DEBORAH MEIER TO SPEAK AT BANK STREET COLLEGE
Saturday, June 5, 2004, 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

May 26, 2004-- Noted educator Deborah Meier will be the keynote speaker on Saturday, June 5, when Bank Street College of Education hosts a conference entitled "What Matters Most: Creating and Sustaining Progressive Learning Communities in the Era of No Child Left Behind." The conference will take place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 610 West 112th Street in New York City.

Describing the goals of the Conference, Deborah Meier has said: "It's time to take our schools back--to kids, parents, and teachers--to build a system of strong, responsible communities of learning.... We need to celebrate the accomplishments we've collectively won in the past. We need to continue the unwon battles for humane, intellectually serious, and equitable schools that serve to nourish democratic life for the future. What is needed is a new coalition of forces to undertake the daunting tasks that lie ahead of us. Let's use this day to start afresh on the many challenges facing our educational perspective."

The Conference will bring together educators, parents, community members, and students to address strategies for creating the kinds of schools that ensure that every student is well known by faculty and staff; address the full spectrum of children's developmental and intellectual needs; and help them grapple successfully with challenging content. It will focus on ways to sustain schools that have spent years progressing toward these goals.

The experiences of students, teachers, and parents in small schools will be a special focus; but the conference will also address the challenges of making large schools more personal, cohesive, effective, and responsive to the strengths and needs of diverse students.

Workshops will address the following topics:

· Sustaining innovative schools in times of change: Renewing the work through community building, advocacy, and outreach.

· Tapping parents' energy and expertise: Defining and expanding the roles of parents and caregivers in school design and redesign.

· Addressing assessment in the NCLB world: Developing and using multiple assessments.

· Sharpening the focus on schools that work: Real-world strategies and experiences from all levels, PreK-12.

· Cultivating leadership for innovative schools: Focusing on the intersection of imagination and efficiency.

· Creating dynamic learning environments: Best practices in curriculum design and adaptation.

· Teachers' voices: Faculty roles, professionalism and collaboration.

· Imagining the possibilities: Students relate experiences of exploration, inquiry, and wonder.

Jon Snyder, Dean of Bank Street's Graduate School, will moderate a closing panel aimed at extracting and framing key strategies and themes from the day's deliberations.

Sponsors of the conference include Bank Street's Leadership Center and Weismann Center for Innovation in Education, the Center for Collaborative Education, and the National Center for Schools and Communities at Fordham University.

Deborah Meier is founder of the Central Park East Schools in New York City, and the Mission Hill School in Boston. She began her career as a kindergarten teacher in Chicago. Meier holds honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia Teachers College, and Bank Street College. She received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for her work in New York. She has written for The Nation and Dissent, and is the author of The Power of Their Ideas and In Schools We Trust.

For more information, call Rima Shore 212-875-4478.

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