National Education Summit 2024

Moving the Arts from the Elective to the Core

Through experience of real world examples and sharing of tested tools and strategies, take-aways will include a set of tools with examples to connect to past and present, bring inclusive storytelling, and blend global thinking and local action to empower students to master academic core. 

Think Digitally! Art, Design & Digital Experiences

What goes into creating an educational digital experience for youth? At the Smithsonian Science Education Center our team of artists, developers and designers start from the ground up to create fun and engaging educational games and simulations, for kids of all ages, to enhance the experience of discovery-based learning. In this session, you will explore how an idea for a digital experience gets started, how we solve problems to make an educational game fun for students, and how we incorporate STEAM into our learning goals.

Teachers Making Black Arts History

"A Bold and Beautiful Vision,” an exhibition at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, explores the rich history of African American artist-educators in Washington, D.C. across the 20th century. Rather than celebrating the singular genius of any one artist, the exhibition celebrates the collective genius of community: the teachers, mentors, and students who made the city into an unparalleled center for Black arts education that produced some of the country’s most gifted artists. Join us for a conversation between a Smithsonian historian and an arts educator as we unpack inspiring education stories that can help us see our communities’ strengths today.

Nurturing Multicultural Voices Through Art

Through a decade-long collaboration between the Fairfax County Public Schools Office for ESOL Services’ Family Literacy Program, National Portrait Gallery, and Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology, workshop participants of all ages have used museum objects, artmaking, and storytelling to explore issues of migration, belonging, and community-building, while developing empathy, confidence, self-expression, and self-advocacy. You will learn about the research and results of these programs, and leave with a Smithsonian Learning Lab toolkit of resources and activities designed to foster in multigenerational English language learners important skills including visual literacy, public speaking, creative writing, art appreciation, collaborative learning, and advocacy.

Leveraging Digital Media to Support Civic Dialogue

This session shares strategies from the Digital Democratic Dialogue (3D) Project, a multi-year collaboration between university teacher educators, K-12 English teachers, and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). The 3D Project harnesses digital media platforms to support students from geographically, demographically, and ideologically distinct communities across the country to share their civic stories, understand perspectives different from their own, and discuss controversial issues from a stance of critical civic empathy. Members will describe how they developed this network, how it has transformed their teaching, and how hundreds of students have responded to the opportunity to dream civically together.

Leveraging Art as a Key Text in Our Classrooms

Join a panel of state teachers of the year as they unpack the ways that they've leveraged the arts to make history relevant in their classrooms. Supported by examples from their classrooms, the teachers will share how they've connected classroom topics to contemporary issues for their students.

Smithsonian Poster Exhibitions in Your Classroom

Learn about the free poster exhibitions and educational resources created by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) as you hear from an educator who is using these materials in the classroom to enhance learning objectives, spark curiosity, and engage student inquiry. You will also learn how libraries and other cultural organizations use these resources. This session also allows for an opportunity to provide feedback to the Smithsonian for topics and related educational resources you would like to see in the future.

Side Quest to Main Quest: STEAM at SAAM Arcade
SAAM Arcade is an annual program featuring independent developers who are invited to the Smithsonian American Art Museum to showcase their video games for a day of playing, exploring art, and helping others understand why gaming is for everyone.  Learn how SAAM Arcade showcases the ways in which turning STEM to STEAM sparks creativity and connection, and creates space for inclusion and equity, amplifying game designers from historically marginalized communities.

Deepening Connections: Art, Music, and AI conversations

The Reckoning with Our Racial Past National Conversation on Race (NCOR) series collaborated with three Los Angeles museums, Japanese American National Museum (JANM), LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, and Chinese American Museum (CAM), exploring the legacies of race and racism via their collections and programs. Together, they deepened their inclusive storytelling to local and national audiences by confronting and connecting history: LA Plaza’s multigenerational art workshops, JANM’s AI technology interviews an internment camp survivor, and a recorded musical performance guides listeners through the 1871 Chinese Massacre.

Creating Portraits of Community

How can museums help students engage with their communities to tell overlooked stories? Join three Smithsonian museum educators and a classroom teacher to explore tools to help your learners capture their community's history through photography and oral storytelling. Leave equipped with practical strategies and digital lessons to enhance your professional development journey.

What’s the Story with National Stories?

How do we learn and teach national stories? Native Knowledge 360° (NK360°) provides educational resources and teacher training that incorporate Native narratives, more comprehensive histories, and accurate information to enlighten and inform teaching and learning about Native America. We will introduce methods of better story telling using NK360° resources. Crafting richer narratives about our collective history prompts deeper reflection on the decisions individuals made then and now. National narratives serve as invaluable tools for acknowledging errors, fostering empathy, enhancing our listening skills, and cultivating stronger communities.

Co-creation: Sharing AANHPI Stories Together

APAC’s National Education Program for Co-Creation inspires and supports educators to share the stories of their local Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities. Throughout 2023 and 2024, APAC worked alongside the YURI Education Project to connect and convene a cohort of K-12 classroom educators and AANHPI-led organizations to co-create new education materials. This wide range of resources, including cookbooks, zines, and maps, will make the rich and diverse histories of AANHPI people accessible to students in their community and beyond. Learn how they developed a co-creation model, preview education resources, and consider how you may integrate co-creation into your own practices.

Finding Your Voice, Telling Your Story

How can our students engage with everyday primary sources they may come across? How can our students use these sources to find their story … and think historically? This interactive session will examine personal family artifacts to tell a story of American immigration. Examples from recent NCSS methods texts for pre-service educators will also show how to engage with primary sources on a wider national scale.

Cross content Approaches to Youth Climate Action

By engaging in interdisciplinary inquiries into complex issues like climate change, educators have the power to foster comprehensive understanding, support diverse learners, and ignite a passion for climate activism. Join Smithsonian educators as they explore this idea using museum resources. Taking a multi-dimensional lens to explore climate change through civics, art, and science, learn transferable techniques to engage students in deeper thinking and action.

Educating for Sustainable Development: Teachers' Perspectives

The Smithsonian Science Education Center and Gallup conducted a study of U.S. K-12 teachers and school administrators, and teachers of students in comparable grade levels in Brazil, Canada, France and India, to gauge attitudes toward, and demand for, education and resources related to sustainable development. In this session you will learn about the major findings of this global survey and will receive free resources from the Smithsonian, NOAA and the Afterschool Alliance to help educate students--both in school and afterschool--on sustainable development topics, including clean energy, biodiversity, climate action, and biotechnology. Let's all think globally but act locally!

Our Classroom is a Zoo! Resources for Real STEAM

Animals can make STEAM lessons wildly exciting! Learn how the Conservation Classroom leverages students’ love of animals to foster empathy and connect them to wildlife through modular activities designed to introduce students to animals and conservation and develop their desire to take action for wildlife.

Stories of Women in STEM

Though women make up 51% of the U.S. population, women only make up 35% of U.S. STEM employment. In this panel three women in various STEM fields will come together to tell their unique stories. From the medical, space, and climate resilience fields they will share their career paths, challenges, and successes, and together will explore how to inspire future generations of women in STEM.

Cultivating Changemakers in Our Communities

Many critical challenges of our time can seem insurmountable, however, given the opportunity to address these challenges at the local level, students can begin to see themselves as innovative changemakers with agency. Join state teachers of the year from across the country as they share how their students are exploring global challenges and activating local solutions in their own communities.

Democracy in Dialogue Virtual Exchanges

The Semiquincentennial will focus on the stories and inspirations of 1776. As part of the Smithsonian's commemoration, the Democracy in Dialogue Virtual Exchange Program will support place-based investigations that connect rural, Tribal, and urban youth across the country to contemplate, celebrate, and reflect on their communities’ unique contributions to the American experiment over 250 years.

Empowering Youth: Co-creating Programs with Teens

Go behind the scenes with Smithsonian educators to learn how they partnered with local community organizations to deliver pilot programs that cultivate the civic identities of high school students. Discover the strategies implemented by three museums to empower youth agency in co-creating program elements that educate and inspire.

Environmental Justice: Leaders through Community

The Center for Environmental Justice at Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum is excited to present the Environmental Justice Academy (EJA). This program works to champion communities of color as the primary driving force in creating leaders for tomorrow, growing community change, and utilizing community organizations to tell the history and write the future of the environmental justice movement. The EJA program which currently serves participants in the Anacostia watershed, is a compelling case study for highlighting national environmental justice issues on a local scale.

Inclusivity in Environmental Education

Students from diverse backgrounds all bring invaluable lived experiences and cultural practices to educational settings. In this session, educators from the Smithsonian, World Wildlife Fund and International High School at Largo will share lessons learned through their nation-wide collaboration to support youth action and leadership for the environment. Panelists will describe the culturally appropriate and DEAI-informed approaches used with youth collaborators to ensure an inclusive and conducive setting for learning. You will learn intentional, practical considerations for language terms, activity types (and even snack choices!) to create a setting wherein all students can thrive.

Youth as Agents of Change in Their Community

Learn how you can inspire students to be civically engaged and act as agents of change in their community. Educators will leave inspired with a framework and a robust step-by-step toolkit to engage K-12 students to become civically active by using design thinking and activating community conversations. Smithsonian staff and educators who executed community focused projects with youth, will share best practices, challenges, and how their project impacted their students and the community.