Presenting and Learning at the 2019 Deeper Learning Conference

Late last month, three of our staff traveled to sunny San Diego, California, to attend the 2019 version of the Deeper Learning Conference — an annual gathering of educators committed to engaging students in deeper learning. Known as DL2019, this year’s event focused on offering attendeesa better understanding of how educators can foster student engagement in deeper learning and create equitable learning environments.

By the way, if you’re unfamiliar with Deeper Learning, it refers to a set of six competencies that students need to succeed in and out of the classroom, including Content Mastery, CollaborationSelf-directed Learning, Critical Thinking & Problem SolvingEffective Communication, and Academic Mindset. Learn more at Deeper-Learning.org.

Eagle Rock was represented at DL2019 by Josán Perales, our World Languages Instructional Specialist/Instructional Coach; Cindy Elkins, our Art Instructional Specialist; and me — Doen Lee, Eagle Rock’s 2018-2019 Public Allies Fellow in Professional Development.

The conference host was High Tech High, which is an integrated network of 16 charter schools in Southern California where the design principles of equity, personalization, authentic work, and collaborative design guide the organization’s work. For our part, our Professional Development Center has had a long-standing collaboration with HTH’s Graduate School of Education, while another one of our California-based clients, iLEAD, was also Continue reading…

The PACT Process: Building a School Community Where Everyone Thrives

The Eagle Rock community has always prided itself on a tradition of coming together to create positive change. We believe that a thriving educational community is the direct result of skills, structures, and trusting relationships that are constructed through effective change processes.

As a result, school leadership, staff, and students are gathering together for a school-wide afternoon class during the second five weeks of our current trimester (ER 77) to explore an Enduring Understanding that affects us all. (For those unfamiliar with the language, an enduring understanding is a statement summarizing important ideas and core processes that are central to a discipline and have lasting value beyond the classroom.) The end result is to collectively bring our entire community together to learn and grow. The belief is that everyone involved will leave the process with a deeper understanding of each other, the skills to make positive change in communities, and specific structures that will make Eagle Rock a stronger community.

We are calling this afternoon course, “Participatory Action Community Time,” or PACT, which focuses specifically on five main areas: Continue reading…