MYFest 2025: Schedule

First half of this session explores AI tools in a Cairo course for tasks like translation and analysis, aligning with learning goals and assessing student work. Discusses challenges and lessons learned, featuring interactive audience activities.
Second half of this session Introduces a reflective framework with AI feedback to enhance Arabic writing, guiding student analysis and teacher instruction. Includes interactive demos and student writing examples.

This will be an ongoing “session”. The idea of the first session is to involve the kids in creating a community type agreement and going over ideas and get things kicked off. Of course, any of the adults who would like to help in this project are more than welcome to attend as well. Follow-up sessions of kids showing off what they are doing, perhaps a tour of their world.

Please join us for another co-facilitated book circle on the book “Burnout from Humans.” As part of this book circle, we will explore the depth of the book and it’s implications over a series of sessions together, where we will move beyond simply consuming the ideas with our heads, to connecting them to our heart and hands in experiential ways.

This book circle requires separate registration through the google form linked inside. Please note that there is a limited number of participants that could join, so please sign up if you plan to participate.

Join us for this hands-on workshop, where you will be invited to engage in identity exploration activities to gain insight into how your lived experiences with transnationality have shaped your understanding of who you are and how you engage with the world. Building on these insights, you will have the opportunity to engage in collaborative autoethnography to make simple practical plans for individual and community transformation for educational justice.

Join us for an hour of supporting each other’s writing… quietly… where we will kick off with 5 minutes of inspiration, give everyone about 50 minutes to work on what is important to them right now, and have 5 minutes to celebrate what we’ve accomplished today. This group is dedicated to anyone who is working on a writing project of any kind: you can work on a peer-reviewed paper, grant application, syllabus, even a really tricky email, even your creative work, a poem you want to capture, lyrics for your next song 🙂

Join us for an interactive session where we’ll play the Go Somewhere card game, a hands-on experience designed to spark dialogue around AI metaphors, personal and collective values, and actionable next steps. Through playful exploration and conversation, we’ll reflect on what the metaphors we use to describe AI reveal about our values and consider how to respond to its continued emergence in ways that are rooted in our values, responsive to context, and oriented toward equity.

It’s hard to know what to tell students about the ecological impact of generative AI when the Internet seems split between “Stop worrying” and “It’s the apocalypse.” This workshop offers a fact-based exploration of AI’s environmental costs while providing tools and activities for educators to bring this conversation into the classroom.

In the “Joy Centered Pedagogy” Book Circle, we will be exploring the depth of the ideas from the book in community with other participants. Unlike a traditional book club, the purpose is read deeper, and spend time connecting with the ideas, with each other, and with our work in experiential and engaging ways. Space will be made for introspection, play, laughter, debate, conflict, reflection, and so much more.

This book circle requires separate registration through the google form linked inside. Please note that there is a limited number of participants that could join, so please sign up if you plan to participate.

Build community, support one another, while also learning some useful facilitation strategies you can use in your classes or workshops.

This workshop will invite participants to examine the concepts of identity, power, privilege intersectionality, and bias and how these impact educational environments and interactions. Participants will have opportunities to engage in supported self and collective reflections on these concepts and how they impact their personal teaching practices and contexts. The session will end with a discussion on approaches to navigating power imbalances in course design and delivery.

Join Us in this community conversation on how to make sessions more equitable. We will use the liberating structure TRIZ to collaboratively co-create guidelines for equitable facilitation in MYFest.

Is it possible that we’re not totally perfect and that’s…okay? Let’s share our feelings around failure, reveal what fruitful possibilities our failures might afford us, and maybe discover renewed joy in our teaching and learning, a little freer from the curse of perfection.

You know where you want to get to, but it feels like you’re treading water in a system designed to keep you or your students down. This session will focus on how we can use the iceberg model from systems thinking to identify the structures and mental models that get in the way of imagining equitable and sustainable futures. We’ll also look at how we can use leverage to shift the icebergs we face into new paradigms and imagine new possibilities.

Please join us for another co-facilitated book circle on the book “Burnout from Humans.” As part of this book circle, we will explore the depth of the book and it’s implications over a series of sessions together, where we will move beyond simply consuming the ideas with our heads, to connecting them to our heart and hands in experiential ways.

This book circle requires separate registration through the google form linked inside. Please note that there is a limited number of participants that could join, so please sign up if you plan to participate.

Join us for an hour of supporting each other’s writing… quietly… where we will kick off with 5 minutes of inspiration, give everyone about 50 minutes to work on what is important to them right now, and have 5 minutes to celebrate what we’ve accomplished today. This group is dedicated to anyone who is working on a writing project of any kind: you can work on a peer-reviewed paper, grant application, syllabus, even a really tricky email, even your creative work, a poem you want to capture, lyrics for your next song 🙂

This session provides an introduction to key concepts of access, accessibility, and disability. We will explore our own biases and perceptions of access and examine different models of disability that may inform individual and institutional perceptions and approaches to accessibility. There will be an opportunity to apply these concepts to design cases.

This hands-on workshop invites participants to create new lyrics for cover versions of songs, fostering creativity and musical exploration. Whether or not you see yourself as a creative individual, you’ll have the opportunity to enjoy artistic expression and collaboration in a studio-like atmosphere.

What do student-staff relationships look like that bring out the best in all involved? What can facilitate not just academic learning, but personal growth and the development of skills necessary for current and future societies? What are the promises of higher education that we wish to offer future generations? Join us to explore these questions through sharing your own experiences and hopes, considering near-future fictions, and together, imagining how we might build better relationships within the academy.

In the “Joy Centered Pedagogy” Book Circle, we will be exploring the depth of the ideas from the book in community with other participants. Unlike a traditional book club, the purpose is read deeper, and spend time connecting with the ideas, with each other, and with our work in experiential and engaging ways. Space will be made for introspection, play, laughter, debate, conflict, reflection, and so much more.

This book circle requires separate registration through the google form linked inside. Please note that there is a limited number of participants that could join, so please sign up if you plan to participate.

This session explores the dynamic intersection of artificial intelligence and Arabic language education. Recognizing both the transformative potential of AI in educational settings (Grassini, 2023) and the current gap in teaching multi-dialectical practices within classrooms (Masaeed, 2023), I aim to demonstrate how AI can bridge this divide.