As someone who works in civic education, debate-inspired education sounds awfully similar to inquiry-based learning and I would be curious to learn more about how they are different

Lunch time! Then the lunch keynote speaker. This one was incredible. Talking about supporting critical racial consciousness in adolescence. The second half of the speaker described debate-inspired education as effective when it was consistent in increasing critical racial consciousness

Morning breakout session: I went to the social and emotional well being in middle school. There was really fascinating work talked about here and highlights how there aren’t enough quality mental health resources for kids. Will that get worse with funding cuts?

I’m still not sure what point she was making by bringing that up. I’m open to admitting misunderstanding, but there’s no reason to bring up the kidnapping, especially as she was playing to liberal sensibilities the whole speech

She also was talking about “our job” and made a comment about how we don’t need to post about it social media or virtue signal. Then she brought up the kidnapping of a Tufts student as what happens when you do that. That is a gross misrepresentation of what happened to her.

Ultimately, I agree with this core problem. I just disagree with how she got there

We need to recognize that the time we are in is the result of a long-winded right-wing, ruling class project. We failed our children because both parties are servant to the ruling class.

I find the premise of this as flawed. The time that we’re in is not unique. These facets have been present for young people since the Industrial Revolution. It’s just that these are now affecting liberal sensibilities that now it’s a unique problem.

She accurately framed the disconnect between young people and adults in how we think about adolescence. She also put this graphic in her presentation

Which is timely, I guess. But she started off with framing the use of chatGPT as some sort of representation of the general consensus of how the internet thinks. I’d like to read what she read that led her to that conclusion.

During the keynote speaker this morning, the incoming APA president gave a thought provoking speech, but ultimately felt inconsistent in the messaging. The message was what can adults learn from middle schoolers about maturing during times of precarity

For the morning session, the opening activity of guided imagery was grounding. She asked us to imagine ourselves in middle school, fitting as this forum is all about thriving in middle school years.

During the poster session, I chatted with a presenter about using big data in civic education, which was such an interesting project. The use of inquiry and asking kids about what they care about is effective civic education

The fireside chat yesterday was also insightful.

I appreciated the through line of treating children as children and seeing them as worthy. Let them make mistakes. Children don’t owe adults anything.

I should have started this yesterday evening when it started, but I didn’t, so here we are.

The keynote session with Jason Reynolds was fantastic. And I loved the message of imbuing intimacy, humility, and gratitude in doing work with youth.