PBS education conference

Thousands of New Yorkers will gather on March 24 and 25, all in the name of education, during the “Celebration of Teaching and Learning.”
The two-day event is being held by Thirteen/WNET New York and WLIW Long Island to give educators a chance to celebrate their work as well as to gain information that is generally found in national conferences that are rarely in the New York area.
“There are no large national education conferences that come to New York anymore,” said Roland Thorpe, the Vice President and Director of Thirteen’s Education Department. “That means that our teachers and our administrators get very few opportunities to go to national conferences. We decided we needed to have something that good, if not better, right here locally.”
The conference, which will be held at Pier 94/The UnConvention Center at 12th Avenue and West 55th Street, will include speakers such as news anchor Tom Brokaw, author Frank McCourt and actor Richard Dreyfuss. The event will also include professional development conferences, keynote addresses, master classes and vendors, among other things. Some of the informative sessions will address issues such as building a positive and safe school culture, high school reform and meeting the needs of English language learners.
The conference will kick off at 8 a.m. on Friday, March 24 with the JP Morgan Chase “Multimedia in the Classroom” Awards, which will recognize 10 schools that have found new ways to put technology to use in the classroom. Among the winners are two Queens schools, P.S. 108 in South Ozone Park and Townsend Harris High School in Flushing. P.S. 108’s project was entitled “Me? Live with Lions?” and involved students creating Web Quests. Townsend Harris won for “Pandora’s Box,” where student Alexandra Stergiou produced a short video as part of a class assignment.
Each winner will receive $1,000.
Thorpe, who was a teacher for 16 years, said that they hope to make the “Celebration of Teaching and Learning” an annual event.
For more information on the conference or to register, visit www.thirteen.org/celebration or call (212) 560-4900.
“This conference is not just for teachers, not just for school leaders,” Thorpe said. “There’s really a lot that we have to offer for people who think that education is one of the most important challenges we’re facing in the country…”