The Nueva School's Innovative Learning Conference

This presentation will share empirical research and guided experiential practices of mindfulness, compassion, and communication. The goal is to elucidate an arc of training the mind, from contemplation to interpersonal skills to wellbeing.

Information technology holds great promise for transforming education — the use of digital devices, courseware, apps, games, and websites in the classroom has significant potential for personalized learning, new and innovative activities, and enhanced home-school connections. But with this power come behavioral and ethical issues, both in schools and at home: privacy violations, hate speech, new permutations of cyberbullying, fake news, digital addiction, FOMO (“fear of missing out”), rising anxiety levels, and mental health issues. In 2019, Common Sense updated its K–12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum — co-developed with the Project Zero team at the Harvard Graduate School of Education — to help educators address the digital dilemmas students are facing today. Linda Burch will share some key components of the curriculum to help educators teach digital citizenship as a means to promote healthy tech use.

Join Eye to Eye’s President Marcus Soutra as he shares his lived experience with dyslexia and ADHD, and best practices to support students with learning and attention issues. With over 20 years of work in the field, Eye to Eye’s award-winning program empowers students who learn differently by teaching social-emotional skills, providing supportive environments to foster positive identity, and encouraging agency.

Will you be targeted with fake news in the 2020 election campaign? Inappropriate use of personal data demonstrates that privacy is the new security. Innovations in technology, low-cost storage and processing, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things — all these are driving the “data age.” They represent a few of the reasons why students need to understand that their personal data has tremendous value and needs to be protected just like any other valuable asset. The right to privacy is becoming one of the hottest topics around the globe, and governments are trying to put controls in place to protect consumers. Europe legislated in 2018 and the California Consumer Privacy Act is due to take effect in 2020. Are we truly aware of the consequences of personal information being collected? We will discuss this from a professional perspective — as well as my personal experience of being part of a data breach — and we will examine some of the considerations and protections we should all take when granting access to our personal information.

Today's youth are leading the movement for climate justice, yet our education system fails to deliver on the great challenge of our time.  Climate change, if taught at all, is still too often framed as a scientific problem (rather than a political one), as an environmental problem (rather than an all-encompassing humanitarian injustice), and as a distant problem in both time and space (rather than an immediate lived reality).  Solutions are too often given as changing lightbulbs, rather than the necessary systemic restructuring of the global economy.  I will speak about my experience as a climate scientist-turned-educator and what I've learned about inspiring students to tackle this great challenge.  I believe that climate educators' delivery must be honest, definite, impassioned, and empowering.  Students can handle the truth about the gravity of what we face, the forces keeping us mired in the status quo, and what we must do to break out.  Educators must learn to do the same.