Last week, I had the pleasure of attending my fourth SXSW EDU in Austin, TX. As Ron Reed mentioned before introducing scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw as the opening speaker, the conference has grown significantly since 2011. Whereas in the beginning, it felt more focused on digital learning and ed-tech, this year felt more like it was a hub for relevant education conversations. Thus, organizers implicitly asked participants to choose their own adventure. And that they did.

For my part, I partook four events: a multilingual learner and teacher meet-up with Alejandra Vázquez Baur, a mentorship session focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and a book signing (I can’t believe This Is Not A Test is still selling well after a decade!). Oh, I also participated in a panel as a special advisor for Teachers Unify Against Gun Violence with Sari Beth Rosenberg, Kiki Leyba, and Kelly Booz of Share My Lesson/AFT. I’m grateful for new shoes, but mostly for the community, too.

People from various circles in my life, particularly my EduColor life, had found a few days out of the year to come under one umbrella and share in this multifaceted experience. While the world feels like we’re seeing calamities and disasters on a regular basis, it’s good to commiserate with people who see what you see and still have a sense of hope anyways.

More importantly, for fifteen years as a teacher, I attended hundreds of hours of professional development sessions. Now as a sociologist studying teacher professionalism, I get to keep attending hundreds of hours of professional development. Here are some takeaways from a structural perspective that’ll help inform everyone’s learning, or so I hope:

It Starts With Values

In the midst of statewide DEI bans, SXSW EDU stepped into that conversation without apology. For teachers who needed space to make meaning of their experiences with book bans, restricted curriculum, high stakes standardized testing, critical race theory, and/or immigrant students and asylum seekers, SXSW EDU carved out that space within the conference. It wasn’t the whole conference, and it didn’t need to be.

Some people would snicker at the idea of discussing various identities as part of professional practice, but in talking to teachers the way I do, identity informs not just their current work, but why they’ve stayed.

Usually, educators’ first experience with a conference is one that everyone discusses or that the district approves for funding. After the conference, the educator goes to a smaller, more focused convening where they can learn more about that subset of topics or, at least, find a community of like-minded practitioners. (Some of us even created our own summit for these times of uncertainty.) What I’ve appreciated in recent times is how conferences have decided to feature what was once considered niche because it elevates everyone’s work.

Embracing values that center empathy, compassion, and learning with courage at the center helps us all.

Designs Experiences within an Experience

Critics might argue that conferences shouldn’t be all things to all people. I argue that not enough conferences allow educators the opportunity to get their various cups filled, either. In other words, what if conferences tried?

The “choose your own adventure” route sounds arduous and expensive, but it also means, like professionals do, they get to craft the learning and conversations they need to have to further their work. A small set of educators could always create an Edcamp, a model in need of revival in our times. But at SXSW EDU, many of the same people who attended Dr. Crenshaw’s talk about her work also attended panels on AI. Some who attended workshops on the science of reading also attended workshops about democracy in education.

In other words, the design of the conference gave everyone a chance to follow an individualized program for what they aspired to learn in the same larger space. It doesn’t have to be all the things for all the people, but just enough of these things to spark more things.

Of course, that wasn’t always the case for many of the conferences I attended even ten years ago. My first experience at SXSW EDU felt more like the typical education technology conference. I heard from plenty of talking heads evangelizing about the promise of the future where students’ devices would accelerate learning, so on and so forth. Back then, too many presenters started their presentations with a long list of questions, but the answers were a list of the most famous companies in the world.

No. Just no.

Now, with educators having seen a wider array of professional learning experiences on and off-line, conferences have to engage participants differently. That’s healthy for everyone involved.

Considerations

Like so many of the professional development conferences I have the opportunity to attend, I get how the cost prohibits wider attendance, especially from teachers in underresourced schools. Because teachers of color are more segregated than students of color, and also more likely to work in said underresourced schools, conferences usually lack the racial diversity necessary to meet the moment. I’d venture to say that these schools are the places where teachers are more likely to get professional development based on raising test scores and less about wider knowledge about the field.

Of course, we also have a global pandemic that has severely affected attendance, not to mention the teacher shortage crisis that districts haven’t figured out. But I think spaces like this are actually a solution to the shortages, not a problem. More organizations and foundations should sponsor teams of educators to attend these spaces as they had before because professional development should be done with us, not to us.

Every conference space can learn how to better organize their work to focus on the learning, just as we aspire to do for our students. Educators don’t have to go to these conferences anymore to get the information they need, but we still seem to prefer the community aspect of learning with other people from various walks of life, on or off-line.

Next year, I’d love to see everyone in Austin, but in the event that you can’t make it, you should at least get to advocate for a more expansive notion of professional learning. Students deserve better and more connected learners.