Growing up in a single parent home on the south side of Chicago, IL, Justin J. Shaifer had little awareness of the potential of a STEM career. His worldview drastically transformed after experiences at Hampton University. Justin graduated with a bachelor's degree in marine and environmental science with the highest departmental GPA, and was also president of Hampton University's student body while receiving scholarships from NASA and NOAA that covered 100% of his tuition and room and board. Now 24 years old, Justin travels the country empowering young students to "embrace their inner nerd" despite their surroundings, and developing culturally responsive STEM curricula for New York City institutions.

Justin is executive director of Fascinate, Inc., an organization created to excite underrepresented students about STEM. He is known for his work on the Magic Cool Bus Project. Past partners of his organization include Microsoft, MIT Media Lab, and the Children’s Aid Society. Justin is studying these programs’ effects as a PhD student at Columbia University.

SPEAKERS:
Justin Shaifer (Fascinate, Inc.: New York, NY)

Bestselling author Max Brooks believes in the power of educating through entertainment, whether it’s learning survival skills through zombie fiction or better understanding our own history through graphic novels. What better way to reach students than through mediums they have fun using, such as video games? Join Max as he explains why he thinks the massively popular game Minecraft has the potential to be the greatest teaching tool since Gutenberg’s printing press.

SPEAKERS:
Max Brooks (Author: Venice, CA)

Alejandro understands that students arrive each day with an abundance of cultural wealth. He will share how establishing authentic relationships with his students and strategically integrating culturally relevant instruction has increased student motivation, morale, and engagement in his class. He will also provide insight to some of the challenges that our students from underrepresented populations face, and how providing his students access to a variety of people, programs, resources, and experiential learning opportunities has been critical to his students’ success.

SPEAKERS:
Alejandro Diasgranados (Aiton Elementary School: Washington, DC)

In this session participants will get an overview of how environmental and climate justice have been introduced to classrooms through partnerships, expos, and educational programming. Participants will also get an overview of key terms, focus areas, and resources for learning more about environmental and climate justice through a local lens.

SPEAKERS:
Taylor Morton (WE ACT for Environmental Justice: New York, NY)

The objectives of this session are threefold: to assist teachers in identifying students who need additional social and emotional support; to highlight the dynamic between SEL and learning/achievement as bi-directional, since SEL instruction and skill building have been shown to improve achievement, but achievement or lack of it also impacts children’s sense of well-being; and to highlight psychologically validated strategies designed to prevent distress as well as enhance performance in the science classroom. Teachers will learn about approaches they can use to help students manage performance fears and encourage strategic risk-taking that fosters creativity.

SPEAKERS:
Rena Subotnik (American Psychological Association: Washington, DC), Joanne Broder (Media Psychologist: Moorestown, NJ), Amanda Dettmer (Yale School of Medicine: New Haven, CT), Kimberly A. S. Howard (Boston University: Boston, MA)

If a student in your class is amazing at math, then what job do you tell them they'd be good at? Engineering, maybe? What if they have a natural aptitude for science, or they’re well-spoken and love to debate? The best answer for these questions, and every other issue we face in education, is simple: You would be a great teacher!

SPEAKERS:
John Arthur (Meadowlark Elementary School: Salt Lake City, UT)

School-based studies of COVID-19 have provided valuable information about how the virus spreads and the activities and settings most associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Although some risks can be ameliorated with policy or environment change, behavior plays a large role in risk of infection. Science teachers are well positioned to address behavioral contributions and can impact behavior change to mitigate the spread of COVID-1.

SPEAKERS:
Lisa Barrios (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Atlanta, GA)

Sponsoring Company: Shell

Science advocates discuss the challenges of creating equitable opportunities for teaching students in science education. We all know that it is a challenge, but through this dialogue, implications and considerations will be highlighted to provide participants ideas for overcoming this challenge and successfully educating underrepresented students.

SPEAKERS:
Sharon Delesbore (Stephen F. Austin High School: No City, No State), Alicia Conerly (Marion County Schools: Columbia, MS)

Sponsoring Company: Shell

In this session, we will discuss how the best leaders are multipliers who make everyone around them smarter and promote their team’s success using this strategy. The keynote will focus on how these strategies can be implemented in the PK–20 systems to cultivate a culture of success for our students and teachers.

SPEAKERS:
Maureen Stover (Cumberland County Schools: Fayetteville, NC)

This presentation will focus on the current state of science assessments around the country. Particular attention will be given to the challenges for reimagining science assessments for the Next Generation Science Standards. Strategies will be included for how to develop assessments that meet the needs of classroom teachers, can measure student content knowledge on statewide summative tests, and can scale at the levels required. Specific attention will be given to addressing how assessments can be more culturally responsive to a wider range of students.

SPEAKERS:
Christopher Lazzaro (New Meridian Corporation: austin, TX)

When you think of social justice teaching, does science come to mind? Science involves the consistent and systematic analysis of the world we live in. However, when we think of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology we rarely examine how learning concepts in core disciplines can empower students to explain the social phenomena that frame their lives. This presentation explores what social justice science teaching looks like in science and how we can empower students to see the value of science when we center social science teaching in our practice.

SPEAKERS:
Bryan Brown (Stanford University: Stanford, CA)