Workshops for Teachers–Under-Resourced Learners Summit - Opening Session

Workshops for Teachers–Under-Resourced Learners Summit – Opening Session

By Phil DeVol

The Under-Resourced Learners Summit workshops for teachers was an aha! Process conference with a very new look and feel. Completely different! Going GREEN! Instead of three-ring binders packed with handouts, we’ve got wikis and blogs, texting and twitters, flip videos and cell phone photo exchanges, and interaction with educators across the U.S. using Epsilen’s social networking service. The conference also includes specially-crafted remixes, dancing, and oohs and aahs! The energy for participatory learning was high—partly due, I’m sure, to a certain amount of anxiety for those who aren’t real smooth on the dance floor or aren’t from Generation Y (those under 30 who completely get high-tech devices).

Educators who came from 18 states and Washington, D.C. started the day by watching a clip from Born with a Wooden Spoon, a documentary report on poverty in the U.S. For many, this video seemed to bring home the reason we are doing this work. It certainly did for me! The participants gathered to learn and share best practices about homelessness, current research on brain development and how it is affected by poverty, African-American boys, redesigning high schools for all learners, math strategies, understanding students of Hispanic/Latino descent and their parents, and creating a climate of support for children from poverty at school, to name a few.

It’s a room full of America’s most highly motivated, well informed, and skillful educators! More from Houston later.

About the Author: Philip DeVol

Phil DeVol is an international consultant who has been working with aha! Process since 1997. He used aha! Process concepts to make institutional changes at the addiction treatment center where he was the executive director for 19 years. During this time he also co-wrote Bridges Out of Poverty with Ruby Payne and Terie Dreussi-Smith. His book Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin’-by-World is being used to engage people in poverty in the work of building communities where everyone can live well. It worked so well that DeVol used it as a basis for a prison reentry model called Getting Ahead while Getting Out. He works with community leaders to help them move quickly from an attraction to application of Bridges concepts. Getting Ahead and Bridges are being used in hundreds of communities in the U.S., as well as a number of sites in Canada, Australia, Ireland, Scotland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. His books have been translated into Spanish, Slovak, and Czech.