Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is not a program to implement, but an outcome of systems designed to support learning for all students. When educators have the clarity, support, and conditions they need, inclusive, high-impact instruction becomes the norm. This full-day session is designed for leaders who are committed to improving outcomes for all learners by strengthening the systems that support teaching and learning. Grounded in concerns-based adoption, implementation science, and complex change theory, this session focuses on what it takes to shift mindsets, build educators' skill sets, and design systems that make inclusive practices sustainable. Leaders will experience UDL throughout the session as they explore how multi-tiered systems of support can drive meaningful, systemwide change. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how to move their systems forward, along with concrete next steps to strengthen support for students, families, and their communities.

Biography:

Katie Novak, Ed.D., is a force of nature - part educational powerhouse, part motivational coach, part witty storyteller. With nearly 25 years of experience in education, a doctorate degree, and real-world experience as a former teacher, curriculum coordinator, and assistant superintendent of schools, she brings unmatched credibility and passion to everything she does. She's the go-to expert for making Universal Design for Learning (UDL), MTSS, and inclusive education not just accessible, but highly engaging.

With a brain wired for clarity, a heart wired for impact, and a voice that’s equal parts inspiring and “let’s cut through the noise,” Katie builds tools, runs workshops, and writes books that both inform and ignite.

An instructor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of 16 books,  with over 300,000 copies sold worldwide, Katie doesn’t just write about change; she leads it. Whether she’s consulting with districts, crafting PD that actually sticks, or running 50-mile races (yes, really ), Katie lives by one rule: Do it with purpose, do it with heart, and make it fun along the way. 

She’s the educator’s educator,  blending hard evidence with humor, sass, and a relentless belief that better is always possible.

As educational leaders,  we often come up against situations where difficult topics must be addressed. What are the best strategies for speaking up at those specific moments? What questions should we ask ourselves before speaking? And, what language is best for when we speak? Based on two of Jennifer’s books, Having Hard Conversations, and Hard Conversations Unpacked, along with her studies around conflict and interpersonal communication, this day long workshop will give participants time to delve into planning and scripting tools and protocols for those necessary, humane, and growth producing conversations.

Biography:

Formerly a high school English teacher and a new teacher coach, Jennifer Abrams is currently a communications consultant and author. Among many, her publications include Having Hard Conversations and Stretching Your Learning Edges: Growing (Up) at Work. Jennifer has been featured columnist on growth and change for The Learning Professional as well as The International Educator and she keynotes, facilitates and coaches at schools worldwide.  She was honored to be named one of the “18 Women All K-12 Educators Should Know,” by Education Week’s ‘Finding Common Ground’’ blog. www.jenniferabrams.com @jenniferabrams

High-performing schools are built on teams that work with clarity, shared responsibility, and an unwavering focus on student learning. Achieving this requires more than collaboration in name, it requires intentional structures that shape how teams think, communicate, and make decisions together.

When team meetings are thoughtfully designed, they are purposeful, efficient and effective, and move priorities forward. They strengthen collective efficacy, and translate vision into action. When poorly structured or unplanned, they limit team functioning, dilute focus, and stall momentum.

This interactive pre-conference is designed for school leaders who want to strengthen the impact of their teams by improving collaboration, communication, psychological safety, and shared decision-making. Participants will explore the conditions that drive effective teams and examine how those conditions are activated through intentional agenda design and purposeful meeting structures. 

By the end of the day, participants will leave with concrete tools, adaptable strategies and specific plans to strengthen impactful teams in their own settings.

Biography:

Kelly Armitage is passionate about building capacity in others so they can deepen their impact on student learning and wellbeing. With more than 35 years of experience working in schools, she specializes in supporting aspiring and current leaders as they clarify their goals, grow their expertise, and expand their influence.

She currently works as a Leadership Consultant and Coach drawing on a career that spans a wide range of roles. She served as Elementary School Principal at International School Bangkok and Curriculum Coordinator at Escuela Campo Alegre in Caracas, Venezuela. Her background also includes experience as an Instructional Coach, Staff Developer, Homeroom Teacher, EAL Teacher, Literacy Specialist and Learning Support Teacher across diverse school communities.

Kelly is an Adaptive Schools Training Associate and an Instructor for The Principals’ Training Center (PTC). When not collaborating with schools, she loves to be outside hiking and skiing with her family. Kelly can be reached at: leadforimpactLLC@gmail.com

What becomes possible when international schools pair the deep relational knowledge they already have with tools that reveal what resumes never could?

International school leaders invest enormous care in getting hiring right — the hours reading applications, the deliberate search committee conversations, the genuine desire to find someone who will thrive in the community. That effort matters. But here's the honest reality: the tools most of us still rely on — resumes, cover letters, unstructured interviews — were never designed to show us what we most need to see. Research tells us they're poor predictors of on-the-job success, they quietly reinforce bias, and they leave search committees making high-stakes decisions with incomplete information. Not because anyone is doing it wrong, but because the instruments themselves have a ceiling.

And the challenge doesn't end at the hire. Once a leader is in the role, meaningful development feedback is rare. Most of what passes for professional growth is infrequent, compliance-driven, and disconnected from the real moments that define the job — the difficult conversation, the team conflict, the decision that has to be made before all the information is in.

This full-day pre-conference is designed for schools that are ready to raise that ceiling. The morning focuses on selection: participants will work through a hands-on case study, surface what they already value in their hiring process, confront where the evidence gaps live, and design an enhanced approach using artifacts of impact, style-fit alignment, and simulation-based assessment. The afternoon shifts to development: participants will step into AI-powered leadership simulations, experience what targeted, evidence-based feedback actually feels like, and explore how the same rigor that improves hiring can transform how schools grow leaders at every stage of their career.

This is a hands-on, practice-oriented day. Participants will try new tools, wrestle with real trade-offs, and leave with a plan shaped by their own school's context.

Participants will walk away with:

• A firsthand experience of AI-powered leadership simulations and evidence-based feedback

• A framework for layering evidence-based tools into their current hiring process

• A model for using simulations as an ongoing development tool, not just a hiring filter

• Language and protocols for giving feedback that develops rather than evaluates

• A 90-day action plan tailored to their school's context

• Connection to a network of international school leaders working on the same challenges

Biography:

Richard Boerner spent twenty years leading international schools across Asia, South Asia, and Latin America before founding TruFit Talent — a platform that helps schools select, develop, and retain educators using evidence instead of guesswork.

His path to this work was unconventional. He started as a public school teacher and principal in the U.S., then moved into international school leadership, eventually serving as Superintendent of Graded – The American School of São Paulo. There, he launched the Graded Learning Lab and began asking the question that would become TruFit: why do schools still rely on resumes and unstructured interviews to make their most consequential decisions, when every other high-performing profession has moved to evidence-based assessment?

TruFit Talent is his answer. The platform uses AI-powered behavioral simulations, blind-reviewed artifacts of impact, and style-fit working style assessments to give schools better evidence at every stage — from initial screening to ongoing leadership development. Partner schools across the EARCOS region, the international schools, and U.S. public districts are using the model to reduce bias, compress hiring timelines, and build stronger leadership pipelines without adding complexity.

Richard has presented at numerous conferences including AAIE, NAIS Thrive, AMISA, the Council of the Great City Schools, and NCERT. His leadership has been recognized with the AAIE Dr. Keith Miller International Innovation Leadership Award.

This daylong workshop is for leaders who run meetings, design professional learning, and facilitate the conversations that shape school culture—and who want to do all of that dramatically better. Whether you lead a weekly team meeting or a whole-faculty institute day, the design and facilitation choices you make determine whether people leave inspired or drained, connected or disengaged, changed or unchanged.

Participants will experience a transformative professional learning design process firsthand—one grounded in adult learning theory, Universal Design for Learning, liberating structures, and equity-centered design principles. This is a "meta-lab": you'll learn the framework by living it, then apply it to your own real-world projects. You'll move through the full arc of elegant design—from assessing impact before the meeting happens, to designing with rather than for the people in the room, to building the facilitatio

Biography:

Lori Cohen is an educational consultant and author with three decades of experience supporting transformational professional learning in schools, districts, and organizations internationally. She specializes in equity-centered instructional practices, adult learning design, and evidence-based coaching frameworks. Lori is co-author of the best-selling book, The PD Book: 7 Habits That Transform Professional Development, co-author of Integrating Educator Well-Being, Growth, and Evaluation: Four Foundations for Leaders, and The Science of Lesson Planning: High-Impact Practices That Deepen Student Learning. She has presented at numerous national and international conferences, facilitating workshops on coaching, leadership development, teacher appraisal/evaluation, lesson design, and school transformation. Lori holds deep expertise in translating educational research into practical, transferable strategies that transform school communities.

Leading literacy improvement is complex work that goes far beyond adopting a curriculum. Many leaders have engaged teachers in learning around the Science of Reading, reviewed instructional materials, studied research, and made important shifts in practice. But aligning instruction with research-based practices requires more than selecting new tools or launching initiatives. It requires leaders to understand the instructional practices that support student learning and to build systems that sustain those practices over time.

Across my work with leaders in international school systems around the world, as well as large public school districts across the United States, one need continues to surface: leaders need time and space to build shared language, understanding, and clarity around what strong literacy instruction looks like in practice. Sustained improvement depends on leaders knowing what to look for in classrooms, how to support teachers through instructional change, and how to align professional learning, assessment, intervention, and curriculum work to shared instructional priorities. This conversation also cannot stop at K–5. Research continues to show that literacy development is a K–12 responsibility, with all educators playing a role in helping students read, write, speak, and make meaning across content areas.

This preconference session is designed to support school and system leaders in building the knowledge needed to lead this work well. Rather than focusing on a single program or approach, the session takes a curriculum-agnostic, research-aligned look at the core instructional practices that should be present in strong K–12 literacy classrooms. Participants will examine evidence-based practices such as explicit instruction, meaningful use of assessment, and effective MTSS structures while considering how these practices show up across classrooms, teams, and schools - both inside and alongside any curriculum or resource. The session will also provide practical tools, ideas, and leadership moves that can help schools sustain continuous improvement even amid competing initiatives and demands.

Participants will walk away with:

• A stronger understanding of research-aligned literacy instruction across K–12 settings

• Clearer language and practical look-fors to support classroom observation and coaching

• Tools and strategies to support teachers through instructional change and continuous improvement

• Practical ways to align curriculum, assessment, intervention, and professional learning

• Greater clarity around how to sustain literacy improvement work alongside other school and system priorities

Biography:

Meghan Hargrave is an experienced educator, with 20 years in the field. After being a teacher leader in the classroom, she moved into education coaching and consulting where she supports hundreds of K-12 schools and districts worldwide. Her work has always focused on important instructional shifts in education and practical ways the educators she supports can embrace these shifts effectively, which has included the integration of Artificial Intelligence tools in the classroom. She is ChatGPT, GoogleAI, and AI for Education certified in addition to working closely with thousands of educators on how to implement these tools in the classroom. She is the coauthor of The Artificial Intelligence Playbook (now in its second edition) and Teaching Students to Use AI Ethically and Responsibly, two books that help schools prepare students for an AI-powered future. Meghan is an international presenter, has taught preservice teachers at Columbia University’s Teachers College, regularly contributes to popular educational publications, and is known for sharing innovative and effective classroom strategies via social media @letmeknowhowitgoes.

A strong Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) requires a clear structure and purposeful implementation. Too often, confusion about team roles, missing components, or overlapping processes leads to frustration and overload. In this session, we’ll explore the three essential teams that drive MTSS, the nine core components necessary for it to work, and common missteps that can derail the entire system.

We’ll discuss the purpose, composition, and scheduling of the three MTSS teams, and clarify how they differ from—but connect with—Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and Learning Support Teams. You’ll gain a clear understanding of how these groups can work in tandem without duplication, each serving a distinct and necessary role in supporting students across all tiers.

Together, we will:

• Clarify the purpose of intervention within MTSS and how to prevent over-reliance on intensive, one-on-one support.

• Examine research on paraprofessional support, including when it helps—and when it may create unintended barriers to independence.

• Identify the difference between true intervention and ineffective models that prioritize homework help or reteaching over skill development.

• Explore different service delivery models that efficiently support students without pulling them away from core instruction.

• Redesign intervention structures to balance targeted support with inclusive, high-quality classroom instruction.

• Address master schedule constraints to ensure time for effective, tiered intervention without overwhelming staff.

Biography:

Lee Ann is CEO of Lead Inclusion, Clinical Professor at San Diego State University, and a consultant to schools worldwide. She provides support to schools in the areas of universal design for learning, inclusion, intervention, and mastery-based assessment and grading. Before beginning a career in higher education she worked in special education in the roles of teacher and administrator. She is a former full professor and director of International Partnerships in the University of Kentucky's College of Education. Lee Ann leads the International Inclusive Leadership Program, a professional learning and graduate program for educators in international schools in partnership with San Diego State University.

Leadership has never been static. Across history, the qualities societies value and need in leaders have continually evolved—from authority and courage, to service and competence, to empathy and relational intelligence. Yet the ways we identify, develop, and evaluate leaders—and even how we think about our own leadership growth—often remain anchored in earlier contexts.

The challenge today may not be a shortage of interest in leadership or in capable leaders, but a gap between how leadership is evolving and how we continue to recognise it. As expectations around authority, wellbeing, professional purpose, and collaboration shift—particularly across generations—school leaders are increasingly called not just to lead in the traditional sense, but to interpret their context with clarity and intention.

This full-day workshop introduces a Context-Based Leadership Framework designed to help school leaders lead with greater clarity, agility, and alignment in times of complexity. The framework guides leaders through four interrelated practices: Identify Your Position, to lead with wisdom and authenticity; Understand Your Context, by analyzing the unique dynamics shaping your school; Understand Your Strengths, to reflect on how your personal and leadership tendencies influence your response to complexity; and Plan Strategy, to align actions with purpose while meaningfully engaging stakeholders.

Participants will explore how to apply this framework to the challenges school leaders face today—such as navigating complex decision-making, supporting employee wellbeing while ensuring high expectations, adapting to generational shifts in professional culture, and managing heightened stakeholder expectations. Drawing on school-based case studies, data from EARCOS schools, and structured reflection, the workshop provides a rare opportunity to pause, reassess, and deepen one’s leadership practice.

Rather than offering one-size-fits-all solutions, this session invites a shift in mindset—from reactive leadership to context-responsive leadership. Participants will leave with fresh insights, practical strategies, and renewed confidence to lead with coherence, connection, and impact, anchored in their school’s values and responsive to the evolving realities of their communities.

Biography:

Rami Madani is the Head of the International School of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Over the course of his career in international education, he has served students and educators across multiple countries and school contexts, working across all school levels and holding both teaching and senior leadership roles.

Rami’s work focuses on the evolving nature of leadership in complex school environments. Drawing on decades of experience, he explores how leaders can align institutional systems with purpose, navigate difficult decisions with clarity and integrity, and cultivate cultures where both students and adults can thrive. His recent work introduces frameworks such as Context-Based Leadership and the Dimensions of Ethical Impact, which help leaders interpret their context thoughtfully and exercise sound judgment in moments of uncertainty. 

Rami regularly presents at international conferences and works with schools on strategic planning, governance, leadership development, and strengthening coherence between a school’s mission, systems, and daily practice.

Data in schools is comfortable. That's the problem.

Schools call me when they're ready to be honest about data. Not just reflective – honest. I have spent years in those rooms. I know what tends to get buried, and where. I could tell you what to do. I won't. But knowing I could is, somehow, the most reassuring thing about the day.

I love asking the very questions school leaders would rather not be asked. Not to be difficult: I understand why they don't want those questions; I've been there. But because those questions are where change becomes possible. So expect to be provoked. Expect to be uncomfortable. Expect, occasionally, to be irritated. But in a good way. I promise.

What questions? That's what you're thinking, right? But if I told you that, you'll have had time to metabolise them before the day itself. And where's the fun in that? And the thing about irritating questions is that, like itches, they proliferate. They breed. Who knows what else we'll arrive with when the day comes?

But questions like:

• How does your data see your students — and does that need to come before asking how well it knows them?

• Think of the promises in your ontological proposition. Now think of the grammar of your epistemological practice. How big is the gap — and what are you going to do about it?

• What happens when schooling in a postcolonial world still works with the tools and apparatus of a colonial ledger? Awkward, right?

• Every international school promises excellence. But if inclusion is genuine – not decorative – then excellence needs a workover. What would yours look like?

Don’t worry: I won't spend the whole day irritating you. That would be a hard sell. When things get too hard, I'll let you play with a card game I made about data in schools. An Irritating Game about Irritating Questions.

Biography:

Do you genuinely know your students – or do you measure them and call it knowing? Matthew Savage has been asking that question with schools for years. This is his territory: data upended, assessment unmasked, wellbeing tended, inclusion held close, belonging grown. He does not describe a new paradigm for how schools know: he tends one.

A Head of School turned consultant, working with schools across the world. Co-host of the Data Talks podcast. CIS Affiliated Consultant. SENIA Affiliate Member. Board member with schools and with Parents Alliance for Inclusion. These are chapters, and only that.

His story is becoming, but, like you, he is, also, already enough. He belongs on the Isle of Skye (more animals than humans, humbled by huge nature); consults from his wheelchair; and thinks for a living, and for life.

Please read more at monalisaeffect.me, or on LinkedIn.

Globally, organizations and educational systems invest immense resources into new programs, professional development, and emerging technologies. However, a significant gap often exists between the implementation of these tools and the actual realization of their intended goals. How do we ensure these investments truly drive progress and elevate outcomes? While the struggle to bridge this gap is universal, the ultimate objective must be efficacy. This session moves beyond "innovation for innovation's sake" to focus on building a framework for Return on Learning (ROL). This session provides the tools to move from simply "doing more" to achieving measurable impact. Participants will leave with a clear roadmap for ensuring every investment, whether of time or capital, yields a tangible return on growth.

Biography:

Eric works with schools worldwide, helping educators meet and exceed their potential to improve learner outcomes. He is the founder and CEO of Aspire Change EDU, a collaborative consultancy designed to provide personalized support to all educational systems. Prior to this, he was a teacher and the award-winning Principal at New Milford High School. Under his leadership, his school became a globally recognized model for innovative practices. Eric oversaw the successful implementation of several sustainable change initiatives that radically transformed the learning culture at his school while increasing achievement. His work focuses on innovative and practical ways educators can transform teaching, learning, and leadership.  Through his work with thousands of schools, Eric has emerged as an innovative leader, best-selling author, and sought-after speaker.  His main focus is on using research, evidence-based practices, and artificial intelligence (AI) to empower learners and educators.