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Event
Learning Choices Network 2nd Annual Gathering
**** TICKETS NO LONGER AVAILABLE ONLINE. PAY AT THE DOOR****
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT MEGAN 716.474.3669 OR artofmegan@gmail.com
Education is not "one size fits all". You have options... Find out what they are.
Have you ever questioned the value of the school program that you or your students are currently involved in?
Have you wondered where you can go to learn more about your own particular interests?
Are you a homeschooler who's looking for local options for field trips, learning excursions, or unique adventures?
Have you given up on enjoying your time in school? Do you dread going back?
Learning Choices Network, along with The Buffalo History Museum, is hosting three days of experiential workshops, speakers, and learning topics. Come explore the history of Buffalo for three days and learn about your local options for learning. Find out how you can navigate your own personalized learning path!
Join cultural organizations, independent schools, study programs, colleges & universities from across the Greater Buffalo area that offer dynamic learning programs for students of all ages. Stay tuned for updates by visiting www.facebook.com/learningchoicesnetwork
Saturday, November 8, 9 am to 5 pm: Family Day
Sunday, November 9, 12 pm to 5 pm: Thinkers Day: Poetry Slam and Panel Discussion
Monday, November 10, 10 am to 3 pm: Educators Day
We will offer workshops for students of all ages, parents, and educators who are looking for other options in their learning path.
*How to access local resources to develop one's personal learning plan and objectives
*How to develop a competitive portfolio for college admissions and employment
*The creative economy and how it affects the relevance of school, testing, college success, and gainful employment
* The impact of technological tools now available to learners & their families
*The potential for creative inquiry in developing critical thinkers, problem solvers, innovators, small business owners, and entrepreneurs
*The history of education reform and social movements in the WNY region (the women's movement, civil rights, Buffalove, etc)
* The historical context of today's human experience as it relates to school crisis, conflict, and cultural transitions
*Learn about local programs and membership benefits
SATURDAY SCHEDULE
8:30 amRegistration and Set-Up
9:00 am Welcome and Introductions, Megan Mills Hoffman
9:30 am Buffalo as an Education City, Chuck Banas
Buffalo is on the upswing these days, thanks to the creatives, entrepreneurs, and do it yourself-ers. Rich with opportunities for learning and exploration, the Greater Buffalo area offers a vibrant history and culture for self-directed experiential discovery.
10:00 am Learning in an Entrepreneurial Age, Linda Aronson
Linda Aronson, author of Unleashed to Learn, iilustrates the next era in education. She will address 1. How to put the new science of learning into action. 2. How learning at full capacity is transformational. 3. How the Capstone model is the complete package for learning at full capacity: student-centered, applied, real world, and relevant. 4. How innovation and creativity, a requisite 21st century skill, can be learned through the Capstone model. 5. How students when unleashed, learn and grow beyond what they and others believed possible.
10:30 am Creativity and Opting-Out, Pamela Szalay
Pamela was possibly the first parent in her school district to coach her son to refuse the New York State Tests in 2012. Having taught music for nearly 20 years as independent piano instructor and creative coach, Pamela established Imagine & Play Music to champion a more inclusive and creative approach to learning and experiencing music. In 2012, she co-founded the Beyonder Youth Program and developed programs for youth and educators with the aim of nurturing and igniting creativity, and works in collaboration with the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY Buffalo State.
11:00 am Academe of Aurora, Lesley Diaz
Academe of Aurora is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational corporation in East Aurora that operates on a co-op model. Yearly tuition and fees are determined by the number of students enrolled, program offerings, donations, volunteer schedules and community resources. Young adults are guided to develop critical thinking, communication, and collaboration skills by asking challenging questions, contributing to thought-provoking discussions, writing extensively, and participating in experiential learning activities. Intensive two to four week seminars encourage students to delve deeply into the subjects of literature, science, history, and mathematics. The 2013-2014 offerings included Aviation to Zoology as well as Animal Behavior, Astronomy, Botany, Cell Biology, Chemistry, Economics, Field Ecology, Global Peacemakers, Introduction to Business, History Through Music, the Odyssey, Poetry, Projective Geometry, Thermodynamics, Transcendentalist, and World Cultures. Students also produced and performed the full-length drama A Christmas Carol.
11:30 am Mindcraft Camp Buffalo
Entering the job market summer of 2014, Johnathan Kegler, currently a Senior at City Honors High School, was unable to find a job, so he founded and created Minecraft Camp a summer camp, capitalizing on his years of Minecraft experience. Martin Zanolli, also a Senior at Performing Arts High School in the City of Buffalo, helped develop policies, managed the campers and the curriculum for the Minecraft camp.
12:00 to 1:00 pm LUNCH BREAK & EXPO
Check out resources from The Buffalo History Museum, The Gow School, Houghton College, Illuminating Childhood (featuring playkits), The Tinkering School, among others.
12:00 to 1:00 pm The Tinkering School Activity: Making a Slingshot
Dangerous Thing #27 Making a Slingshot: Kids will sand the wood, build the slingshot, then practice target shooting with a safe, soft, small object.
1:00 pm The TInkering School Buffalo, Melissa Leopard
Melissa Leoard is the founder of Tinkering School Buffalo, one of the first national extensions of Gever Tulley's highly-regarded experiential learning program. Tinkering School is a place where kids are given open-ended building projects and problems to solve. Trusted to use the tools required for success, they have the freedom to fail, the time to persevere, and the opportunity to realize that a journey is as important as a destination. Melissa is co-founder of POP-UP Park, a grassroots urban playground initiative. She is also the Director of Curriculum for Public Preparatory Network, a consortium of six public schools in New York City.
1:30 pm Creating the Future, Adrian Roselli
Adrian is a writer, speaker, digital media + software consultant, and VP of Algonquin Studios, a software development and consulting company he co-founded at age 23 in 1998. He will tell his story of turning point decisions that made it possible for him to chart a career not yet invented, understood, or anticipated at the time.
2:00 pm The Common Vision: Parenting and Education, David Marshak
There are no secure job prospects in the future. The future well-being of a community depends on the creatives, entrepreneurs, and do it yourself-ers. David Marshak discusses a few ways that the education of children and teens can make it more likely that your children will become those creatives and stick around as adults rather than relocating.
2:30 pm Ele-MEN-tary Education, Scott Richardson
Our current culture of school and education is defined by hyper-male terms and perspective in a feminized context.
3:00 to 4:30pm What We've Learned: Panel Discussion: Linda Aronson, David Marshak, Scott Richardson
Speakers include the following:
Linda Aronson, OTR, M.Ed., is a advocate and designer of learner-centered, experiential, and customized learning. Her new book Unleashed To Learn: Empowering Students to Learn at Full Capacity, illustrates the transformational effect of learning in context and out into the community. Linda has led workshops at national, regional, statewide, and university levels, melding her background in neurobiology, human development, sensory integration, and multiple intelligences into a brain-based, developmental, and wholistic approach to learning. She is a registered occupational therapist and certified in English Language Arts at the secondary level, a graduate of Tufts University, and earned her self-designed, interdisciplinary Master's in Education degree from the University of Vermont. Currently she is investigating how self-directed and experiential learning segues into entrepreneurism. Linda serves on the board of North Star: Self-Directed Learning for Teens in Hadley, Massachusetts and teaches a course on the Trilogy of Mind, Heart, and Body Intelligence.
Esther Carlson travels the U.S., Canada and Central America as a facilitator of new and innovative inductive learning processes. As a business consultant for women and a holistic health educator, she supports humanitarian initiatives. Originally from Detroit, she raised four children. After completing her Masters in education, she utilized various schooling systems, including homeschooling, Catholic schools, Waldorf, and public schools to educate her children. Parent of a Hotchkiss school boarding student, she has experienced the benefits of an independent, co-educational college preparatory boarding school. Esther now facilitates an introspective curriculum in weekend seminars for eclectic women, with special insight into the challenges of parenting and work/life balance in today's fast paced modern-day culture.
Mark Garrison holds both a BA and MA in sociology and a Ph.D. in the Social Foundations of Education, with a concentration in the Sociology of Education. Since 1995, he has worked in various higher education institutions, serving in a variety of research, administrative and faculty roles. He is currently Professor of Education Policy & Research in the Educational Leadership Doctoral Program at D'Youville College, Buffalo, New York.
Chuck Banas is an urban planning consultant and community activist in Buffalo. His blog Joe the Planner, "has only a few posts, but boy do they pack a wallop." He also chairs the SmartCode Committee at the New Millennium Group of Western New York and tells stories of the hijinks he and his twin would be up to as young boys free to roam Buffalo, with his mother encouraging their active hands on investigation into how things worked.
Johnathan Kegler, currently a Senior at City Honors High School in the City of Buffalo. Originally a counselor in training at Wyomoco 4H Camp for 3 summers and a Program Assistant at Emagination Computer Camps in Boston, MA. Entering the job market the summer of 2014 was unable to find a job, so he founded and created Minecraft Camp a summer camp, capitalizing on his years of Minecraft experience.
Melissa Leopard is the founder of Tinkering School Buffalo, one of the first national extensions of Gever Tulley's highly-regarded experiential learning program. Tinkering School is a place where kids are given open-ended building projects and problems to solve. Trusted to use the tools required for success, they have the freedom to fail, the time to persevere, and the opportunity to realize that a journey is as important as a destination. Melissa is co-founder of POP-UP Park, a grassroots urban playground initiative. She is also the Director of Curriculum for Public Preparatory Network, a consortium of six public schools in New York City.
David Marshak spent his first fourteen years in Buffalo and Kenmore and graduated from Kenmore Junior High in 1964. Against his will, his parents then moved him to Syracuse for high school. David has worked as an educator for four decades: teaching in the New Hampshire State Prison and a public high school in Connecticut, helping to found and lead an alternative high school in New Hampshire, developing curriculum for the Unitarian Universalist Association, serving as an assistant superintendent in a small public school district in Vermont, and teaching in a Master in Teaching program at Seattle University. He is the author of several books about multiage education and of The Common Vision: Parenting and Educating for Wholeness, one of the late 20th century holistic education classics. He has studied progressive, holistic, and post-modern education extensively and published many articles on these topics. Currently David lives in Bellingham, Washington and is the founding president of the SelfDesign Graduate Institute, a unique low-residency Master of Arts program in SelfDesign.
Megan Mills Hoffman grew up in southcentral Alaska, leaving the formal school classroom for an unstructured, informal, self-directed education from grades 5-12, returning to the classroom as a college student with a personalized transcript and admission to an out-of-state four year university honors program with a full tuition scholarship. She has since attended and worked in residence life, admissions, registrars, and development offices for two state universities, a state college, and a private university, completed a B.S. in Sociology, was a teacher assistant for social statistics, and built twenty years of experience working in development and community revitalization.
Scott Richardson is an assistant professor of educational foundations and women's studies affiliate at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. His research interests are comparative/international and alternative education with a focus on democracy and gender. He is the author of "eleMENtary school: (Hyper)Masculinity in a Feminized Context.
Adrian Roselli is a writer, speaker, digital media + software consultant, and VP of Algonquin Studios, a software development and consulting company he co-founded at age 23 in 1998. He is a regular guest lecturer and advisor for web development forums across the world and has served on a variety of boards throughout Buffalo, including Oracle Charter School, Erie 1 BOCES, and the Advertising Club of Buffalo. An avid programmer, casual photographer, and an accessibility advocate, he pursues all personal interests with intense commitment. You can follow his continuing autodidact pursuits, including his latest Buffalo food truck commentary, at adrianroselli.com.
Pamela Szalay is an independent educator, creativity coach, entrepreneur, professional musician, parent and occasional rabble-rouser. She was possibly the first parent in her school district to coach her son to refuse the New York State Tests in 2012. Having taught music for nearly 20 years as independent piano instructor and creative coach, Pamela established Imagine & Play Music to champion a more inclusive and creative approach to learning and experiencing music. In 2012, she co-founded the Beyonder Youth Program and developed programs for youth and educators with the aim of nurturing and igniting creativity. She currently serves as the Program Director for Beyonder, and works in collaboration with the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY Buffalo State where she has also served as an Adjunct Intructor. In 2013, Pamela's involvement with Beyonder led to an opportunity to present "Creativity in the Classroom" to over 70 educators in China. She has B.A. in Music and English from the University at Buffalo, an Advanced Certificate in Adolescent Education, and a M.S. in Creativity and Change Leadership from SUNY Buffalo State. Her blog "Creating Music", available on her website www.imagineandplaymusic.com, helps parents, teachers and students tap into creativity.
Brandon Williamson is a Buffalo born poet, teacher, actor, and performers amongst other things. He is the founder of the Pure Ink Poetry Slam in Buffalo NY, and a college admissions counselor at Fredonia State University of New York. He has performed on stages in Buffalo, New York City, Toronto, Brooklyn, Washington DC and beyond and is thrilled to have the opportunity to share his art with you.
Jason A. Zwara is the Executive Director of Buffalo ReformEd, an education reform advocacy non-profit, researching and advocating for reform of the Buffalo Public Schools. A Buffalo native, Jason received a bachelor of arts in Political Science and Economics from Canisius College before graduating from Notre Dame Law School. At Notre Dame and while working as a Research and Policy Advisor for Buffalo ReformEd, Jason researched and wrote extensively on education labor relations, including teacher union contracts, due process and tenure education laws, and collective bargaining in school districts. In 2013, his article Left in the Dark: How New York's Taylor Law Impairs Collective Bargaining, calling for amending New York's public sector collective bargaining law, was published by Hofstra University's Labor and Employment Law Journal.
Martin Zanolli, currently a Senior at Performing Arts High School in the City of Buffalo. Co-Captain of the swim team, with 5 years of counseling experience, from Parkside Summer Arts Program and the Leadership and Chaplain training received at the First Unitarian Toronto, Martin helped develop policies, managed the campers and the curriculum for the Minecraft Camp Buffalo.
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LocationThe Buffalo History Musuem (View)
One Museum Court
Buffalo, NY 14216
United States
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