Deeper Learning New York

What if AI wasn’t just about speed and efficiency—but about honoring the complexity, dignity, and spirit of educators? This session explores how school and system leaders can use AI to accelerate educator capacity while preserving the soul of high-quality, authentic learning. Through the lens of deeper learning, culturally responsive design, and the WBWC model, we’ll share how technology can help bring interdisciplinary teams together to co-create high-quality learning experiences where every student’s full humanity is centered—inspired by our work with neurodiverse learners and the solution for bringing deeper learning to all classrooms.

Participants will identify their ONE WORD - the one word that guides their personal and educational aspirations. Leaders will explore ways their ONE WORD can manifest in their personal and professional lives. By centering on a single unifying purpose, leaders will gain focus and clarity that can be difficult to find in our ever-increasingly busy world. 
This interactive session encourages movement and discussion. Leaders will engage in reflection exercises about their leadership or teaching practices to recognize strengths and areas for growth. This approach can be turnkeyed to leadership development and future professional training, helping educators understand the ways they approach challenges in the classroom.
Leaders and teaching professionals will leave this session with a deeper understanding of the mind-body connection and the power of a singular driving force.

This will be a follow-up to the keynote presentation. In this session, Yong Zhao will work together with the audience to dive deeper into the new learning paradigm and explore how personalized learning can be realized in the classroom.

With so many platforms, passwords, and fragmented tools, it’s easy for districts to lose sight of what technology is really for—empowering learning. This session invites school and district leaders to rethink their approach to educational technology by streamlining their toolkit and focusing on the built-in creative potential of Apple devices. We’ll explore how simplifying your tech ecosystem can reduce costs, ease the burden on teachers, and elevate student voice through purposeful, creative learning experiences. You’ll leave with actionable strategies, examples, and a vision for how Everyone Can Create can support high-impact, sustainable innovation across your schools.

 If we want students to graduate with the skills and dispositions outlined in NY's Portrait of a Graduate, we obviously need to think about teaching and learning across grade levels and time. We will use the Solutionary Framework™ as an example and will actively consider and discuss the following: How do we ensure that student learning experiences authentically and reliably build toward the outcomes described in NY's Portrait of a Graduate, regardless of pathway through school? We are confident that the wisdom to answer this question in ways that fit your context/vision will be in the room. Join us!

Let’s get real—true school safety isn’t just about locked doors and lockdown drills. It’s about seeing the signs before crisis hits, and building systems that support students long before they’re in danger of spiraling.

In this powerful Den Talk, we’ll challenge the typical "react-and-respond" mindset that dominates school safety efforts. While preparedness matters, it's often too little, too late. The hard truth? In far too many cases of school violence, the warning signs were there—but the system didn’t catch them in time.
Together, we’ll unpack how individuals can become radicalized, what paths lead them toward violence, and how schools can flip the script. By identifying key risk factors and learning how to intervene early, educators and leaders can play a critical role in changing outcomes—connecting students to support, disrupting harmful trajectories, and building school cultures grounded in care and responsiveness.

If you care about your students, your staff, and your community—and you're ready to move from fear to foresight—this is the conversation you need to be part of.

Climate Change feels like a big cloud of wild weather that covers our future, which many fear will be driven by artificially intelligent programs and machines. But wait, we have a say! This workshop will utilize a story circle to unlock the wisdom we all have to help us formulate concerns and ideas for meeting this moment as a seed for future flourishing. As a participant in this workshop, you will be introduced to the story circle methodology to build trust, community, and curiosity in your classroom for tackling challenges that impact our ability to be resilient.

Learn to evaluate team culture in just two minutes! Culture is the foundation of every successful team, but how often do leaders truly step back to evaluate its impact? In The Two Minute Culture Test, we introduce a powerful framework that allows leaders to quickly assess their team’s culture from a third-point perspective. By stepping outside their immediate viewpoint, leaders gain clarity on the true effects of their leadership and the environment they influence.
Developed from work across teams, athletics, schools, and corporations, the Two-Minute Culture Test analyzes positive team culture. Through guided discussions and interactive exercises, participants will explore the 4Cs of Positive Team Culture, a proven approach to building strong, high-performing teams. Leaders will leave with a deeper understanding of their team’s dynamics and practical, actionable steps to elevate their culture immediately.
Key Takeaways:
 A fast and effective method to assess team culture quickly
 A deeper understanding of the 4C’s of Positive Team Culture
 Insight into the impact of leadership from a third-point perspective
 Immediate action steps to strengthen and elevate team culture
Join us and walk away with the tools to create a culture that inspires, empowers, and drives success.

Join students from Ulster BOCES in a groundbreaking session showcasing the power of virtual reality/mixed reality (VR/XR) and simulations in fostering deeper learning and preparing students for diverse career pathways. This entirely student-presented session will demonstrate how hands-on practice with skills, collaboration, and knowledge construction are enhanced through immersive technologies in fields such as automotive, health sciences, and electrical.
Our North Star Educational Commitments at Ulster BOCES are designed to cultivate an environment where all learners can develop their unique self, contribute to community, develop their capacity, and engage in continuous cycles of inquiry. Through the lens of glasses-free XR and simulation, our students will illustrate how these commitments come to life, empowering them to explore, learn, and grow.

This session offers a unique opportunity for educational leaders and teams to witness firsthand how student-led innovation and technology drive profound changes in learning and skill development, aligning with the principles of Deeper Leading & Learning. You'll gain insights into how these cutting-edge tools are helping students discover their unique selves, contribute to their communities, build their capacities, and engage in continuous cycles of inquiry.

Explore how New York’s evolving CTE vision—through NY Inspires, Portrait of a Graduate, and CTE for All—is reshaping the student experience. This Den Talk invites you to listen to the vision and ideas behind a future-focused, equity-centered approach that blends career-connected learning with social-emotional development—so learners can become employable, good people who align their talents, interests, and identity to thrive in a rapidly changing world.

Schools are at a critical crossroads: adopt AI too fast and risk harm—or wait too long and miss out. So what’s the smart move? In this Den Talk, two veteran educators explore AI integration using CoSN’s AI Maturity Toolkit, reflecting on the hopes and hazards of this powerful technology. Come for the conversation, stay for the candid discussion—and enter to win a signed copy of a must-read book on AI in education. We’ll guide the conversation through five stages of district readiness—and invite YOU to weigh in.  Think of it as a live podcast meets planning session, with a little laughter, a little learning,

Why did the farm student graduate with honors? He was outstanding in his field! Get ready to cultivate sustainability champions and food-saving heroes through Farm to School initiatives that connect classrooms, campuses, and communities!   Join us to discuss ways to foster agricultural literacy and impactful solutions to combat food waste, through incentives, in-school programming, and actionable student-led food share tables.

As this tumultuous school year ends, many educators feel the pull toward scarcity, retreat, and self-preservation. This Den Talk invites participants to resist that urge and instead explore what it means to design forward—rooting change in shared purpose, equity, and bold collaboration.
Drawing from his unique role as both a systems leader and connector for eight school districts in Ulster County, Jonah Schenker will share how his team is reimagining education—not through cutbacks, but through expansive, values-driven transformation. From co-creating the Ulster County NY Inspires Playbook to elevating every voice across the educational ecosystem, this conversation will surface concrete examples of how communities can align around human-centered, future-facing design—even in politically and financially uncertain times.
Participants will be invited into a candid dialogue about:

• Reframing professionalism as courageous, inclusive leadership
• Building trust through local context and co-design
• Cultivating cultures of belonging, relevance, and possibility
• Leading with hope and action in the face of disruption

This is not just a conversation about education policy—it’s an invitation to imagine what we can build together that none of us can build alone.

Join us as we create space for leaders and educators to explore how shared services can be reimagined not just as a cost-saving mechanism, but as a tool for educational innovation, equity, and sustainability.

What does it take to truly prepare students for their future? This session explores
the 4 Pillars of Deeper Learning: career-connected learning, future-ready skills, performance
tasks, and high-quality project-based learning. These pillars help build the Deeper Learning core
competencies students need to thrive.
Christine Willmart from Questar III BOCES will share how they are applying one of the pillars in
their schools through a real-world example. We’ll also explore how these pillars align with the
state’s upcoming graduation changes and the NY Portrait of a Graduate goals. The session
includes a mini hands-on, career-connected project, aligned with New York State learning
standards, giving you a clear look at how performance tasks bring deeper learning to life.

In many classrooms today, students sit in neat rows, compliant but disconnected—doing the work, but not owning it. What if the design of our learning spaces could do more than accommodate instruction—what if it could ignite engagement, voice, and agency?
This interactive session invites educators, school leaders, and designers to reimagine learning environments as active agents in student-centered education. We’ll explore the critical shift from teacher-directed to learner-driven approaches and examine how spatial design—through flexibility, visibility, relevance, and choice—can fuel autonomy, motivation, and deeper learning.
Grounded in real classroom practices and participatory dialogue, this session will spotlight three key student-centered strategies: voice & choice, real-world relevance, and co-design. Participants will reflect on current practices, collaborate in breakout groups to explore these levers, and walk away with concrete "Try Tomorrow" actions to increase student ownership and connection.
Together, we'll bridge the gap between pedagogy and place—demonstrating how thoughtfully designed spaces can be catalysts for meaningful, student-driven learning.

Augmented reality gives students opportunities to experience the world in new and inspiring ways, but integrating it into curriculum requires planning. Join us to learn best practices for bringing augmented reality to the classroom across subject areas — from science to social studies and beyond.

With Apple!