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Join this welcoming session for first-time Summer Institute attendees! Get a quick overview of the schedule and key sessions, connect with others, ask questions, and gain tips to make the most of your experience.
“Release the Power: Reimagining Early Release Days Through Design Thinking, UDL, and Innovation” explores how elementary school leaders can transform shortened school days into meaningful learning opportunities for students. Early Release Days often present a leadership challenge: balancing staff professional development time while ensuring students remain engaged in purposeful learning. Too often, these days default to passive activities or unstructured programming. This session encourages leaders to rethink Early Release Days as opportunities for creativity, problem-solving, and student voice.
Participants will explore how the Engineering Design Process (EDP) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can support innovative and inclusive student experiences. Through a hands-on design activity, collaborative discussion, and practical planning tools, leaders will gain strategies to design engaging Early Release programming that is both impactful for students and feasible for schools.
A lot has changed FERPA was written in 1974. Directory information is no longer confined to paper. Text and photos are can be scraped, consolidated, and searched from the web. Students' social lives are intertwined with their online presence. Yet many of our school privacy practices are grounded in assumptions from a half-century ago that no longer hold true. In this session, we will engage in collaborative activities and discussions to interrogate the assumptions behind our current practices, identify unmet needs, and brainstorm guiding principles that center students' well-being and autonomy in privacy practices grounded in the modern landscape.
