International Boys' Schools Coalition
17th Annual Conference 

Inventions in Teaching 

June 27-30, 2010

Hosted by The Haverford School
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

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An invitation to the IBSC's 17th global conference

Welcome to Philadelphia – Philly, City of Brotherly Love, Cradle of Liberty! Educators representing boys’ schools from around the world will gather in Philadelphia, USA for the 17th Annual IBSC conference from June 27-30, 2010. The conference unites the best of the International Boys' School Coalition -- an emphasis on continual improvement and innovation in teaching boys – with the best of Philadelphia – its remarkable role in the founding of the United States and its constantly changing and vibrant life today. Philadelphia was the home of Benjamin Franklin, the great statesman, writer, scientist and inventor. The conference theme, “Inventions in Teaching” is inspired by his ceaseless energy and creativity!

Conference Venue & Welcome

Delegates will convene at The Haverford School near Philadelphia, a short and very pleasant commuter train ride away from the downtown hotel location. For a preview of our venue, watch the conference preview video, or take a look at www.haverford.org.

Conference Schedule

To view the schedule, please click here. Please note that revisions to the schedule may occur between now and June.

Keynote Speakers

Andy Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. His work at Boston College concentrates on educational change, performing beyond expectations, sustainable leadership and the emotions of teaching. Professor Hargreaves qualified for and went on to teach primary school before studying for and completing his Ph.D. thesis in Sociology at the University of Leeds in England. He lectured in a number of English universities including Oxford until in 1987 he moved to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Canada, where he co-founded and directed the International Center for Educational Change. From 2000-2002, he was also Professor of Educational Leadership and Change at the University of Nottingham in England.

Professor Hargreaves has authored or edited more than 25 books which have been translated into a dozen languages. They include Learning to Change, Teaching in the Knowledge Society; Sustainable Leadership, Change Wars and the very recently published The Fourth Way, written with Dennis Shirley. This compelling and provocative volume makes clear that the old ways for effecting social and educational change are no longer suited to the “fast, flexible, and vulnerable new world of the 21st century.” The authors take readers on a revealing journey through three ways of change that have defined global educational policy and practice from the 1960’s to the present and offer a new “Fourth Way” that will lead to remarkable reforms in student learning and achievement. Andy now lives close to Boston, Massachusetts with his wife Pauline who is also an educator. Their children, Stuart and Lucy, work in the fields of law and international development.

Peg Tyre is a prize-winning investigative reporter and the author of the controversial and widely praised book The Trouble With Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Schools and What Parents and Educators Must Do (Crown 2008). Peg spent two decades in journalism, as a magazine feature writer at New York magazine, a newspaper reporter at New York Newsday, an on-air correspondent for CNN and most recently, as a long time staff writer for Newsweek, covering social trends and education. Between 2001 and 2008, she pursued her passion: examining the fault lines in American culture formed by class, gender, race, ideology and upbringing for the national weekly. Praised for being "analytical," "often counterintuitive" and "not afraid to take on society's sacred cows," Tyre's cover stories were top sellers at the magazine. Her cover story on the “Boy Crisis” in 2006 sparked national debate. A graduate of Brown University, she has lectured at Harvard University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a frequent speaker at public and private schools around the United States. She continues to write about education, social trends and culture. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, novelist Peter Blauner and their two sons.

Thomas Newkirk is the author of Misreading Masculinity: Boys, Literacy and Popular Culture (2004), which has been cited as one of the most significant books for teachers in the past decade. A former teacher of at-risk high school students in Boston, Tom is Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, the former director of its freshman English program, and the director and founder of its New Hampshire Literacy Institutes. He has studied literacy learning at a variety of educational levels—from preschool to college. He is the author of numerous books and articles on teaching literacy at all levels. In 2000 he received the David Russell Award from the National Council of Teachers for his book, The Performance of Self in Student Writing. His most recent book is Holding on to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones: Six Literacy Principles Worth Fighting For.

Adam Cox, a leading advocate for the social and emotional wellbeing of youth, initiated the Mighty Good KidsTM Workshop for Social and Emotional Development. This programme helps children with learning or attention problems, Asperger's syndrome, and other behavioural challenges develop social skills in a focused, supportive environment. He is the author of Boys of Few Words: Raising Our Sons to Communicate and Connect. In this work, Cox probes the reasons for and consequences of boys' relative difficulty in communicating their feelings. Further, he explores how nature and nurture combine with common "boy" issues like shyness, withdrawal, anger, and aggression to discourage the development of broad, deep, and verbally dexterous social and emotional vocabularies. His most recent book is No Mind Left Behind: Understanding and Fostering Executive Control--The Eight Essential Brain Skills Every Child Needs to Thrive. As a practicing clinical psychologist, author, and lecturer, he helps parents and teachers apply the insights of scientific research to the everyday challenges of raising healthy children and adolescents. Dr. Cox is the principal researcher and writer for the IBSC’s new project, Locating Significance in the Lives of Boys, and will present his preliminary findings on this project at the conference.

Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Executive Director of the Curriculum Mapping Institute and President of Curriculum Designers, Inc., is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of curriculum and instruction.  She has served as an education consultant to schools nationally and internationally. She works with schools and districts, K-12, on issues and practices pertaining to curriculum reform, instructional strategies to encourage critical thinking, and strategic planning.  Her books include Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation and Mapping the Big Picture: Integrating Curriculum and Assessment K-12 , and Getting Results with Curriculum Mapping, was released by ASCD in November, 2004. Dr. Jacobs' most recent book, Active Literacy Across the Curriculum: Strategies for Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening was released in April 2006. . PBS features two of her courses for teachers, Curriculum Mapping by Heidi Hayes Jacobs I & II, in their professional development program delivered on-line.

Dr. Jacobs has served as an adjunct associate professor at the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, NYC, from 1981 to the present. Her doctoral work was completed at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1981 where she studied under a national Graduate Leadership Fellowship from the United States Office of Education. Her master’s degree is from UMASS at Amherst and her undergraduate studies were at the University of Utah in her hometown of Salt Lake City. The fundamental backbone of her experience comes from her years as a teacher of high school, junior high school, and elementary children in Utah, Massachusetts, and New York.

Denise Pope, Ph.D., has been a lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education for the past 9 years. She specializes in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service learning. She founded and now directs the SOS: Stressed-Out Students project, a research and intervention effort to work with K-12 schools to counter the causes of academic stress. She lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to increase student health, engagement with learning, and integrity. Her book, "Doing School": How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (Yale University Press, 2001) was awarded Notable Book in Education by the American School Board Journal, 2001. Dr. Pope is a three-time recipient of the Stanford University School of Education Outstanding Teacher and Mentor Award. Prior to teaching at Stanford, Dr. Pope taught high school English in Fremont, CA and college composition and rhetoric courses at Santa Clara University. She lives in Los Altos, CA with her husband and three children.

New Conference Features

This year we introduce two new features to the IBSC conference. True to the theme, Inventions in Teaching, these innovations invite delegates to step ‘outside of the box’ and to think differently about their work with boys.

Locating Significance in the Lives of Boys

The first of these special sessions begins with a presentation by Dr. Adam Cox on his preliminary findings from the IBSC’s new research project on Locating Significance in the Lives of Boys.

The project involves intensive research visits to selected project schools for interviews with boys and teachers. In 2009/10, Dr. Cox will focus on IBSC schools in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. In 2010/11, he will visit project schools to be selected in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The final report will be published in mid-2011 for IBSC member schools.

The project is especially compelling for boys’ schools. “Significance” implies value beyond the immediacy of the moment; these are experiences that develop boys’ minds through the power of insight, inspiration, and meaningful changes in their subjective perspectives of the world. Rendering a model of how and where boys locate significance in their lives is essential to understanding how they value themselves and their various efforts, as a foundation of identity, purpose and accomplishment.

At the end of his presentation, Dr. Cox will pose a number of questions to delegates, who will then engage in smaller breakout sessions for discussion led by co-ordinators. This is outstanding opportunity for delegates to share thoughts on this intriguing topic with colleagues from around the world, and to contribute to the research gathered during the project’s journey.

Real Boys, Real Teachers, Real Classrooms

In the second new feature, a presentation and breakout sessions will focus on a series of video stories of boys’ classrooms in action, at the elementary, middle and senior levels, across many subjects and disciplines. The project is inspired by the IBSC’s report on Teaching Boys: A Global Study of Effective Practice.

We emphasize that the purpose of this exercise is to show “real teachers” at work with “real boys”, engaged together in “real time” classrooms. As is amply demonstrated in the IBSC’s Teaching Boys: A Global Study of Effective Practice, teachers tell great stories about approaches that work especially well with boys, and boys’ testimony tends to confirm the power of these practices. But this quite distinct phenomenon has seldom or never been witnessed in a form that can be viewed and analyzed by other teachers --and made meaningful and directional for their own practice. This innovative session will lead us to find new ways to continue the professional discussion about teaching and learning in our schools.

Workshop Proposals:
Second Round of Workshop Applications are due February 1st.

High quality workshops are an important part of the IBSC conference and we are eager to solicit proposals for the coming conference. The experience of preparing a workshop is tremendously powerful professional development for teachers and staff. Welcomed are presentations about classroom practices, programmes related to the physical, social-emotional or spiritual development of boys, mentoring, community service, arts, athletics and leadership. Also welcomed are workshops focusing on advocacy of boys' schools and other topics of interest to teachers and administrators working in boys' schools.

To submit a workshop proposal, go to our online workshop application.