When I return to the New York AERO office after this coming weekend we will have little more than a month before the AERO conference, August 3-7 in Portland, Oregon. It is shaping up to be one of the best AERO conferences ever, with many new features, such as the first day's Ted-like mini-talks, the World Cafe at the beginning and end of the conference, child care that will run as a democracy, The Education Jam and Agile Learning Center programs, fifty great workshops, keynotes from Yong Zhao, Peter Gray and Stuart Grauer, local school visits, etc. We haven't been able to announce all features because AERO staff have been traveling this month.

 

We have a decent number of registrations, enough to make a very good conference and networking experience, the most important part of the AERO conference. But I had expected to do better than this in our first return to the west coast in four years, so this will likely be our only conference in the area for a while. We've had many requests to bring the conference elsewhere, including back east. Of course there's still some time. So please do spread the word about the conference. We've previously asked you to tell your networks about it, to get beyond our core members, but not many have done so. So it's now or never. The same is true if you want any group rate or special help.

 

We look forward to seeing you in Portland!

-Jerry Mintz

By Lynn Stoddard

The statistics are alarming. More than one-third of teachers leave at the end of their first year and four out of 10 quit within five years. We are headed toward a genuine crisis. That's the bad news. The good news is that there is a sleeping giant solution waiting to be activated, if our culture can understand a different vision and summon the will to do it.

Read the rest here.

By SHANNON GILCHRIST

Ongoing

 

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