Deeper Learning 2026

Schools need more AI. And by AI, we mean Arts Integration, Ancestral Intelligence, Abundant Imagination and Artificial Intelligence. At our opening event, hear from educators and leaders who will speak to each of these important forms of AI.

Arts Integration
Marimar Patrón Vázquez, is a cultural innovator and educator who co-founded Habla: The Center for Language and Culture in Yucatán, México, where she was born and her family lived for generations. Trained in literature at Universidad de las Américas and Brown University, she has been recognized with Brown’s Presidential Teaching Award. She directs Habla’s programs weaving storytelling, cultures, reading, and the arts into language learning to create transformative learning experiences. Her approach foregrounds translanguaging and culturally sustaining strategies: she supports learners in drawing on their full linguistic repertoires, using story, movement, visual arts and multimodal composition to build meaning, identity, and voice across languages. Marimar helps design the Habla Teacher Institute and presents workshops internationally. The greatest lessons she’s learned about teaching are from her children, who are growing up bilingual.

Ancestral Intelligence
Dr. Stanley Rodriguez also serves on the board of Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival and is active in cultural events across the region. Named a 2015 American Indian Heritage Month Local Hero by Union Bank and KPBS, he continues to champion Indigenous knowledge and cultural resilience with unwavering commitment.

Abundant Imagination
Dina Buchbinder is the Founder and President of Education for Sharing (E4S), a global nonprofit transforming education through the power of play. For over 18 years, E4S has engaged more than two million children, educators, and families across the Americas, fostering empathy, collaboration, and civic agency through a Play–Reflect–Act methodology that connects learning to sustainability and real-world impact. A National Geographic Explorer and Ashoka Fellow, Dina leads initiatives like Nature for Sharing to inspire environmental stewardship and systems thinking from childhood. As a social entrepreneur and advocate for joyful, inclusive learning, she builds bridges between education, science, and civic engagement. Dina believes deeper learning emerges when curiosity, creativity, and care meet action—when learners see themselves as protagonists of change.

Artificial Intelligence
Kwaku Aning is the Founder and Principal of Retro Futurism Consulting where he leverages 25 years of experience across education, corporate, and non-profit sectors to help organizations: transform how they build and leverage networks, maximize conference and gathering opportunities, create lasting partnerships that drive change, facilitate meaningful connections that scale impact in corporate and nonprofit sectors. This work has taken Kwaku to national and international stages, where he has presented and participated in panels on the future of education, design, social impact,  and technology. Whether it’s discussing AI, Blockchain, Virtual Reality, or Augmented Reality at events like the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 23), Comic Con, Social Innovation Summit, or SXSWedu, he is always eager to share insights and explore new ways to create lasting impact.

Note: This is a Crossover Session that is featured at the National Summit on Improvement in Education. Attendees from both conferences can attend this session, so there will be a mix of participants from Deeper Learning and from Summit.

Deeper Learning is a set of powerful outcomes for students. Continuous Improvement is a set of powerful methods to achieve better outcomes. Deeper Learning needs continuous improvement and continuous improvement needs deeper learning. Join a discussion with three leaders who have been working to support schools to both achieve deeper learning outcomes and to enact the principles and methods of continuous improvement. Where are these efforts in tension? Where do they support one another?

About the Speakers
Ben Daley joined High Tech High to teach physics as a founding faculty member in fall 2000. He has been a school director, chief operating officer, and chief academic officer for High Tech High and is now the president of the Graduate School of Education. As a student at Haverford College, Ben majored in physics and was credentialed in secondary physics and math, student teaching at Lower Merion High School outside Philadelphia. After graduation, he traveled to the Philippines and taught science and math at an international school in Manila. Upon his return to the U.S., he taught physics and AP physics at the Madeira School, a girls’ boarding school in suburban Washington, D.C. He then moved to California to coach basketball and to teach physics at Pomona and Pitzer Colleges. He earned an M.A. in Science Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership at UC San Diego.

Jim May is the president & CEO of New Tech Network (NTN), a national education nonprofit transforming K-12 public education. Since joining NTN in 2011 as a School Development Coach, he has held multiple leadership roles, returning in 2022 after a brief hiatus to co-lead the organization before assuming his current position.
Previously, Jim was a founding staff member and principal at Two Rivers Public Charter School in Washington, DC. He began his career as a high school social studies teacher and soccer coach in South Carolina. A committed education leader, he has been a Fulbright Memorial Fund Scholar, an education policy fellow at the Institute for Educational Leadership, a fellow at the National Center for Leadership, and, most recently a Pahara Fellow. He holds degrees from Presbyterian College and The George Washington University and is an alumnus of the Stanford EdLeaders program.
Outside of work, Jim serves on multiple nonprofit boards and is deeply involved in coaching youth soccer. Jim lives in El Paso, TX  with his wife, Evan, and their three children.

Ash Vasudeva is the Education Program Director at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Previously, Vasudeva served as President and CEO of ConnectED: The National Center for College and Career, where he championed the organization’s efforts to improve students’ social and economic mobility through high-quality college and career pathways. Prior to ConnectED, Vasudeva was senior VP at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He was also a senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, served as co-executive director of Stanford University’s School Redesign Network, was a senior research associate at WestED, and taught science at Pasadena High School. Ash received a B.S. in History from Carnegie Mellon University and a Ph.D. in Urban Schooling from UCLA.

About the National Summit on Improvement in Education:
The National Summit on Improvement in Education is a gathering and rallying point for a vibrant and diverse community of improvers who are working to create educational systems where all young people learn and thrive. In 2026, we're bringing together the powerful Deeper Learning and Improvement communities through select crossover sessions, culminating in a joint closing keynote. You are invited to dive deeper and make new connections at DL26. Check out our Summit and DL26 comparison to learn more.

As work, learning, and society evolve, what should school hold onto—and what must it be willing to change? This moderated screening and conversation features curated clips from Most Likely to Succeed and Multiple Choice that explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping learning, work, and postsecondary pathways. Through contrasting school models—project-based, experiential learning and career-connected education grounded in mentorship—participants examine how skills for college, employment, and durable human development are cultivated. The session also surfaces a central parent dilemma: choosing between innovative models aligned to a child’s needs or traditional pathways long viewed as the safest route to success. Blending film, guided reflection, and peer dialogue, this interactive experience invites educators, families, and system leaders to consider why schools look the way they do, how AI accelerates change, and what it means to prepare young people for an uncertain future. 

Marvel and DC comics, East Coast and West Coast hip hop, Marmite and vegemite yeast extracts… All historic rivalries between titans who are, in truth, united by so much more than what divides them. 

Now you can add the National Summit on Improvement in Education and the Deeper Learning Conference to that list. Two iconic education conferences, both hosted by the High Tech High Graduate School of Education at the same time, both culminating in a closing keynote that will bring BOTH CONFERENCES TOGETHER.

Who, you ask, could command such an audience?

It could only be Ron Berger. 

Ron taught at Shutesbury Elementary School in Shutesbury, Massachusetts, for 28 years, from 1975 to 2003. Shutesbury has a population of fewer than 2000 people, which means that Ron has taught a significant portion of them. At that school, he developed an approach to learning in which students tackled serious, intellectually knotty challenges together and  created beautiful, professional-quality work over the course of multiple drafts. To give just one example, his elementary-school students conducted Shutesbury’s first-ever comprehensive water quality study. 

This work inspired Ron to write An Ethic of Excellence, a 156-page book that has not only inspired countless educators, it has inspired countless people to become teachers. It’s also one of the few education books that routinely reduces readers to tears (in a good way). 

Since then, as Chief Academic Officer of EL Education, Ron co-authored  A Culture of Quality, Leaders of Their Own Learning, Transformational Literacy, Management in the Active Classroom, Learning that Lasts, and We Are Crew: A Teamwork Approach to School Culture. He was a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he did his graduate work. He founded and directs the website Models of Excellence: The Center for High-Quality Student Work, which holds the world’s largest collection of beautiful K-12 student work. 

Ron is now EL Education’s Senior Advisor on Teaching and Learning. In his closing keynote, he’ll be talking about how Deeper Learning and Continuous Improvement inspire remarkable student work and thinking around the world.