AGENDA

Welcome and Keynote | Browning Recreation Center

Holding the Umbrella, Offering Peace: Effective Leadership Strategies for Educators Navigating a VUCA World | Dr. Susan Perry, Associate Head of Wellness and Belonging at Forsyth Country Day School & Senior Consultant with EXPLO Elevate

Designed with your identified interests for an NCAIS Lower School educators conference keynote, our time together will offer specific ways to navigate the highly relational context of learning relationships with students, their families, and colleagues in order to help you get the results that matter most to you as a professional.  Join in this interactive workshop that will explore where we have been, where we are, and specific, evidence-based strategies that assist educators stay present, engaged, and feeling purposeful about their work in rapidly changing educational settings.  People are a school’s most important resource. Come prepared to engage in a lively opportunity to learn, reflect, and walk away with directly applicable tools that affirm, develop, and amplify the mission aligned qualities we need as educators to address the contemporary learning needs of our school communities. 

What Do You Have For Lunch? Supporting Young Learners As They Navigate Communication And Social Skills In A Post Pandemic Classroom | Emily Hayes, The Lerner School | 4th grade classroom 
The pandemic babies and toddlers are now our kindergarten and first grade students. As these students enter the formal education marathon, we (their teachers and administrators) observe a social and emotional gap that they have compared to our pre-pandemic classes. During this presentation, we will review social skills that our students had fewer opportunities to practice and ways we can create a classroom environment to support their continued growth.

Texts, Content, And Connections: Unraveling Scarborough's Reading Rope Through Literacy And Social Studies Integration | Alie Brinegar M.Ed. and Dr. Yolanda McClure, Forsyth Country Day School | Junior Kindergarten classroom 
Researchers have identified various gaps within education such as the achievement and opportunity gaps. Another gap that we are seeking to uncover is the knowledge gap through the help of researcher and Author, Natalie Wexler. By breaking down the language comprehension strand of Scarborough's Reading rope, educators in this session will discover a practical model to utilize during whole group instruction that builds content knowledge through integration and retrieval practices, which enhance student achievement.

Differentiation Through Engaging Multisensory Activities | Deanne Gallo-Hounsell, Rabun-Gap Nacoochee School Kindergarten classroom 
Differentiated instruction is necessary in the classroom. However, this can be hard to accomplish when students are starting school with various degrees of academic knowledge. Teachers can achieve this through multisensory and engaging practices while maintaining consistent classroom routines and structure. These practices can be employed in whole groups, small groups, or with one-on-one instruction. Activities engage the whole body, are fun for students, and are easy to incorporate into all areas of academics.

How Can You Be the Calm in Students' "Anxious Storms?" | Emily Lugo, Lindsey Barnett, Ravenscroft School | 4th grade classroom 
What is anxiety? How do I help students in my classroom feel more comfortable in my learning space? Throughout the school year, an educator can prepare and make a child feel more comfortable with different versions of anxiousness by identifying anxiety, modeling behaviors, creating social-emotional relationships with families, and building a distress tolerance that frames how an educator can validate but also build on the threshold of anxiety without enabling or modifying the environment.

Take It Outside! | Michelle Gorman, Davidson Day School | Browning Recreation Center
Did you know outdoor learning significantly enhances student academic achievement. Immersed in nature, students develop stronger connections to their subjects, making concepts more engaging. Hands-on experiences and sensory engagement stimulate critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Outdoor settings reduce stress and improve focus, leading to better information retention. Come learn ways to take learning outside the classroom. You will come away from this workshop with ideas and activities that can be implemented in your classroom today.

The Power of Positive Parent Connection and Communication | Matt Piscitelli, Trinity Episcopal School & Payton Gooch, Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School | Kindergarten classroom 
Parent communication is always a difficult balancing act for teachers and in an age where parents are flooded with digital input, it is challenging to know how much information to share and what modality to share it in. In this session we will present two communication strategies that will empower your students and clearly inform the families of what their children are learning and doing at school. 

• ePortfolios: Using ePortfolios like Seesaw and Google sites can help to bridge a connection between families and their student's daily learning at school, aiding in unifying the team dynamic needed for student success.
• 3-2-1 Go:  A bi weekly student-led mini conference that encourages families to pause, connect, and reflect on the academic and social growth of the student. 

Both of these strategies help shine the light on the reality of the students' experience at school and help fill in the gaps that are so often found from questions like, "how was your day?'' or " What did you learn today?" We hope that you will walk away with a new sense of purpose for how you want to communicate with your families. 

Breakout Session III

Atomic Habits In The Classroom: Maintaining Calmness In A Classroom By Implementing Habits | McKenzie Spivey, The Fletcher School | 4th grade classroom 
An “Atomic Habit” is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic and its purpose is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible (Clear, 2018). In a classroom, students must retain information effectively to be able to comprehend what is being taught. Distractions, baneful emotions, and bad habits create interruptions in students’ learning. By teaching, implementing, and creating “Atomic Habits” in your classroom, your students will be able to learn in an environment that is calm and safe for them to learn. Having Atomic Habits in your classroom is a crucial necessity for teaching students.

Developing a Gender Identity Skills Matrix for Lower Schools | Dr. Michelle Rosen, Carolyn Ronco, Jason Mundy, Durham Academy | Junior Kindergarten classroom 
Follow Durham Academy's journey in developing a gender identity skills matrix for Lower School students. We will discuss introducing the topic to teachers, deciding which books to include, and rolling the program out to parents.

How to Implement Meditation and Mindfulness Techniques in Your Classrooms and Lives | Malcolm Boone, Rabun-Gap Nacoochee School | Kindergarten classroom 
Stress and Anxiety have become terms we hear entirely too often in this world. Not only do adults deal with this on a regular basis, students do, too. Some of the issues may lie in a lack of awareness for high stressful moments. Our nervous systems enter a state of fight or flight (sympathetic) and that leads to not only stress in the moment but chronic stress down the road. In this workshop, I will share my strategy for reducing stress and how I have incorporated meditation strategies in my 3rd grade classroom. Let's optimize and normalize meditation and mental well-being through accessing what we all have, our breath.