In March 2025, Miss Porter’s School hosted a symposium called “Learning Well, Teaching Well,” which focused on exploring strategies for improving the well-being of both students and educators.

This conference brought together educators, administrators, and education consulting professionals for a variety of dynamic workshops. Educators at all levels learned how to better support and engage the diverse learners in their classrooms, and administrators were able to explore ways to strengthen their approaches to faculty support and overall professional development.

Keynote Speaker Starr Sackstein

Starr Sackstein, an accomplished educator, author, and advocate dedicated to transforming education through innovative practices, was the keynote speaker for this event. With a background in secondary humanities education, she has championed learner-centered paradigms, assessment reform, and technology integration.

In her opening presentation, “All Students Can: Building Learning Cultures That Promote Student Ownership & Advocacy,” Sackstein argued that schools must shift from compliance-based models to student-centered learning cultures prioritizing agency, voice, and advocacy. Throughout her talk, she highlighted many ways to empower students in today’s schools through student-led portfolios, assessments, and conferences, co-creating success criteria with students, or personalizing learning with flexible demonstrations of understanding.

In addition to her role as keynote speaker, Starr also led a special two-hour workshop titled “Empowering Students: Creating a Learner-led Culture Through Partnership, Grading Reform, and Authentic Assessment,” which built on the themes of her keynote presentation. In this workshop, participants reflected on current beliefs about grades, assessment, and school structures which led to productive conversations about the different ways that learning experiences could be improved for students. They also explored the steps a school would need to take to build a truly learner-led culture.

“It was a meaningful experience in a beautiful setting, and I came away feeling truly energized and inspired. I’m so glad I had the chance to meet and spend time with such dynamic educators—Starr is awesome!”

Session Highlights

This symposium brought together over 40 education professionals from public and private schools across the United States. Participants had the opportunity to explore a wide variety of meaningful sessions, addressing topics such as: developing competency-based learning systems, supporting growth through dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), building mastery-based practices in the classroom, engaging in reflective practices that enhance educator wellness, and leveraging AI, design thinking, and research to create meaningful, lasting learning experiences. 

“I really enjoyed the day and was so impressed by the thoughtful planning and meaningful conversations throughout the symposium.”

In her session titled, “Nurturing Neurodiverse Learners: Designing Teaching and Learning Experiences to Foster Access, Equity, and Growth,” consultant Maggie Roberts taught participants how to cultivate strengths-based approaches to learning in the classroom. She also highlighted the importance of using a proactive Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, which anticipates and embraces cognitive diversity in the classroom, and she provided a number of ways in which educators can effectively develop and apply this framework, no matter their content area.

Dr. Gravity Goldberg, an educational consultant and visiting professor at Wesleyan University, focused her session on “Using the Body-Brain Connection to Boost Student Engagement and Wellness,” and participants learned about the many ways in which students’ emotional safety and stress management affect learning. Throughout the workshop, Dr. Goldberg modeled strategies that educators could use to lessen student anxiety, stress, and fatigue in their classrooms. Her many suggestions, such as planning breaks, embedding different types of movement into lessons, listening actively, or using nature scenery in a classroom, were all practical and easily applicable for any grade level or type of learning experience.

Are you interested in more transformational workshops, symposia, and conferences like this for your professional development as an educator?

Click here to check out all the different opportunities we have coming up.