Sylvester Chisom’s day 2 keynote will explore the future of Career and Technical Education, highlighting how innovative pathways can spark hope, expand access, and create real economic opportunity for students and communities alike.
Kareem Neal is a self-contained special education teacher in Phoenix, AZ. He has taught students with cognitive delays for 24 years. He is the 2019 Arizona Teacher of the Year and is a 2022 inductee into the National Teachers Hall of Fame. He is on the board of directors for The National... Read More →
Kareem Neal is a self-contained special education teacher in Phoenix, AZ. He has taught students with cognitive delays for 24 years. He is the 2019 Arizona Teacher of the Year and is a 2022 inductee into the National Teachers Hall of Fame. He is on the board of directors for The National... Read More →
This workshop highlights how the Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG) program is intentionally designed to meet students where they are—across rural, urban, and under-resourced communities—by equipping them with the skills needed for success beyond graduation. Participants will explore how JAG integrates project-based learning (PBL) to build essential soft skills such as communication, critical thinking, teamwork, and professionalism, while also strengthening resume writing, interviewing, networking, and career readiness. The session will showcase how hands-on projects, leadership development opportunities, and real-world exposure through guest speakers and community partnerships help uncover students’ strengths, expand their confidence, and broaden their postsecondary outlook. Attendees will leave with practical insights into how JAG’s student-centered, culturally responsive approach supports leadership growth and prepares young people for college, careers, and life.
Senior JAG Specialist, Plainfield High School (NJ)
I am in my 16th year of education (3rd year as a JAG Specialist). I’m currently working on my Ed.D.👩🏾🎓 I love to travel ✈️ (Australia🇦🇺, Iceland🇮🇸 & Cuba🇨🇺 were my favorites!)😊💕 I look forward to connecting with other educators! Please follow... Read More →
High schools often graduate students with academic credits, but many leave without the confidence, clarity, and strategic plan needed to successfully navigate post-secondary pathways. This session presents a strength-based framework that integrates SMART planning into the high school experience to build these essential skills for all students, with a focus on underserved urban and rural communities. Attendees will explore how to embed structured opportunities for goal-setting, identity exploration, leadership development, SEL, and CTE alignment into daily schedules and counseling programs. The session emphasizes equity, access, and whole-child development, helping schools prepare students for college, career, workforce, and life beyond graduation.
This presentation will highlight how schools can design strong simulated work-based learning experiences that prepare students for life beyond high school. Participants will explore practical strategies for creating authentic career-connected opportunities that build durable skills through resume workshops, mock interviews, and other structured learning experiences. The session will focus on how simulated work-based learning can increase student engagement, strengthen career readiness, and expand access to meaningful preparation for all students.
Join the multiplayer game of teamwork and betrayal. This flipped session immerses you in a real-life version of Among Us: think Escape Room meets Survivor and Clue. Learn how to seamlessly blend Gamification, Experiential Learning, 5E Instructional Model, Project Based Learning; Maslow, Bloom, Gardner, Pink, and more in an engaging, interactive environment. Will you complete the mission and discover the imposters before time is up? Rated T for Teen: contains scenes of animated violence.
I'm Stephanie J. Bradberry, an experienced administrator, entrepreneur, and consultant with over 25 years developing, managing, and streamlining programs, projects, and deliverables in state, corporate, and private sectors. My business acumen led to offers from a U.S. President, Netflix... Read More →
College students are a powerhouse of energy, fresh perspectives, and untapped potential—yet many community education initiatives struggle to move them from "interested" to "invested." This interactive workshop explores the unique motivations of today’s learners and provides actionable strategies to build sustainable partnerships between campus and community.
Digital Hustle is an interactive workshop that helps schools, districts, community organizations, and corporate partners understand how to prepare students, especially student athletes, for future careers. Participants explore how athletic strengths translate into workforce competencies and engage in two hands-on activities using Adobe Express. Creating student digital portfolios and mapping athlete transferable skills to high-demand job requirements. The session focuses on digital fluency, STEM, AI literacy, and project‑based learning to promote Access for all.
Research is clear: school leadership is second only to classroom instruction as the most powerful school-based factor influencing student learning. Effective principals can generate the equivalent of two or more additional months of learning per year, and leadership accounts for up to 27% of variance in student outcomes. Yet many leadership development programs underperform, with limited connection between leadership learning and what actually changes for students. This session addresses that gap directly. Schools and districts across urban and rural contexts invest heavily in leadership development, but the return on that investment often fails to reach classrooms. In urban systems, this disconnect often appears as misalignment between district initiatives and school-level implementation. In rural contexts, it shows up as isolation, limited access to coaching, and development models that do not reflect local realities. Drawing on experience designing and implementing leadership development systems in a large urban district, this session introduces a structured diagnostic framework for aligning leadership learning with instructional practice and student outcomes. Participants will examine why common approaches fall short, including lack of structured application between learning and practice, weak connections to classroom instruction, and limited accountability for results at the student level. Through guided analysis, participants will map their own leadership development efforts using a practical diagnostic tool that identifies gaps across leadership learning, application, and student-level impact. They will explore strategies to strengthen alignment across leadership practice, teaching quality, and student outcomes, including connections to career readiness pathways, equitable access to advanced coursework and opportunity, and teacher retention across diverse school contexts. Participants will leave with a clear framework, a practical tool, and concrete next steps that can be immediately applied to redesign leadership development systems in ways that produce visible, measurable results.
This interactive session equips educators with trauma-informed strategies to support student mental health—especially in under-resourced urban and rural schools. Participants will learn how to recognize signs of emotional distress, respond with empathy and boundaries, and integrate mental wellness practices into daily classroom routines. The presentation will highlight how systemic barriers like the digital divide and socioeconomic stressors impact student behavior and learning, and offer practical tools to foster resilience, connection, and healing. Educators will leave with actionable techniques to become mental health allies—without needing to be therapists.
This workshop explores practical strategies for supporting children with autism through the use of visual supports and Positive Behavior Supports (PBS). Participants will learn how to create structured, predictable learning environments that reduce anxiety, increase engagement, and promote positive behaviors. The session will focus on understanding behavior as communication, using visuals to support comprehension and transitions, and implementing proactive strategies that help children succeed across classroom and community settings. Educators and practitioners will leave with practical tools they can immediately apply to support autistic learners.
His session will provide practical strategies for aligning education with real work, defining clear standards, verifying readiness through performance, and improving training systems based on results.
This interactive professional development session provides educators and school leaders with practical, research-based strategies to improve school culture and climate as a proactive approach to reducing threats, disruptive behavior, and safety concerns. The session centers on equity-based practices, emphasizing support for marginalized student populations—including students of color, behaviorally marginalized students, and students with disabilities. Participants will review data from different states, analyze the threats, and create action plans that can be tailored to their school populations. By combining data analysis, proactive wrap-around approaches, restorative practices, and intentional relationship-building, participants will learn how to shift their school environment from reactive discipline to preventative, inclusive, and relational approaches.
Classroom management is often perceived as an innate “gift” that some teachers possess and others struggle to develop. To the untrained eye, highly effective classrooms appear almost magical, students are engaged, disruptions are minimal, and learning flows naturally. However, what appears to be “magic” is the result of intentional professional practice. The magic is not a mystery; it is the educator. This session challenges educators to examine how their own actions, reactions, tone, expectations, and instructional structures directly influence student behavior and engagement. Drawing on research in trauma-informed practices, conscious discipline, and culturally responsive classroom management, participants will explore how educators can unintentionally escalate student behaviors or intentionally de-escalate them through reflective practice and strategic instructional moves. Participants will engage in practical exercises that help them identify the subtle but powerful ways educator behaviors shape classroom climate. Through real classroom scenarios, reflective frameworks, and replicable instructional strategies, attendees will learn how to create learning environments where students feel safe, respected, and motivated to participate. The session will highlight how conscious educator practices improve classroom management, increase student engagement, and support equitable learning environments, particularly for students historically marginalized in traditional disciplinary systems. By the end of the session, educators will leave with immediately implementable strategies to strengthen their instructional presence, build positive classroom culture, and transform their classrooms into spaces where both teachers and students thrive.
Across urban and rural schools alike, student mental health is too often addressed reactively—through crisis response, discipline, or isolated SEL programming. Yet schools that consistently improve outcomes understand something deeper: mental health is not a support service. It is infrastructure. Drawing from experience across middle schools, high schools, residential treatment facilities, and juvenile justice settings, this session explores how to move beyond fragmented initiatives and instead design aligned systems that promote psychological safety, executive functioning development, and sustainable student performance. Participants will examine a practical 4-part framework for whole child mental health that integrates trauma-informed practice, student accountability, family engagement, and leadership alignment. Through real case examples and applied strategies, attendees will explore how to reduce behavioral escalations, strengthen student ownership, support educator well-being, and build school cultures where students are prepared not just academically—but emotionally and developmentally—for long-term success. This session is designed for school leaders, counselors, CTE directors, and educators seeking to implement mental health systems that are both relational and results-driven.
Students cannot be prepared for careers, leadership, or adulthood while operating in survival mode. This session explores how schools and community partners can move beyond fragmented support systems toward integrated, whole-child pathways that support mental health, identity development, and workforce readiness simultaneously. Drawing from real-world experience working with students in temporary housing and under-resourced urban schools, this presentation examines the limitations of treating wellness as an add-on and workforce preparation as a standalone goal. Participants will learn how embedding emotional regulation, mentorship, and career exposure into the school experience creates sustainable outcomes for students across urban and rural contexts. The session offers practical frameworks and examples for building systems that support students not just to graduate, but to thrive beyond the classroom.
This 45-minute presentation examines disparities in special education programming between rural and urban school districts. Drawing from 30 years of professional practice across elementary, middle, and high school settings in North Carolina, the session highlights key differences in funding, academic interventions, vocational opportunities, and support structures for teachers and parents. Participants will explore how access to resources, particularly within the Occupational Course of Study (OCS) pathway for students with significant disabilities, directly impacts student outcomes. The session concludes with practical, implementation-ready strategies to promote equity regardless of geographic location.
Many students struggle to show up consistently and push through challenges, often shutting down or disengaging when faced with difficulty. This session introduces the BeDoFeel Framework, a practical approach that helps educators build student resilience through identity (Be), intentional action and goal-directed behavior (Do), and emotional awareness (Feel). Participants will learn how to support students in clarifying who they want to become, identifying the actions needed to reach their goals, and managing emotions that interfere with follow-through.
Employers are clear: technical skills alone are not enough. Students must also demonstrate professionalism, clear communication, problem-solving, and attention to detail—skills embedded in the 12 Career Ready Practices, yet too often treated as compliance requirements rather than instructional priorities. This high-impact, 45-minute workshop challenges educators and leaders to reposition Career Ready Practices as core drivers of instruction across Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs. Participants will examine how small lapses in precision—whether in communication, documentation, time management, workspace organization, or decision-making—can lead to real workplace consequences, including safety risks, inefficiencies, and loss of credibility. Through engaging, CTE-aligned scenarios across multiple career pathways, attendees will analyze how all 12 Career Ready Practices surface in daily workplace expectations—and how to intentionally embed them into labs, projects, assessments, and work-based learning experiences. The session moves beyond theory, equipping participants with practical, ready-to-use strategies to strengthen career-connected instruction and build a culture of professionalism, accountability, and true career readiness. Designed for CTE educators, instructional leaders, counselors, and workforce partners, this session aligns with LEAD’s focus on real-world pathways—ensuring students are not only trained, but fully prepared to succeed.
This interactive applied improv workshop uses improvisational theater techniques to strengthen communication, creativity, adaptability, and teamwork in a fun, low-pressure environment. Through guided exercises and group activities, participants learn how to listen actively, respond with confidence, collaborate effectively, and think more flexibly in real-time situations.
Kareem Neal is a self-contained special education teacher in Phoenix, AZ. He has taught students with cognitive delays for 24 years. He is the 2019 Arizona Teacher of the Year and is a 2022 inductee into the National Teachers Hall of Fame. He is on the board of directors for The National... Read More →
