CONFERENCE STRANDS
Leadership
This strand emphasizes the vital role of leadership in fostering and sustaining thinking classrooms. Sessions focus on what school and district leaders need to know to create the conditions for teachers to implement BTC, including time for teachers to collaborate, making it safe for teachers to experiment and learn, and providing resources and removing obstacles.
Coaching
This strand attends to the knowledge and skills that coaches—who may or not have the word “coach” in their job title, and may or may not coach full-time—need in order to support colleagues in implementing BTC in their classrooms. Sessions focus on working with teams of teachers in collaborative groups, techniques for working with teachers new to BTC, and/or the various types of support that coaches might provide.
Teaching
Sessions in this strand are focused on the classroom level implementation of all or some of the 14 practices in the BTC framework. They might highlight one’s implementation journey, focus on using BTC alongside a specific curriculum or resource, within a specific grade band, or to teach a specific standard; or the unpacking of specific BTC practices or toolkits.
Equity
All BTCC26 sessions should be equity-forward, in the sense that they prioritize ways in which ALL students have access to, and benefit from, BTC, regardless of student characteristics. The Equity strand is for those educators who have a particular interest, job responsibility, or personal mission around equity, and includes sessions for educators who are not classroom teachers but support their district’s efforts around equity in various ways.
Special Populations
Sessions in this strand focus on approaches for building thinking classrooms while considering a wide range of student demographics, including but not limited to, students from diverse ethnic/racial backgrounds, emergent multilingual students, IEP-eligible students, neuro divergent students, LGBTQ+ students, or those facing economic disadvantages.
BTC Outside of Math
Sessions in this strand focus on approaches for building thinking classrooms in content areas other than mathematics and should include a focus on one or more of the BTC practices. Proposals for inclusion in this strand should clearly indicate for which subject teachers they are intended.
