2025 Agenda

Our schools are only as good as the conversations that take place in them. This workshop introduces communication beliefs and habits that will help anyone communicate more effectively, both professionally and personally. Participants will enhance their communication skills through reflective practice. 

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 

This practical workshop provides an introduction to the three elements of effective leadership coaching, with a particular focus on the GROWTH framework and key coaching skills to help current and aspiring leaders support, challenge, and grow those around them.

Key Outcomes: 

• Understand what leadership coaching is – and isn’t! 
• See a real, live leadership coaching demonstration 
• Practice using the GROWTH Framework leadership coaching  
• Greater confidence and clarity with leadership coaching 

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 

This session will examine the earliest days of being a new instructional coach. Participants will examine foundational coaching principles and skills and also various elements of coaching in action: coaching cycles, data gathering, strategies, leadership support, and new coaches’ greatest fears. If you’re a new coach or you support new coaches, this session is for you. 

Key Outcomes: 

• You will be able to successfully get started with your first 90 days of instructional coaching 
• Support coaches in this process if that is part of your role as a leader and be productive at helping teachers and consequently helping thousands of students 

Peer-to-peer coaching and AI – two powerful levers that can change the way we think about and make use of coaching in schools.

We know teachers learn best from other teachers. That is one of the great strengths of peer coaching—it builds upon the professional trust and collaboration between teachers by giving them resources for working in partnership to improve instruction and student achievement. 

Then add in the evolving power of AI as tool to support data analysis, personalized feedback, and a platform for collaboration.

This session offers practical tools for educators at all levels to combine the power of AI with peer coaching to make personalized professional learning scalable and accessible in new ways. 

Key Outcomes: 

• A clear understanding of how teachers can work in reciprocal partnership to improve their teaching practice 
• An appreciation of emerging ways AI can be used as a tool for enhancing reflection and professional learning 
• Tools and strategies to immediately apply in schools following the workshop 

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 

This workshop gives participants a deep understanding of the elements of system support at their schools that empower coaches to have an unmistakably positive impact on student learning and engagement with their teachers. 

Key Outcomes: 

• Leaders will learn about who the coach is and how well the coach is supported and look at ways to ensure coaches get the support they need 

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