This conference features breakout sessions for established learning centers and a comprehensive two-day training workshop for schools seeking to create their own

Breakout Sessions

This two-day conference will feature breakout sessions tailored for schools that have already established a learning center. Our agenda includes dedicated sessions for both students and advisors. These sessions are designed to provide opportunities for discussing shared challenges and successes, and for exchanging effective strategies. Below, we’ve listed potential topics for breakout sessions. We strongly encourage both students and advisors to propose and lead their sessions. Breakout sessions may cover any aspect of managing and operating a learning center. A detailed schedule along with final breakout sessions will be published in August.

Type of Sessions: presentations, roundtable discussions, mini-workshops, innovative solutions dialogues, mentorship sessions.

Number of Sessions: the number of breakout sessions will depend on the number of conference attendees.

Possible Sessions for Students

• Generating Interest - Marketing Your Center
• Training Coaches: How to Run a Workshop
• Getting Parents Involved
• Managing 101
• Supervisor: Benefits and Challenges
• Building a Cognitive Coaching Culture
• Challenging Myths
• Advanced Cognitive Coaching
• Understanding the Creative Process

Possible Sessions for Advisors

• The Role of the Advisor
• Using the Guiding Principles to Drive Decision-Making
• Harnessing the Support of the Community
• Maintaining the Sustainability of the Center
• Building Student Leader Capacity
• Understanding How the Program addresses Social Emotional Well-Being

Training Workshop

In this two-day workshop, participants learn the nuts-and-bolts of how to establish a successful student-staffed and managed learning center. This workshop builds on the success of the International School of Tianjin’s award winning Literacy Lab, a 10-year tested and proven model for a student-staffed and managed learning center that supports the acquisition of literacy skills. Using a simple philosophy rooted in discussion-based learning practices and supported by a sustainable organizational structure, the Literacy Lab was able to transform a small, teacher-driven writing center into a fully developed student-staffed and managed learning center that provides support for students in reading, writing, notetaking, presenting and discussing. The Literacy Lab is staffed by over 60 student volunteers—coaches, managers, and a supervisor. The lab provides support for students in grades 5-12 during lunch and after school and records over 1200 visits a year from students seeking academic support—nearly five times the number of students currently enrolled in the school’s secondary division.

The model that has allowed the Literacy Lab to achieve this level of success is rooted in inquiry- and discussion-based practices that promote respectful, authentic, and often mutually beneficial dialogue. When engaging in a workshop, student volunteers do not act as tutors or give advice to students seeking academic support. Instead, volunteers serve as coaches and engage in conversations using specific strategies to help guide students to think critically about their work and develop creative solutions to their unique challenges. This model not only reinforces essential approaches to learning but ultimately empowers students by creating opportunities for them to take responsibility for their own learning and by acknowledging their innate ability to do so through meaningful dialogue. These are valuable life skills and strategies that will benefit them throughout their schooling and beyond. Over the course of the workshop, participants will learn strategies and receive practical tools that will enable them to establish an effective learning center in their school.

Who Should Attend?
This workshop is primarily designed for students in grades 6-12 and supporting adults (teachers, librarians, service coordinators, and curriculum coordinators). We strongly encourage attending adults to bring at least 1-2 interested students. This is not, however, mandatory. Adults are welcome to attend on their own if they have not yet identified interested student leaders.

What Will Participants Learn?
Over the course of the workshop, participants learn and practice key strategies and receive practical tools that will enable them to establish an effective learning center in their school. By the end of the workshop, participants will understand how to:

• Create a simple guiding philosophy that promotes inclusion and involvement while ensuring sustainability
• Use cognitive coaching strategies to work with students one-on-one
• Employ 10 different feedback strategies to facilitate group workshops
• Address concerns related to editing student work
• Create tiered levels of involvement that create authentic, real-world leadership opportunities for students
• Tackle myths about student agency, student-driven learning and literacy instruction
• Recruit student coaches and managers and select a student supervisor
• Encourage teachers to actively support the center and embed the center’s strategies in classroom practices
• Promote the center’s services to the community and encourage parent involvement
• Manage change sustainably in order to accommodate shifts in student population and teaching staff

Who's Leading The Workshop?
This workshop will be led by the teacher responsible for developing the program along with student supervisors, managers and coaches.

Registration Fees & Accomodations

Maximum Capacity: 80 attendees

Fees: Free

Accommodations with Transportation Provided

• Crowne Plaza Meijiangnan (610 RMB per night)
• Shangri-La Tianjin (800 RMB per night)

Accommodations without Transportation Provided

• Ji Hotel (430 RMB per night)
• Vienna Hotel (238 RMB per night)
• Green Tree In (216 RMB per night) - Chinese ID card holders only. 30 meters away from school.

If you have any questions, please email Joe_Schaaf@istianjin.org.cn

Host School