Takeaways from The 2024 Residency Lab Symposium
It has taken me a couple of weeks to share my reflection from this year’s Residency Lab symposium; I just felt like there was so much valuable information to process and communicate and I wanted to do it justice! This year, our symposium centered around the theme of Reimagining Teacher Preparation for the 21st Century Learner. The symposium featured many professional learning opportunities for our participants, including 2 Keynote Speakers and 29 breakout sessions led by presenters from all across the state in various stages of implementation. We had attendees from across the state of California and even connected with a team of residency leaders from Washington State to learn about the great work happening in California!
After an event that engages our minds and hearts and allows us to participate in structured engagement, I feel that it is important to reflect on our biggest learnings.
The Importance of Representations from Diverse Perspectives
The symposium allowed for audiences to hear from a variety of perspectives. We had presenters who represented small residencies and large residencies, urban and rural residencies, and came from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, socioeconomic, and other backgrounds. By integrating a variety of voices, we set the stage for challenging preconceived notions and biases that exist in our educational system today.
The Physical Space
We heard from our participants that our venue this year, the Museum of Tolerance, inspired conversations within your teams to challenge the status quo. The space allowed us to think critically about social issues that have been a part of our history and continue to be at the forefront of our work today. Our participants felt that the museum was lovely, hospitable, and “felt like someone’s living room.”
Our Keynote Speakers
Dr. Noble kicked off our event with an eye-opening fireside chat, and enlightened us to the racial limitations and assumptions behind search engines. Through her discussion with Dr. J, Dr. Noble gave incredible insight into how search engines prioritize results, and how those results reflect the biases of our culture. Further, she gave us concrete examples of how these limitations can be addressed in the educator preparation space. Dr. Noble suggested two activities to raise awareness of the influence of search engines and AI in our perceptions of the world. First, she encourages her students to put their devices away for 48 hours to allow them disconnect and have experiences outside of the technology she uses every day. She asks them to journal about how they process their experience during those 48 hours and reflect on how they find information they regularly access and how they access it.
Second, Dr. Noble encourages her students to use AI or other search engines to look up identities that they care about and see if the results they come up with are surprising in any way. Dr. Noble encourages her students to then go to the library and search in the stacks to see how the identities they care about are categorized. For example, she had a student find that books or articles surrounding Black, gay identities were categorized with other lifestyles deemed deviant or bad.
Jesse Leon joined us on the second day of the symposium, and shared about his experience being trafficked as an 11-year-old. Through his story, he spoke about the importance of the people surrounding him and how they influenced him both positively and negatively. Jesse tried to escape his trauma by acting out in school, and struggled to find the words to tell his mom what had happened to him. He spoke about how the system failed him, and how he hopes to create better systems for those who come after him. Jesse emphasized the importance of educators and teachers to truly know their students and be a safe place for them to share their experiences.
The Event Overall
We heard from some participants that The Residency Lab Symposium allowed them to see models of residencies doing the work they plan to do, and felt a strong sense of community. New residencies felt that they could take the insight gained from the symposium back to their work and be part of the residency movement! Our participants felt inspired:
“This was a phenomenal event. It’s been so long since I’ve attended a conference/symposium where I left feeling invigorated and excited to implement everything!”
“I appreciate all the care and support the residency lab offers. The community is small and we do rely on our honest conversations to support each other and our candidates.”
“This was an amazing conference. I learned a TON!!! I feel so supported as I start the residency grant process. Everything from pre-arrival logistics, to the food, to the physical space, to the keynotes, to the breakouts everything was fantastic and really expected.”
“Thank you for an amazing experience. I am looking forward to attending next year.”
Further, 97.6% of participants would recommend The Residency Lab’s Annual Symposium to a colleague, 97.6% of participants felt that the tools and resources they received were useful to their program, and each keynote session was well-received, averaging 4.7 out of 5 for being informative and engaging!
Thank you again, to all who attended, and to our sponsors and partners! Keep an eye on The Residency Lab communications as we refine our offerings for the year to come!
