Leadership EDIT 2026

Participants will learn how schools move through experience phases—recovery, stability, and belonging—and why culture and equity efforts stall when foundational conditions are missing. Attendees will identify indicators of each phase and examine how communication clarity, system consistency, and leadership behaviors shape psychological safety.
The session is highly interactive, beginning with a brief self-reflection to help participants locate their school’s current experience phase, followed by small-group dialogue to surface patterns and insights across contexts. Guided discussion will encourage peer learning and normalize shared challenges.
Participants will leave with one concrete action to strengthen stability in their setting and a simple reflection tool to continue evaluating experience conditions after the summit, extending learning beyond the session into daily leadership practice.

A poet once asked, “How does the seed reveal the tree, but yet conceal all that it will ever be?” In this session, participants will practice radical empathy by recognizing and questioning deficit-based thinking to reframe how they talk about and work with students, staff, and their community. Participants will identify and define their own core values and brainstorm ways they model them in their work through the filters of their personally inherent, acquired, and organizational traits. The facilitator will present a 4-prong strategy to focus on the potential in students, staff and community – reflect, recognize, reframe, and respond.

Participants will:
1. Understand school connectedness as a research-based protective factor linked to academic success, engagement, and student well-being.2. Identify practical, school-wide strategies that leaders can implement to strengthen connection across grade levels.3. Develop one actionable next step to assess and enhance connectedness within their own context.
This session will actively engage participants through reflection prompts, brief partner discussions, and real-world scenarios that invite collaborative problem-solving. Audience polling and guided dialogue will encourage leaders to share ideas, challenges, and effective practices from their own schools.
To extend learning beyond the summit, attendees will leave with practical tools, assessment ideas, and implementation strategies that can be shared with leadership teams. Resources and reflection guides will support continued conversation and sustained action toward building stronger, more connected school communities.

In this session, we will share the journey of transforming school culture at two alternative sites, a juvenile detention center and a mental health facility, by centering learning on curiosity, student agency, and critical thinking. In settings where students often feel powerless, we have discovered that shifting ownership of learning from teacher to student builds engagement, resilience, and ultimately, hope.Participants will: (1) explore practical ways to increase student agency and curiosity in any classroom; (2) examine structures that shift thinking and problem-solving to students; and (3) consider how student agency, curiosity, and critical thinking serve as a foundation for hope, especially for vulnerable learners.Through reflection protocols, real examples from our sites, and collaborative discussion, we will model the strategies we use with students. Although our work is rooted in alternative settings, these practices readily transfer to traditional schools and can strengthen culture, engagement, and student thinking in any learning environment.

Every thriving school culture is a perfect blend of leadership, collaboration, and care. In this session, participants will discover how administrators, counselors, and staff can work together to intentionally brew a supportive, inclusive climate for students and adults alike. Attendees will sip on real-world strategies, collaborate with peers, and leave energized with tools to sustain momentum. Strong culture is the secret ingredient and it should feel good.

This interactive session blends brief neuroscience-informed content with reflective dialogue and applied practice. Attendees will assess their own regulation patterns using a guided self-audit, analyze real-world leadership scenarios, and practice language shifts that promote psychological safety and equity. Structured small-group discussion protocols will create space for collaborative problem-solving and shared insight across roles.
Participants will leave with concrete reflection questions and immediately applicable strategies to bring back to their teams, supporting sustained, trauma-informed leadership beyond the summit.
Participants will (1) understand the role of adult nervous system regulation in shaping school climate, (2) identify how leadership behaviors influence collective emotional safety, and (3) develop practical strategies for modeling co-regulation during high-stress moments.