In collaboration with Flintridge Prep, the first-ever Southern California Teaching Symposium: Creating Connections invites teachers, innovators, and thought leaders to participate in a day-long conference where we’ll celebrate teaching and learning. We’ll imagine how our students can most effectively learn key skills and concepts, while also learning deeply and supporting each other in an educational world that asks for flexibility and growth.

Join us for this dynamic 3-day Summer Institute to transform teacher evaluation from a compliance-driven task into a meaningful, growth-oriented process. We will explore how to reimagine evaluation as an act of “tending the ecosystem,” a collaborative and continuous practice rooted in equity, well-being, and professional growth. Participants will engage with research-based tools for assessing instruction and classroom culture, receive practical, easy-to-adapt frameworks for their school sites, and leave with a clear road map for collaboratively designing an evaluation system that better supports the flourishing of both educators and students at their schools.

The early years are critical for building the foundational reading and writing skills that set students up for long-term academic success. Facilitated by Rebecca Bellingham and Veronica Scott, authors of The Artful Approach to Exploring Identity and Fostering Belonging, and The Artful Read Aloud, this interactive experience highlights how purposeful play activities, storytelling, community poems, expressive movement, and “artful read-alouds” can bring early literacy to life—honoring children’s identities, amplifying their voices, and fostering the belonging that underpins joyful learning and academic excellence.