Faculty Present at Transformative Teaching Conference

On Saturday, March 1st, the inaugural Transformative Teaching Conference, organized by the Center for Transformative Teaching (CTT) in collaboration with the California Teacher Development Collaborative (CATDC) took place at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, California, just south of San Francisco. Presenters from over 20 schools, predominantly from the northern California region, contributed to the premise of “Catalyzing Change”; among them were Poly’s own Upper School Film/Media Teacher Adam Feldmeth and Upper School Science Teacher Will Mason. As co-presenters in the category of “Democracy in Action,” they closed out a robust day brimming with intriguing ideas, generative practices, salient strategies, and mutual sharing. As a culmination to the day, they facilitated a workshop entitled, “Community Forum: Fostering a Space for Civil Discourse on Campus.” 

This presentation grew out of a year-long, grassroots study group that included Adam, Will, and College Counselor Garine Zetlian. Gathering on a weekly basis since February 2024, this trio, organized under the loose moniker of POG, drawing upon Poly’s recent Portrait of a Graduate cornerstone document, organically formed as an ongoing fellowship of colleagues mutually invested in actively considering the culminating years of a Poly student. This discursive work has since manifested into the realization of a variety of on-campus initiatives and events. These include the establishment of the Community Forum designed to promote timely discussions and civil discourse, Thinking Out Loud, a gathering initiated and sustained by faculty toward discussions of transformative teaching, innovative pedagogies, academic programming, and student support. Additionally, Adam, Will, and Garine have organized Upper School assemblies on the election and democracy, and a special program for seniors during Senior Week with an emphasis on the new college climate. The conference presentation, while reflecting the weekly POG dialogue, represented Adam and Will's collaborative effort.

After providing an overview of the group’s initiatives over the past year through a slideshow of cases, Adam and Will turned the remainder of their allotted time into an exercise in civil discourse among all those in attendance. At the end of a robust day of numerous presentations, tools, and strategies, they posed the very question that any educator should not take for granted: What is transformative teaching? 

The rows of chairs in the room were disrupted from their lecture structure and reconfigured into a loose circle for all to see and hear each other as a dynamic discussion commenced. One attendant raised a salient comparison between the challenges of transformative teaching in the transactional context of private education. Another idea put forward involved the prescient observation that transformation is not a one-way street; in the most fundamental manner, the site of transformation is not only the student in relation to their schooling but also the educators in relation to learning. The discussion recognized presenters from earlier in the day and voices that were attending the conference but until this time had remained more audience than equal. The discussion was so robust in weaving together a consortium of approaches in progressive pedagogy that it continued well beyond the allotted time for the session running its course. 

The importance of fostering occasions for student agency and collegial collaboration has been central to Adam, Will, and Garine’s work, who themselves represent a collaborative of trans-curricular skill sets, experience, and approaches. The opportunity to present at the inaugural Transformative Teaching Conference provided an expanded field to manifest this fundamental ambition with the many educators today who are pursuing novel, creative, and critical projects giving form to this thing called transformative teaching.