Education Summit: 'Burn the Worksheet'

The Education Department is finalizing plans for the sixth annual Education Summit Thursday and Friday, March 15-16.

This year’s theme is Burn the Worksheets: Student Learning in Innovative & Creative Classrooms and features Brian LaDuca, executive director of the Institute of Applied Creativity for Transformation at the University of Dayton. Through his work, LaDuca empowers forward-thinking students with the ability to develop imaginative and empathetic skills to excel and impact the global workforce. A 2017 Dayton Forty Under 40 award winner, he also is the creator of the IDA pedagogy, short for Ideation-Disruption-Aha!

LaDuca has presented his research and work at the High Aims 2017 Summer Institute and other conferences in the U.S. and abroad. He has published extensively on such topics as An Arts-Based Model for Student Creativity in Engineering Design and Social Innovation Through Purpose, Performance and Story. He holds a bachelor of fine arts degree in performance studies from the University of Illinois-Champaign and another BFA in directing for stage and screen from the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His professional experience includes work at both his alma mater institutions, the University of Notre Dame, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.

The school also will welcome English teacher, author and tennis coach Walter Moody from Hueneme High School in Oxnard, California, and three young Heidelberg alumni, who will share their classroom experiences with education majors and mentor teachers who are working with them in the field.

The welcome and LaDuca’s keynote presentation will be at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 15, in Gundlach Theatre. On Friday, March 16, Heidelberg education majors, area practicing teachers and area high school seniors will participate in a series of breakout sessions. LaDuca, Moody and Dr. Karen Jones, director of the School of Education, along with alumni Krystina Pratt, Paige Atterholt and Allyson Guarino will lead the breakout sessions, which will be followed by a Q&A discussion with all of the presenters.