NM PED 2026 Literacy and Humanities Summer Conference

Rejuvenate your spirit in this experiential workshop that introduces simple, accessible art-making practices grounded in mindfulness. You will engage in creative activities designed to restore focus, reduce stress, and cultivate presence for both yourself and your students. Because the emphasis is entirely on process and reflection, no prior artistic experience is required.

During the session, you will have the opportunity to participate in several mindfulness art activities, including drawing, beading, and sculpting. You will also be invited to engage in guided reflection and mindful movement. You will leave this workshop with a personal sense of calm and a variety of creative tools to help foster a mindful, focused atmosphere in your own classroom.

Financial literacy is an essential life skill that should grow with students from early childhood through adulthood. This session showcases dynamic, free resources from the Federal Reserve designed to build economic knowledge and personal finance skills across grade levels.

Participants will explore classroom-ready resources and engaging activities that integrate easily into literacy, math, and career readiness instruction. Educators will leave with practical tools to help students build real-world financial understanding and make informed financial choices. Whether you are looking to enhance a math unit or find informational texts for literacy blocks, this session provides the high-quality materials needed to prepare students for a successful financial future.

In this session, you will explore real classroom scenarios involving AI use in civic learning, emphasizing that ethical decision-making around technology is an essential part of daily civic education. Together, we will analyze both effective and problematic uses of AI through a civic lens, focusing on the common good, transparency, bias awareness, and academic integrity.

Working in small groups, you will create a "Do’s and Don’ts of AI in Civic Education" guide tailored to your specific instructional context. This tool is designed for everyday classroom use rather than one-off conversations. You will also contribute to a shared resource bank of vetted prompts, discussion protocols, and student reflection tools that support ongoing civic thinking in an AI-rich world. By the end of the session, you will leave with a practical ethical AI checklist reflecting your local policies, sample AI-integrated civic lesson prompts, and student reflection templates for responsible use. You will learn how to help students practice critical evaluation and civic judgment, preparing them to engage responsibly in their communities and democracy on an ongoing basis.

In this session, you will examine real examples of misleading digital content that circulate in civic spaces and explore the everyday challenges to accuracy in a democracy. You will investigate issues such as mis- and disinformation, sponsored content, media bias, and conspiracy theories. Rather than relying on simple skepticism, you will model discipline-specific lateral reading strategies that support informed civic judgment.

You will learn how to evaluate and verify claims by cross-checking sources, tracing authorship and funding, and contextualizing information using targeted search operators. Working collaboratively, you will design a classroom-ready flowchart that guides students through a structured verification process which can be embedded across social studies units all year long. By the end of the session, you will have gained hands-on practice with digital literacy through live demonstrations and experienced applying search operators to authentic civic examples. You will leave with a customizable verification flowchart, an access link to iCivics digital literacy resources, and a deeper understanding of how to integrate civic reasoning into your daily instruction.