2025 Agenda

Key Outcomes:

• Identify and explore personal communication beliefs and habits
• Gain new communication habits that will have an immediate, positive impact on your ability to communicate at work and at home
• Discover how your communication beliefs transfer into habits that lead to an authentic life

In this session, learners will take a deep dive into the 7 Success Factors with the new book, The IC Toolkit. Together, we will explore what the book has to offer and practice the activities as a whole group and in small, collaborative groups. Toward the end of the session, participants will have dedicated time to plan how they will use The IC Toolkit to create a month-long learning plan for themselves, their team, or their own IC program.  

Key Outcomes: 

• Understand how to leverage The IC Toolkit as a learning tool  
• Experience the benefit of a community of practice 
• Create a plan for how to continue learning with The IC Toolkit throughout the school year 

In this session, participants will have the opportunity to invest time in honing the key skills of coaching: listening, noticing, asking powerful questions, and playing back. The day will be spent exploring and practicing these key skills so that each participant can take away what they need. The session is designed to enhance your coaching skills and build your confidence as a coach.

Key Outcomes: 

• Sharper conversational skills 
• Greater confidence in coaching 
• Higher levels of self-awareness 
• Increase sense of well-being 

In this pre-conference session, Chris Munro, co-author of Growth Talk, will bring to life the key concepts and frameworks of their ground-breaking book through a series of interactive activities across the day. The central premise of the book is that every interaction between members of a school community are potential opportunities to enhance learning, growth. and progress. In these moments, no matter how fleeting or informal, Growth Talk is about intentionally bringing the key elements of coaching into play to best support the thinking and progress of our conversation partner. In this full-day workshop, we will explore the skills and techniques that underpin these conversations and demonstrate coaching as a way of leading. 

Key Outcomes: 

• An understanding of ‘coaching as a way of leading’ in human-intensive organizations like schools 
• An understanding of the ‘Learning Conversations Map’ as a framework for being a more intentional conversation leader in less-formal contexts 
• Immediately implementable strategies to make every conversation count 
• Enhanced skills and confidence to lead Growth Talk conversations with teachers, administrators, parents, and students 

Would you like a clear set of skills and strategies to confidently navigate difficult conversations while maintaining strong relationships?

This interactive workshop is designed for both new and experienced leaders seeking to enhance their ability to manage difficult discussions or feedback, with clarity, empathy, and purpose. You’ll learn how to balance expectations with constructive, practical tools and frameworks to support successful and effective conversations.  

Key Outcomes: 

• A deeper understanding of what makes some conversations challenging or difficult 
• Knowledge of some theories that explain our responses to challenging conversations 
• Enhanced self-awareness about how you ‘show-up’ and respond in challenging conversations 
• Increased confidence to engage in challenging conversations 
• Enhanced skills and helpful frameworks to manage challenging conversations 
• First-hand experience of taking a ‘coaching approach’ to challenging conversations 

What do leaders need to know and do to ensure that coaching flourishes in their school? This is a question that Christian van Nieuwerburgh, John Campbell, and Jim Knight have been wrestling with over the past year, and the result is a completely new version of John and Christian’s book The Leader’s Guide to Coaching in Schools.

In this interactive session, Jim Knight will unpack the key ideas from the book and guide participants through hands-on activities designed to turn theory into practice.  

Participants will explore: 

• What leaders need to know about The Impact Cycle and how administrators can apply its principles and methods in everyday conversations 
• How the Growth Coaching Conversational Framework equips leaders to guide teachers and colleagues to set and hit powerful goals 
• Strategies for having powerful coaching conversations—even when there’s only 5 to 10 minutes available 
• Next-level communication skills that deepen trust and engagement 
• And much more 

Many coaches and on-site professional developers are finding themselves in high stakes, critically important roles expected to lead school reform efforts with little or no professional preparation for successfully performing such tasks. Having worked with more than 100,000 coaches from around the world for over two decades, ICG experts have identified seven factors that must be in place in order for coaches to flourish. This workshop provides an overview of those seven factors. 

Key Outcomes: 

• Learn research-based coaching skills that can be used in professional practice immediately 
• Discuss each strategy, principle, tool, or idea with other conference attendees to gain multiple perspectives on the learning that is shared 
• Create an implementation plan to take back to schools, organizations, and districts 

To launch this year’s Teaching, Learning, Coaching Conference, Jim Knight will take the stage to share something deeply personal and profoundly relevant—what he’s learned about life by listening closely to others.

Over the past year, Jim set out on a journey to uncover the most important lessons people learn in a lifetime. He read widely, but more importantly, he listened—interviewing and surveying people around the world, especially those further along in their lives. He asked them big questions: *What brought you the greatest joy? What mistakes taught you the most? What do you wish you had done differently? What are you most proud of?* And if they could go back, *what would they want their younger selves to know?*

The stories he heard were honest, moving, surprising, and wise. They changed him. And now, he’s bringing those insights to the conference—not as a lecture, but as an invitation to reflect on what really matters in our work and in our lives.

This conference is about learning—real learning, the kind that changes classrooms, conversations, and people. What better way to begin than by learning from life itself?

Come join us for a keynote that’s inspiring, grounded in evidence, full of heart, and rich with practical wisdom. It just might change the way you see your work—and your life.

Sharing her personal journey of the American Dream, Dr. Natasha Sistrunk Robinson honors teachers — the true American heroes — whose dedication shapes the future through public service, education, and mentorship. As a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and commissioned U.S. Marine Corps Officer, Dr. Robinson draws on her proven leadership experience to inspire bold truth-telling and courageous confidence to lead in the challenging days ahead. 

We live in an era in which listening is more important than ever. Drs. Christian van Nieuwerburgh and Robert Biswas-Diener introduce new ways to think about listening. This includes listening as a motivated practice, grounded in observation, and one that comprises diverse and occasionally counterintuitive sub-skills. 

This keynote introduces interfluence: the subtle ways our words shape meaning between us. For instructional coaches, interfluence offers a way to hear “real stories” not just as problems, but as pathways—whether they come from strength, hope, dread, or trouble. Through this lens, every coaching conversation becomes a space where stories, in all their complexity, are crafted into resilience, learning, and hope.