CONFERENCE, March 14-15
- Keynotes:
- Derrick Gay
- Myron Dueck
- Maymouna Sakho
- Tricia Friedman
- Kristin Lowe
- Ewan McIntosh
- Sean Truman
- Hour-long workshops
- Exhibition
- Social events
- Coach & AD program
PRE-CONFERENCE, March 13
- Full-day institutes and meetings
- In-depth learning
CONFERENCE STRANDS
- Programs for Exceptionalities
Design educational settings that support students with diverse needs and abilities, empowering them to achieve their goals.
- Belonging & Inclusion
Create a learning environment where all students feel valued, respected, and have equal opportunities to succeed.
- Wellbeing & SEL
Develop SEL to cultivate empathetic, supportive and resilient school communities.
- Leadership
Explore innovative leadership strategies that empower educators, inspire students, and drive systemic change.
- Technology & Innovation
Harness the potential of technology to create engaging and effective learning experiences that facilitate student success.
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FEATURED SPEAKERS
Derrick Gay
Dr. Derrick Gay is a globally recognized Belonging and Intercultural Strategist, dedicated to fostering cultures of dignity and respect. With multifaceted expertise as an international speaker, author, researcher, educator, and university lecturer, Dr. Gay empowers individuals and organizations to deepen belonging and empathy by cultivating shared language, raising awareness, and fostering inclusive personal behaviors and organizational practices and policies.
Drawing from his extensive international experience, Dr. Gay designs meaningful strategies that resonate across a broad range of industries and cultures. His approach, informed by research and practitioner experiences in over 50 countries, facilitates meaningful connections and promotes belonging on a global scale.
His educational background includes Oberlin College (BA - Romance Languages), Oberlin Conservatory of Music (BM - Opera Performance), Columbia University (MA - Private School Leadership), and University of Pennsylvania (EdD - Education). Dr. Gay is also an accomplished pianist, violist, and opera singer, performing internationally and leading master classes for young musicians.
Currently, Dr. Gay serves as a board member at MERIT Music, a music conservatory that “transforms the lives of Chicago-area youth through removing barriers to high-quality music education.” He has previously served on the boards of The National Guild for Community Arts Education and Greens Farms Academy.
Myron Dueck
Myron visits schools, conferences, and districts around the world to share his 25 years of practitioner and leadership experience. He helps educators develop ideas, construct tools and navigate issues surrounding grading, assessment, reporting, student voice and generative AI.
Myron's published work includes numerous journal articles and his best-selling books, Grading Smarter, Not Harder– Assessment Strategies that Motivate Kids and Help Them Learn (ASCD, 2014) and Giving Students a Say! Smarter Assessment Practices to Empower and Engage.
Myron and his family live in Summerland, BC, Canada where he has helped local districts embrace the new provincial proficiency scale, student self-reporting and other significant shifts.
Sponsored by Wilkes University
Kristin Lowe
Kristin Lowe is a former international school teacher now working as an Organizational Development Consultant and Certified Positive Psychology and Brief Solutions-Focused Coach.
Kristin is passionate about helping international school leaders, teachers, staff, and parents use the tools and principles of positive psychology coaching to develop community-wide wellbeing, energy, engagement, and teamwork while teaching, mentoring, and raising our next generation of change-makers.
She has seen firsthand how positive psychology coaching transforms lives, teams, families, and schools - empowering and equipping each person to fulfill their unique, meaningful, and positive purpose in the world.
Sponsored by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)
Tricia Friedman
Tricia Friedman (she/her) is a long time educator who has worked in the US, China, Thailand, Morocco, Ukraine, Indonesia, Switzerland, SIngapore and now currently lives in Canada. She’s founder of Allyed.org and Director of Learning and Strategy with Shifting Schools. Tricia loves podcasting, you can catch her on Be a Better Ally, Unhinged Collaboration, Shifting Schools, and if you listen closely you might occasionally hear her dog weigh in too. Connect with her on LinkedIN.
Sponsored by NWEA
Kathleen Naglee
Kathleen is an award-winning educational leader advising national systems, individual schools, international projects, ed-tech start-ups and early career leaders. She specializes in visionary projects on the future of learning. Recent workshops have centered on the neuroscience of learning space both virtual and physical.
Maymouna Sakho
Maymouna Sakho is an educator, inclusion and equity advocate, and systems builder.
Maymouna is the founder of Sakho Learning Consultancy - dedicated to supporting individuals and organizations to innovate through embracing and implementing equitable and inclusive practices.
Maymouna’s passion for working to create equitable and inclusive spaces comes from her experience of growing up between two cultures, having to learn a new language and system, and finding a place and voice for herself. She is a connector of people and ideas and loves to engage in conversations about inclusion and serving others - particularly children - to reach their fullest potential.
She serves as the Chair of SENIA International Africa Board, mentor for the AIELOC Aspiring Leaders of Color Program, and is a co-founder and co-trainer for AIELOC’s Learning Support Affinity Group For the Margins, From the Margins with Dr. MaryAnn DeRosa. Additionally, Maymouna serves as a co-chair for MSA Accreditation Evaluation Team Visits and as a member of CIS Accreditation Evaluation Team Visits.
Outside of her professional life, Maymouna is passionate about spending time with her family and friends, traveling and exploring new countries, cooking and discovering new places to eat, and working with individuals with a vision and desire to contribute to the ever-changing African landscape through education and advocacy.
Sponsored by International Schools Services (ISS)
Ewan McIntosh
The passionate and energising tour de force behind NoTosh, Ewan leads client projects around the world and is a pioneer of design thinking for learning in the classroom. A highly-regarded keynote speaker and host, he marries intense preparatory work, dynamic presentation skills and a natural capacity to listen, shining a light on the best stories that delegates and participants have to share.
As a high school teacher of French and German in Scotland, Ewan began to look for new ways to help his students engage with his subject. With a strong belief that technology was both critical to this, and underused in the classroom, his classes became among the first in Europe to podcast and blog as part of their daily learning.
Ewan then took his transformative ideas around Scotland for three years, as the National Advisor on Learning and Technology Futures for the Scottish Government, before joining Channel 4 as their Digital Commissioner in 2008. A step in a different direction perhaps, but one that led to him taking creative insights from the media world into the education world. And that’s how NoTosh came about.
Sponsored by Clements Worldwide
Sean Truman
Dr. Truman grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, where his father worked for the United Nations. He attended the International School of Kenya in Nairobi where his mother was a teacher.
Dr. Truman graduated from Reed College where he majored in psychology and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Connecticut, and was a National Institute of Mental Health Fellow at the Yale University School of Medicine, where he worked both at the Child Study Center and in the Department of Psychiatry.
He is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he cares for adults, adolescents and couples. In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Truman has worked as both a researcher and a professor of undergraduates and graduate students in psychology.
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