Morning Pre-Conference Sessions: 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM PT
Student-Centered Learning and Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education
How can we bravely center learners, well-being, connection, and justice in school? We’ll look at real-life examples as we explore questions like: Can schools be responsive spaces of discovery, connection, and academic growth for a community of learners? Can we do transformational work within “the system”? What do healthy partnerships look like? Whose expertise do we value? Whose guidance do we seek? How can we draw on diverse knowledge systems and seek wellness for schools, ourselves, and our planet?
An Introduction to Competency Frameworks for Students, Educators, and Leaders
This workshop is designed to be a deep-dive, hands-on experience focused on introducing competency frameworks from across the country and providing guidance and information on how to plan, design, and implement learner-centered, competency frameworks and systems change. Participants will leave with access to the competency frameworks, including examples of educator and leader competencies, and concrete, actionable steps to begin the transformation to personalized and competency-based learning.
Afternoon Pre-Conference Sessions: 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM PT
Beginning and Sustaining Your Competency-Based Learning Journey
Authors and veteran competency-based learning (CBL) practitioners Jonathan and Brian will share the knowledge, experiences, and solutions to common problems of practice they have gained in supporting schools, including their own, with the implementation of CBL in K-12. They will reference various resources from their 2022 Solution Tree book, Unpacking the Competency-Based Classroom and facilitate guided conversations and reflection specific to Aurora Institute’s seven design principles of CBL.
Researchers Roundtable: Informing and Improving Personalized, Competency-Based, Deeper Learning
This meeting fosters a space for researchers and other stakeholders in competency-based/personalized/deeper learning to come together for information sharing, collective problem-solving, and networking. It provides an opportunity for everyone to gain and give practical, applicable insights into research and evaluation to inform and improve the field. We will share work underway and recent findings, go deep on a small number of problems of practice and do some networking.
Competency-Based Education Leadership Forum
The CBE Leadership Forum aims to bring together a diverse group of CBE stakeholders to discuss the future of the CBE field. What have we learned and what guidance can build momentum and support others? How will we build the diversity and capacity of the educator workforce to achieve CBE’s equity goals? What roles should CompetencyWorks play in the field? Help create actionable ways to move our ideas forward.
Bridging Competencies with Teaching and Evidence of Learning
This is an interactive workshop where participants will explore the bridge between competencies and teaching and learning. Participants will engage with performance outcomes which are crucial in operationalizing a graduate profile. With this knowledge, participants can begin to operationalize their competencies through the design of high-quality teaching and performance assessments.
Full-Day Pre-Conference Sessions: 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM PT
PBL Project Slice
A Project Slice demonstrates what it’s like to be a learner in Project-Based Learning by engaging participants in a fully immersive PBL experience—a “slice” of a project. As you engage as a learner in a transformative project that models the key features of the PBL process, you will build an understanding of the what and why of PBL as well as reflect on the pedagogical moves you are experiencing as PBL learners and the implications for your own schools and classrooms.
