Leadership EDIT 2025

Join this interactive session to define and develop your professional identity as a leader. Engage in self-reflection to discover what drives your practice and explore the concept of personal branding to create a professional persona that aligns with your values and goals. Learn practical strategies for expanding your leadership skills, including crafting a mission statement and creating a personalized action plan. Leave with a digital interactive notebook containing actionable steps to strengthen your impact within your school environment! * Attendees of this session will need to bring a laptop with them in order to full engage in learning activities* 

How can we support diverse students through district initiatives without taking neurodiversity into account? 15-20% of the entire population are considered neurodiverse and an underrepresented group is often our Latinx community due to stigma, accessible resources and diagnostic measures.

Listen to narratives from a Latinx and neurodiverse perspective on the impacts of inaction and action to our larger community in terms of developing initiatives to support all students. This will be an opportunity to share your own story, reflect on your DEI initiatives and walk away with some ideas for how to develop neuro-equity en la comunidad.

In 2024, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation revealed that Wichita Public Schools in Kansas inappropriately restrained and secluded students with disabilities, often for punitive reasons or non-compliance. The investigation led to a settlement agreement with the district to end the use of seclusion, reform its restraint practices, and improve services to students with disabilities.

This session, “Classroom Crisis: Reducing Restraint and Seclusion Through Proactive Leadership,” will explore the critical importance of addressing these practices and provide school leaders with strategies to reduce and eliminate physical restraint and seclusion.

Participants will learn:
1. The impact of restraint and seclusion on students
2. Trauma-informed alternatives to these practices
3. How to implement systemic changes in their schools

Participants will gain an understanding of trauma-informed, neuroscience-aligned, neurodiversity-affirming, relationship-driven, and collaborative approaches to proactively reduce and eliminate the use of physical restraint and seclusion in their schools and districts.

In this session, attendees will learn how a school effectively uses a neuro-informed, restorative approach to meet the diverse needs of both students and staff. Through the story of one student's success, we will highlight the power of a collaborative, team-based model that draws on individual strengths and promotes a holistic approach to problem-solving. Participants will explore how staff members worked together to identify and implement tailored, strength-based interventions that addressed the unique needs of the student. By the end of the session, attendees will gain practical strategies, actionable resources, and insights on how to apply similar collaborative approaches to their own school settings.

Our schools, districts, and organizations are dynamic, living systems in which our experiences, thoughts, identities, behaviors, and feelings are constantly intersecting, colliding, avoiding, and yes, synching together as we navigate our collective nervous systems. This session dives into the role of leaders as we seek to create and honor the supportive and equitable school environments that allow all stakeholders to thrive. Through the lens of applied educational neuroscience, participants in this session will gain awareness of their own nervous system states and learn strategies to hold space and energy for the most vulnerable among us. When we shift paradigms and adopt compassionate, inclusive, and restorative practices, we begin to transcend the devastating effects of toxic stress, trauma, pain and fear that are so prevalent in today’s learning systems.