Session Outline (90 Minutes)
1. Pick Me Up: Leading with Interests (10 min)
Participants reflect on their own passions using prompts around interests, relationships, and learning practices. They connect this to student interests and community expertise.
2. Community of Practice Values (3 min)
Brief review of group norms focused on collaboration, brave spaces, and shared learning. Participants reflect on how to create these conditions in their own settings.
3. Context Builder: Students as Curriculum, Community as School (10 min)
Introduction to the Interests + Relationships + Practice framework. Includes examples from New Image Youth Center and student stories. Participants consider application in their context.
4. Student Presentations of Learning (30 min)
Students lead 20-minute mini-lessons on their passions followed by 10 minutes of Q&A and feedback. Participants observe interest-driven teaching in action.
5. Reflection & Implications (10 min)
Guided reflection on engagement, assumptions about expertise, and shifts needed in systems, culture, and learning design.
6. AI-Powered Project Ideation & Competency Alignment (20 min)
In small groups, participants use AI tools to generate interest-based project ideas, align them to competencies, and identify possible expert partners. Groups share takeaways.
7. Final Reflection: Translate to My World (7 min)
Participants reflect on rigor, barriers, opportunities, and one change they can implement immediately to honor student passions.
Attendees will leave with resources for designing interest-driven, real-world learning experiences powered by AI. This includes:
A protocol for using AI to map and analyze student interests
An AI-assisted process for identifying local or virtual experts aligned with those interests
A draft outline for a meaningful project co-designed with AI prompts that connect student passion, real-world impact, and competency goals
Works Cited
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