Breakout Sessions: Cleveland
Breakout Session A
10:30 AM – 11:20 AM
Creating Safe Spaces for Civil Dialogue
The current political climate has created urgency around the use of civil dialogue. Supported by Facing History and Ourselves’ pedagogical model, Magnificat students and faculty collaborated to plan and carry out an equity summit using a relevant and current controversial issue. Student leaders served as small group facilitators, modeling the skills being encouraged. The summit provided an opportunity for all students to practice the skill of civil dialogue and fostered open conversation in a safe space, using the topic of immigration.
PRESENTER: Caitlin Lynch-Huggins, Theology Department Chair, and Marissa Madden, Director of Campus Ministry | Magnificat High School
Good-bye Little Miss Perfect, Part 2: Practical Tales of Challenging Unhelpful Perfectionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic
Free from the shackles of unhelpful perfectionism, students and staff both enjoy themselves and also perform at higher levels. To tackle damaging perfectionism the whole community needs to buy in to new ways of thinking—students, staff and especially parents. On one side we have universities who want students with intellectual curiosity, marked independence, and self-advocacy skills, and on the other, we have parents who continue to talk about their daughter’s university application as “mine”. What to do? Judith will share her experiences, observations and work from Oxford High School (where she was Head until August 2017) and The Bishop Strachan School where Judith is working together to set our girls free.
PRESENTER: Judith Carlisle, Head of School | Bishop Strachan School
Increasing Student Engagement in the Classroom through Mathematical Modeling
In this session, we will explore how open-ended prompts of real problems from the news are modeled in the mathematics classroom in order to empower girls to engage in deep discussions and debate. Participants will be immersed in an activity as students and collaborate in groups to think about a problem. The groups will debate and discuss their solutions to come to a class consensus. By working through an activity as students, participants will see how mathematical modeling helps girls bring math to life and learn to celebrate their unique voices as part of a mathematical community of learners.
PRESENTER: Dr. Matthew A. Kennedy, Mathematics Department Chair | Laurel School
Many Voices: It Happens Here, Too. Education and Action to End Human Trafficking
Through a collaboration of girls’ schools in the Shaker/Cleveland Heights, Ohio area, we are bringing education, awareness, and advocacy to our communities about human trafficking, today’s practice of slavery. Here in the United States, human trafficking victims include men, women, minors, US citizens and immigrants, undocumented individuals, and refugees. We will discuss the growing awareness and impact human trafficking has on our communities, resources available locally and nationally, and brainstorm ways to empower our girls to join the fight to end human trafficking. This will be an interactive session led by students from our schools.
PRESENTERS: Paige S., Class of 2019, and Bill Rice, Civic Engagement Program Leader | Laurel School; Alise A., Class of 2019, and Stephanie Hiedemann, Director of Center for Civic Engagement | Hathaway Brown School; and Meghan K., Class of 2020, and Amy Seitz, Director of Campus Ministry | Beaumont School
Quiet Strength: Honoring & Empowering Our Introverted Girls
“They don’t understand my quiet child. They penalize her with class participation grades and demand that she ‘come out of her shell.’” Quiet Revolution and Columbus School for Girls have partnered together to take action: CSG offers parent coffees and faculty in-service sessions designed to strengthen parent-teacher relationships, raise awareness about temperament diversity, and build safer communities where both introverts and extroverts thrive. Research, techniques, and handouts will be shared so parents, educators, and administrators can work more effectively together. Discussion topics range from progress report language biased against introverts and extroverts to parent gatherings and faculty professional development.
PRESENTERS: Charlotte Stiverson, Quiet Consultant & Retired Form IV Teacher, and Betsy Gugle, Director of Lower School | Columbus School for Girls, and Heidi Kasevich, Educational Consultant | Kase Leadership Method
Service Learning: An Academic Approach
Generation Z wants to feel valued. How can a school provide a learning experience through community service? How do you measure the value of service learning? Columbus City Preparatory School for Girls implements the mastery of academic standards through service learning. Students become involved in making differences in their communities while integrating 21st century skills. Learn how these middle school students are capturing the attention of school board members, state senators, and other influential people throughout their community.
PRESENTERS: Stephanie Patton, Principal, and Pamela Reed, Teacher | Columbus City School Preparatory School for Girls
Supporting the Socio-Emotional Lives of Girls of Color through Girls’ Group Spaces
This presentation imagines the potential of informal, educational spaces for girls where they can experience socio-emotional understanding and develop an awareness of social and power relations in their lives. Girls of color engage in unique emotional work in schools: they manage emotional responses to forms of marginalization as well as understand certain unspoken rules of emotion in order to succeed. We present data from girls’ groups for Black and Latina adolescent girls in public and independent school contexts. We illustrate how these groups function as developmental spaces that provide support, and nurture critical voices that can promote positive social change.
PRESENTERS: Charlotte Jacobs, Associate Director | University of Pennsylvania Independent School Teaching Residency Program, and Katie Clonan-Roy, Assistant Professor | Cleveland State University
Teaching Leaders: Empowering Girls & Inspiring Teachers through the Aspire Program at Hathaway Brown School
The Aspire Program at Hathaway Brown School is an academic enrichment and leadership development program for promising young women from under-resourced communities. Aspire offers students a summer opportunity to explore themselves as learners, find their voices as leaders, carve pathways to college, and discover skills necessary to reach their highest dreams. Aspire also provides a teaching internship for young people considering careers in education. Teachers practice the components of high quality education and create a community where success is palpable and trajectories are changed. Join us to explore Aspire: where girls learn to lead and people are inspired to teach.
PRESENTER: Camille Seals, Director | The Aspire Program at Hathaway Brown School and Ciera Whitsett, High School English Teacher | Shaker Heights High School
Valuing Voice: Empowering Girls as Researchers and Activists
Helping students discover their voices is one of our most significant responsibilities as educators. Working collaboratively at a girls’ school in Toronto (Canada), we empower students as researchers and activists by building awareness, knowledge and skills in real-world contexts. Attendees will hear about successful initiatives in and beyond the classroom, see samples of student work, experiment with strategies, collaborate in real time using tech tools, and plan for their own contexts. By the end of the session, they will have a toolkit of practical ideas and feel energized to help students affect change in their local, national, and global communities.
PRESENTERS: Jaime Malic, Teacher, English Department and AP Capstone Program, and Laura Mustard, Head of Library and Information Services | St. Clement’s School
Breakout Session B
11:30 AM – 12:20 PM
Differentiate for her: A practicum on research-based instructional strategies, classroom norms and curricula that benefit girls
The session will show how the Center for the Advancement for Girls has synthesized research on pedagogies for girls to create a framework for the teachers at The Agnes Irwin School to design lessons and curriculum, and create classrooms that are responsive to how girls learn best. We will share research that has informed the development of this framework to guide our academic program. This session will highlight practical implements and evaluation criteria, and the research behind them, that teachers, department chairs and administrators alike can begin using to evaluate the gender responsiveness of their curricula and instructional strategies.
PRESENTER: Bridgette Ouimette, Director of Research and Strategic Partnerships | The Center for the Advancement of Girls at The Agnes Irwin School
Innovation, Empathy, & Design: The Story of a Year-long Project
In this session for Lower and Middle School faculty and administrators, we’ll share how Stanford’s Design Process for kids provided a framework for an inaugural Form V class, Innovation Lab. The resulting cross-curricular, experiential learning project helped students develop empathy for people with developmental disabilities, learn about the structure and function of the brain, connect to a character in literature, and engage in creative problem solving. We will share our project, planning process, lessons learned, and our students’ takeaways.
PRESENTERS: Staci Schulte, Teacher, and Abigail Blosser, Teacher | Columbus School for Girls
Intergenerational Learning
Our Lady of the Elms draws on the unique strengths of our all-girls, Dominican community, situated on our 33-acre campus in Akron, to instill a growth mindset in our students driving lifelong motivation and achievement. We have implemented a new program to build student confidence through critical thinking and exposure beyond the classroom. Empowering Elms faculty with training, coaching, and resources needed to build on current relationships, students benefit from the rich community around us. The project incorporates a partnership with residents at Rockynol and the Dominican Sisters on campus in an intergenerational outdoor learning lab. Working as a group to problem solve, create, and build together, students will be challenged to use judgment and communication to work as a team. The intergenerational elements of the project will promote communication skills for the students, challenging younger students to speak clearly and listen openly, and providing diversity in their daily interactions. As older students engage in meaningful conversation, the wisdom of the Dominican Sisters and the residents at Rockynol will play an integral role in instilling a growth mindset.
PRESENTER: Kristin Yee, Kindergarten Teacher and Team Leader K-2 | Our Lady of the Elms School
Interrupting Implicit Bias: Creating Space for Challenging Conversations
Let’s address the “Ostrich Trap!” How many of us bury our heads in the sand when it comes to matters of implicit bias in our schools? This session will create intentional space for reflecting upon the hard questions. How do we learn to acknowledge implicit bias? How do we interrupt it and learn from it? How do we implement mission-centered programming in all areas of our schools that addresses implicit bias (i.e. Admissions, Retention, Academics, Student Life, Marketing, Institutional Advancement, etc.)? Join us as we discuss taking off the blinders, coming up from the sand, and working to acknowledge and manage our implicit biases.
PRESENTERS: Sara Utecht, Assistant Principal for Student Affairs, and Mari Thomas, Principal | Saint Ursula Academy
Making Room for Balance
In the face of increasing stress and anxiety, Harpeth Hall formed the Balance Committee to address students’ needs. In this team presentation from the Head of Upper School, School Counselor, Learning Specialist, Dean of Students, and Balance Committee Chair, we will share how we address Social Emotional Learning, what we have gathered from student data on school-life balance, and how we’ve made adjustments within our community. We’ll also share the process we’ve undergone to include multiple voices. Ultimately, our goal is to provide a rigorous but not stressful education – one that gives girls agency in their own well-being and is infused with joy.
PRESENTERS: Denise Croker, Balance Committee Chairperson; Armistead Lemon, Head of Upper School; Liz Stockdale, Upper School Dean of Students; Dina Stevenson, Learning Specialist; and Dr. Rachel Cupit, School Counselor | Harpeth Hall School
A New Model for Student Research: How Six Teenaged Girls and a Middle-Aged Teacher Unraveled Decades of Gender Bias in Interscholastic Speech and Debate
For years, female students participating in interscholastic speech and debate have been criticized for styles and behaviors that are accepted in their male competitors. Beginning in 2017, a team of student researchers and their adult mentor worked to put data to the anecdotes: investigating the types of criticisms given to both female and male speakers, analyzing impacts, and drawing connections to socially-constructed expectations for female speakers. Their continuing work and the process they developed provides a model for a different type of student research – one that does not take place in the science labs but instead focuses on unpacking the impacts and causes of a cultural phenomenon. This session will take participants through the process as they follow in the steps of the researchers, examining the same evidence and forming their own hypotheses on societal expectations of women in speech.
PRESENTERS: Richard Kawolics, Director of Speech and Debate, and Julia L., Student | Laurel School
Onramps for Parent Education
Parents are hungry for information on how to support their daughter’s developmental journey and how to help her navigate growing up in a 24/7 social media world. The Center for Girls at Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart approaches parent education with an eye to creating multiple on-ramps and avenues for knowledge building and discussion. Our goal is to help parents understand the “work of adolescence” and how our school program supports that work. Different entry points connect with different parents for a variety of reasons: convenience, personal interest, personal need and/or format.
PRESENTERS: Betsy Briardy, Director of the Center for Girls | Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, and Julie Metzger, RN, MN, Co-Founder | Great Conversations
Peer-to-Peace: Using mediation and student leaders to usher in a culture of collaborative conflict resolution
Peer conflict has moved from school hallways to cyber forums, thus making it difficult for administrators to understand the root of student disputes. Guided by a trained mediator, student leaders can be empowered to identify disputants and establish collaborative environments to encourage student-driven resolutions. With a real example of mediation and student leaders in-action, attendees can see how mediation positively affected class culture at the Willows Academy. They will be able to understand the dynamics of mediation while receiving key strategies to help form a culture of peer-led alternative conflict resolution within their own schools.
PRESENTER: Jacqueleen Hale-Warsinske, Dean of Students | Willows Academy (IL)
Portrait of a Middle Schooler: Using a 360 Process to Develop an SEL Program for Advisory
This session will focus on developing a 360 look at your students to develop an advisory program that meets the developmental and social-emotional needs of your students, as well as helps to plan professional development for faculty and programming for parents. We will present the process in which we engaged the student, faculty, and parent communities to develop the Portrait of a Middle Schooler. Participants will begin the 360 process, draft a timeline, and take away samples and resources for further study.
PRESENTERS: Sharon Baker, Director of Middle School, and Lisa Lurie, Director of Counseling | Hathaway Brown School
Breakout Session C
1:30 PM – 2:20 PM
Amplifying Global Voices through Collaborative International Programming
Learn how The Ellis School uses its transatlantic partnership with Queen’s College in London to provide a unique student-driven project that promotes mutual understanding, cross-cultural awareness, global competency, and the empowerment of young girls. The year-long project “Global Cities: Global Leaders” allows participants to collectively design, debate, research, and conduct fieldwork on a shared social issue in the global cities of London and Pittsburgh. In the process, students learn to see the world, their cities, themselves, and each other in new ways. Come hear about this model of collaborative learning and self-discovery and how it might inspire your global programming.
PRESENTERS: Susan Corbesero, Global Initiatives Coordinator and History Department Chair | The Ellis School
Celebrating Health and Wellness
High school can lead to stress and anxiety overload for many students, often affecting sleep, nutrition, self-image and self-confidence. Faced with this challenge Magnificat set aside a day to Explore and Celebrate Health and Wellness. Topics for the day focused on mind-body-spirit and included diet, nutrition, self-acceptance, mental health, women’s health, self-defense, yoga and exercise. Following an entertaining faculty presentation students heard from a keynote presentation, toured an exhibition hall highlighting student research, and participated in small group breakout sessions, many of which were facilitated by Magnificat alumnae. Presenters will share planning and scheduling challenges, strategies and pitfalls!
PRESENTERS: Colleen Greller, Innovation and Instructional Technology Coach, and Lori Koss, Science Department Chair | Magnificat High School
Changing Tradition in an All Girls Community
When arriving as the 14th Head of School, Dr. Fran Bisselle, walked into a controversy about a 77-year-old Hathaway Brown School tradition called “IDEO.” This tradition is the last ritual before holiday break and consists of the middle and upper school girls reverently processing to the gym singing a very Christian hymn, Personent Hodie. Today, HB is a nonsectarian and increasingly diverse school, and this tradition (more specifically this song), while sacred to the alumnae, seemed incongruent with our current culture and student body. The Head of School worked closely with the Director of Alumnae Relations to build a process to address this issue and change it. Anticipating reactions, thoughtfully communicating, and dealing with the fall-out of this change directly relates to a deep understanding of girls’ schools and their alumnae.
PRESENTERS: Fran Bisselle, Head of School, and Dana Capers, Director of Alumnae Affairs | Hathaway Brown School
Embracing Black Female Voices and Experiences
As a human rights activist, Malcolm X emphasized, “you can’t teach what you don’t know, you can’t lead where you won’t go.” With this idea in mind, it is imperative educators understand students’ experiences, in and out of the classroom, and create space for an array of narratives. In this workshop, participants will examine research on black students’ experiences at independent schools and follow two black female educators’ journeys to explore how to better support students that look like them. Through the lens of black girls, educators will engage in reflective practice activities and explore strategies and frameworks for inclusion.
PRESENTERS: Ryann Fapohunda, Co-Director of Teaching & Learning Center/Assistant Dean | National Cathedral School and Michelle Black, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion | Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart
Finding Our Voices
In this session, we will share our experience of team teaching a senior seminar entitled “Facing History and Ourselves: The American Experience.” We explore topics such as race, gender, and education to help our students think more deeply about and be involved more fully in the various circles of association within society as young women. We look back in history for context, to the present for what is happening currently, and especially toward the future – how can we improve? Our goal is to help students find their voices regarding these and other controversial issues, particularly as they impact life in Greater Cleveland, with an eye toward becoming part of the solutions to challenges in these areas as educated women leaders. The class is a very popular elective, and many students have said they wish it were required for all seniors. The class is a combination of the talents of our Social Studies and Theology Departments and is formulated on a Blended Learning Style of presentation and execution.
PRESENTER: Catherine Knittel, CORE Ministry Teacher; Alison Barberic, CORE Ministry Department Chair; Nick Roaldi, Social Studies Teacher; and Mike Shannon, Social Studies Department Chair | Saint Joseph Academy
The Hidden Costs of Fitting In: Why Fostering a Sense of Belonging Should be Our Goal
Students with a deep sense of belonging in the classroom experience substantial benefits over those who do not. Enhanced motivation for academic work, positive character development, and greater wellbeing more generally are all outcomes demonstrated by over four decades of research. How do we create a culture of belonging for every student? What are the seen and unseen obstacles to belonging, and why do students settle for “fitting in” when the costs of settling are so high? Learn why cultures of belonging must be our goal, and learn strategies to move your daily work with students closer to that goal.
PRESENTER: Tim Leet, Executive Director | Heart of Character (OH)
Mirrors and Windows: DEI and Social Justice for Our Youngest Learners
In this session, I will explain how I created a Global DEI and Social Justice Curriculum for Pre-Primary and Primary students; at Laurel School, we call them Civility Conversations. We want children to learn, understand, and be able to speak openly about social identity, social justice, and the Eight Identifiers. The goal is to have them actively challenge implicit bias, stereotypes, and injustice when they see it. We want them to both see themselves and others in the world through their eyes and others’ eyes.
PRESENTER: Lauren Calig, Director of Multi-Culutral Education | Laurel School
Perspectives Project: Computing for the Social Good
Computer science classrooms have historically struggled to attract and retain diverse voices, even in all-girls environments. Computing for the social good is one avenue of attracting and retaining under-represented groups. The Perspectives Project is designed to encourage girls to seek out those diverse voices in their own school community and to listen to the experiences of those young women. Students then create a simulation of the experience of those young women highlighting the decisions they must make to navigate our community daily. Students discuss how to avoid gamifying someone else’s experience and respect the voices they are hearing.
PRESENTER: Brian Carpenter, Upper School Science Teacher, and Mimi Thompson, Alumna | Laurel School
The Role of Single-sex Education for College-bound Women, Revisited: A Multilevel Analysis
What characteristics and experiences exemplify women graduates of single-sex high schools? How do women graduates of single-sex high schools differ from their co-educational high school-attending peers at college entry? These questions and others form the basis for this session. Revisiting the 2009 NCGS report on the effects of single-sex schooling (Sax et al., 2009), this session will present findings from an updated collaborative investigation between NCGS, the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA and University of Missouri-Kansas City. Using data from the 2016 Freshman Survey, we will identify ways in which women from single-sex schools are different from, and similar to, their coeducational school-attending counterparts. The audience will be invited to participate in discussion surrounding the results and how to foster success for young women attending all-girls schools.
PRESENTER: Tiffani Riggers-Piehl, Assistant Professor of Higher Education | University of Missouri-Kansas City