"We chose New Orleans because the city embodies a spirit of change. In the face of disaster, this city sees the chance to rebuild better and stronger--to reinvent itself. Like the challenges the U.S faces in education, there is hope, there is courage, and there are plans to make it better," said Nancy DeFord, immediate past president of ASCD. DeFord has been replaced by Valerie Page Truesdale, superintendent of Beaufort County School District in Beaufort, S.C., which serves over 19,000 students in the most rapidly growing county in that state.

Paul Vallas, superintendent of the New Orleans Recovery School District, said that even though 70 percent of the children in Louisiana suffer from poverty, and the state has the lowest reading scores among 4^th graders in the country, "we are a proud and courageous people, and we know that we will only become wealthy when we become a well-educated people."

Vallas said the state has approved new math and reading programs for all schools this year.

In keeping with the spirit of the conference, Deirdra Grode, a seventh and eighth grade social studies and language arts teacher at Hoboken Charter School in Hoboken, N.J., helps her students understand that knowledge and courage can lead to positive changes in the world.

Grode was the winner of ASCD's 2008 Outstanding Young Educator Award. She says she expects her students to "view the world with critical minds and be leaders of positive change in their communities." To help her students accomplish this, she regularly exposes them to different perspectives and provides them with innovative service learning and character education opportunities.

For example, when most middle school students learn about slavery, they focus on its existence in colonial America and the role it played in the Civil War. Grode addresses those aspects of slavery with her students, but she also has them examine strategies of change used by abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to explore how they can become agents of change themselves. Her students then research examples of contemporary slavery--from child soldiers in the Burmese Army to agricultural workers in the United States who receive no pay for their work--and create informational brochures to educate the community about slavery's existence today and how it can be stopped.

Grode related the story of how she became involved in her current work. She said during her freshman year in college she was required to take a community service course. For two days a week she taught at a prison.