Around the country – and the globe – schools are changing to modernize how teachers teach and how students learn – replacing traditional, time-based structures with new innovative, mastery-based, student-centered learning models.
Educators and school leaders are driving this transformation and re-imagining teaching and learning with new school designs to ensure all students build knowledge and skills, can apply it to real-world problems, and build the competencies they need to become lifelong learners. Innovative educators and experts come together at the Aurora Institute Symposium year after year to find their tribe, learn together, identify solutions to their toughest challenges, and share the latest trends and innovations in future-focused education.
It is the field’s largest convening of professionals dedicated to student-centered learning, covering the greatest depth of practice, policy, and research. It is an unrivaled opportunity to meet like-minded professionals and allies, form relationships with others at the frontlines of next-generation learning, and add the field’s foremost thought leaders to your professional network.
Why You Should Attend
Connection and Collaboration
The Symposium links you with peers from all over the world who become valuable resources for new strategies, referrals, and best practices. Teachers and school leaders use the Symposium as a platform to share their models and to encourage school visits and partnerships on shared goals.
Real-World Solutions and Visionaries from the Field
The Aurora Institute Symposium is the largest gathering of new, developing, and experienced practitioners shaping the future of public education. It is the place where educators join an international conversation about the purpose of education and how to transform it to be fit for purpose. Sessions and workshops encourage the real-time development of solutions to common needs, such as incorporating emerging knowledge from research, designing learning experience, for local context, and drawing on local wisdom for community engagement strategies and policy advocacy tactics.
The Symposium also features a diverse lineup of internationally recognized education authorities and influencers. Our keynotes, sessions, and workshops are an opportunity to draw upon their deep experience, expand your ideas about what’s possible with education, apply their strategies and seed their knowledge into your teams, and inspire your school community to demand change. Every session tackles questions that are top-of-mind for practitioners. They answer questions about what has worked, how to innovate, how to scale, and how to achieve equitable access and opportunity.
Professional Learning
The Symposium offers highly rated professional development in the field for educators, school leaders, superintendents, board members, coaches, and practitioners. Our sessions and workshops provide hands-on, interactive learning experiences, and thoughtful strategies to advance student-centered pedagogy. The conference provides state and local policymakers, education leaders, and advocates with comprehensive information on new trends, successful policies, common entry points, financing programs, and the latest innovations that are transforming education for the 21st century.
More than 85 percent of attendees say the Symposium deepens their knowledge of student-centered learning. They tell us that what they learn directly applies to their jobs and leads to concrete implementation steps or other forward movement at their schools and organizations. Eighty-seven percent say they choose the Aurora Institute Symposium to meet their networking and learning needs.
Why We Created the Symposium
The Symposium brings together experts, practitioners, teachers, policymakers, technical assistance providers, and researchers to offer an opportunity for deepening understanding on a variety of new student-centered learning models while affording a big picture view on the future of K-12 education. It is a forum to showcase the field’s brightest ideas; emerging trends; and the models, strategies, and tools that are transforming K-12 schools around the globe.
Who Is the Symposium for?
The Aurora Institute Symposium is the largest gathering of new, developing, and experienced practitioners shaping the future of public education. It is the place where educators join an international conversation about the purpose of education and how to transform it to be fit for purpose. Sessions and workshops encourage the real-time development of solutions to common needs, such as incorporating emerging knowledge from research, designing learning experience for local context, and drawing on local wisdom for community engagement strategies and policy advocacy tactics.
- Educators
- Principals
- Administrators
- Superintendents
- Practitioners
- Non-profit Organizations
- State Policymakers
- Researchers
- School Board Members
- Design Thinkers
- Philanthropists
- Learners of All Ages
