Call to Higher Ideals: Systems Change & Equity – A strong K-12 public education system is essential for a democracy and civil society to thrive. It is time to build a system on the core principle that all students can succeed. Join this session for advancing thinking to elevate the hard questions about the purpose of our education systems. We should raise our collective consciousness and ask whether today’s systems are fit for purpose and do they meet the needs of each and every learner. Click here to vote!

LEAP Innovations

Making Good on the Promise of Brown V. Board – Sixty-five years after the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in Brown v. Board, our schools are still separate and unequal. And so are our classrooms. Any focus on combatting segregation must account for the inequities present even when students of different racial backgrounds learn in the same classrooms. Join this panel of advocates for a discussion on how teachers and schools can counter bias and injustice to build pathways to opportunity for all students in the modern classroom. Click here to vote!

PowerMyLearning

Increasing Teacher Leadership & School Culture – School culture is the catalyst to building teacher leadership opportunities and having clear school-wide communication. Learn strategies to build teacher leadership capacity and create an action plan for your school. Discover your communication style and how to use this knowledge to establish strong communication systems. Click here to vote!

“These Kids” and Other Coded Conversations – How often have you heard adults talk about “these kids,” as in “that would never work for these kids” or “these kids don’t know how to behave?” What mindsets hide behind these coded comments, and how can we engage productively? In this campfire session, participants will define their own terms of engagement for addressing coded language, and discuss how tools and frameworks can be used in tough conversations. We’re not experts but we feel strongly that this conversation has a place at SXSWEdu. Click here to vote!

The Learning Accelerator

BL/PL Toolbox: Putting Innovation into Action – Educators and leaders strive to ensure that ALL students are supported in an effective and equitable manner. Integrating technology with in-person instruction through personalized and blended learning can be a powerful way to achieve this goal. This interactive, learner-centered session offers stations featuring: how to set up specific structures (e.g., station rotation), strategic planning with data, and how to implement specific strategies to personalize & engage students in their own learning. Speakers include members of the TLA team: Juliana Finegan, Nithi Thomas, and Jeremy Jones. Click here to vote!

Modeling Best Practices: Strategic PD for Educators – Looking for ways to revamp & revitalize your current approach to professional learning for innovative models? Come join a team of district & ecosystem leaders in a hands-on workshop where you will explore key tangible, practice-based strategies around onboarding, effective adult learning, & creative ways to package your PD to inspire & engage. The workshop will include insights, an exploration of resources, and time for action planning so that you can apply your learning immediately! Speakers include Jin-Soo Huh (education innovator), Juliana Finegan (TLA), and Kristen Watkins (Dallas Independent School District). Click here to vote!

Real Talk: Are We Achieving Equity in Ed Reform? – Education reform efforts can come in many different shapes and sizes, all with the goal of achieving educational equity. We know our system of schooling needs new ideas to better prepare our future generations. But with so many efforts, where have we succeeded and fallen short in seeking equity in schools? Let’s grapple with this challenging question together and have an honest conversation on how equity is looking in education reform to date. Click here to vote!

Transcend

Measuring What Matters in the Classroom – The industrial-age system of education has focused on measuring seat time, grade-point averages, and standardized test scores. What does a post-industrial educational system need to measure in order to better prepare all learners for an era of accelerating change? In this session, research and frameworks will be shared to guide an inquiry into identifying, capturing, and using whole-child measures to build learner agency, collaboration, and problem-solving. Click here to vote!

Designing for Learning: Applying Learning Science – How does learning happen, and how can we design environments to support it? Research has given us important insights and models to help school designers answer these questions, but this research base is extensive, complex, and encumbered by the design of traditional schools. Transcend’s Designing for Learning resources summarize in digestible and actionable ways what is known about how learning happens. This panel will discuss how designers are applying these resources to learning environments. Click here to vote!