Conference Schedule

8:45 AM – 9:45 AM: Let Go (Without Letting It Go Wrong): Equipping Your Team to Think, Own, and Lead

Overworked? Stressed? Buried in decisions and problems that shouldn't always require you? These are signs you are carrying responsibilities your team should be owning, and that’s limiting your influence.

For special education leaders, letting go isn't easy. The stakes are high, the demands are constant, and sometimes stepping in and solving the problem yourself feels faster and safer. But when leaders become the answer to every question and the solution to every problem, people learn to wait instead of think, escalate instead of own, and depend instead of lead.

In Let Go (Without Letting It Go Wrong), Jason A Hunt shows leaders how to break that cycle without sacrificing accountability. Participants will learn practical strategies to stop rescuing, spark critical thinking, create greater ownership, and turn everyday challenges into opportunities to develop the people they lead. The result? Less firefighting. More ownership. And a team increasingly equipped to think, decide, and lead without everything having to come back to you.

9:45 AM – 10:00 AM: Q&A

Restorative Practices for Lasting Impact and More Inclusive Classrooms

Learn how restorative practices can create more inclusive, equitable, and culturally affirming classrooms. This work, grounded in co-design, shared ownership, and a deep respect for students’ cultures, identities, backgrounds, and lived experiences, can create a lasting impact.

Creating more restorative and equitable schools requires a commitment to four core principles:

1. Courageous conversations: create restorative spaces to identify and disrupt inequities and assumptions while engaging honestly across differences.
2. Unapologetic inclusion: elevate all voices, especially those of students whose perspectives and experiences have historically been overlooked.
3. Power sharing: shift from doing for students to designing and creating with them, ensuring students have meaningful voice, agency, and influence in the decisions that shape their learning.
4. Transformational leadership: tapping talent and leading self-actualization by precipitating change and leveraging relationships.