Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking Hosts Conference on “Attention and Distraction in the Classroom” on April 24
D. Graham Burnett, keynote speaker at IWT’s April 2026 conference.
Bard College’s Institute for Writing and Thinking (IWT) will host its annual April Conference and welcomes educators of all disciplines on Friday, April 24 from 9:30am to 4pm. This year’s IWT conference will focus on “Attention and Distraction in the Classroom.” The 2026 conference will be hybrid, and participants can join online or in person at Bard’s Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, campus.
As demands on attention multiply, this conference considers how teachers can create vibrant communities of attention in the classroom and how writing-based practices can invite students to slow down and more thoughtfully engage with their learning and lived experiences. The keynote speaker, D. Graham Burnett, is a historian, writer, and professor whose work invites people into collaborative experiments in attention. He is the co-founder of the Strother School of Radical Attention, and Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton University.
Tuition fees are $635, with Early Bird registration (prior to March 27) and Group discounts available. To apply for a scholarship, please submit an application here by March 27. Participants will earn 5.5 Continuing Teacher and Leader Education credit hours. Learn more about the conference and register at iwt.bard.edu/april/.
Participants will meet in small, interactive workshop groups to read, write, and explore a range of pedagogical practices, and will take up the intertwined themes of attention and distraction in the classroom, asking how we can create spaces where students rediscover the joy of deep engagement with ideas, texts, and each other. Each participant will also receive an anthology of texts and a copy of Burnett’s newly released book, Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement (January 2026).
Post Date: 03-06-2026
As demands on attention multiply, this conference considers how teachers can create vibrant communities of attention in the classroom and how writing-based practices can invite students to slow down and more thoughtfully engage with their learning and lived experiences. The keynote speaker, D. Graham Burnett, is a historian, writer, and professor whose work invites people into collaborative experiments in attention. He is the co-founder of the Strother School of Radical Attention, and Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton University.
Tuition fees are $635, with Early Bird registration (prior to March 27) and Group discounts available. To apply for a scholarship, please submit an application here by March 27. Participants will earn 5.5 Continuing Teacher and Leader Education credit hours. Learn more about the conference and register at iwt.bard.edu/april/.
Participants will meet in small, interactive workshop groups to read, write, and explore a range of pedagogical practices, and will take up the intertwined themes of attention and distraction in the classroom, asking how we can create spaces where students rediscover the joy of deep engagement with ideas, texts, and each other. Each participant will also receive an anthology of texts and a copy of Burnett’s newly released book, Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement (January 2026).
Post Date: 03-06-2026