EduCon 2.5

Vanity Fair recently published a list of the "New Establishment" and according to the editor, they share a common trait: they’re "disrupters." By definition, disrupters are innovative change agents who challenge the status quo. There are a growing number of these educational innovators in Philadelphia and across the country. But they often do not have the resources they need to scale their approaches. As a result, their innovation is often short-lived and isolated from mainstream practice.

In this session, participants will share their experiences and discuss what conditions are necessary to retain this type of talent at multiple levels of the system – i.e., district, school, classroom – and how the broader community can be used more effectively to support disruptive innovation.

The following questions will be discussed: •What does disruptive talent look like in practice (at the district, school, and classroom level)? •What role should the broader community play in supporting this type of change? •How can we better connect innovators between schools within the same district, as well as across school in different regions?