WACA 2025

Countdown - building culture and community in the area, networking, preview the conference.

Launch - Professional Growth, building our collective knowledge

If you need ideas on how to organize a leadership class to encourage student initiative, an inclusive, school climate, and awesome projects, while promoting self-leadership and character growth through reflection, this is the session for you. I have been fine-tuning my leadership class structure and will share assignments, routines, and methods that have worked well for my students' diverse work as well as my own sanity. Equity, creating a positive and inclusive school climate via the work of leadership class, student character growth and self-leadership are the pillars of my approach to teaching leadership. Let's work smarter, not harder! This details a high school semester Intro to Leadership set up as well as a high school Advanced Leadership class structure

In this presentation, we will explore the transformative power of Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools (UCS) and how they foster socially inclusive school communities. Unified Champion Schools bring together students with and without intellectual disabilities through sports, education, and leadership programs, creating a sense of belonging and mutual respect among all students.

Whether you’re developing, improving, or revitalizing your project management system, this session will model step-by-step ways you can increase student voice and incorporate restorative practices into the foundation of your leadership program. Get examples of equitable and justice-driven strategies that are guaranteed to increase buy-in and cultivate a community where everyone’s voice is heard and validated, both in the classroom and school-wide. You’ll leave with ideas you can use tomorrow and a system that will run itself by the end of the year.

Learn how we used student voice to create more inclusive practices in our traditional school activities including homecoming, elections, and more!

Recovery - applying and sharing what we learned, and voting for elections