Think, Do, and Lead with Enduring Purpose: A Preview of Learning Summit 2024

Our Learning Summit theme, Enduring Purpose, emerged from a desire to have a way to respond to the “What now?” question that schools, leaders, educators, students, and parents continually have to ask each time a new wave of urgent questions rises. From the closing and re-opening of schools in the pandemic to disrupting inequitable school systems to the resistance to/embrace of emerging technologies to the care for emotional wellbeing, we have all been confronted with urgent needs and a desire to know how to respond to them. How might we navigate these questions and the ones to come while also maintaining a sense of self and sense of purpose? How do we face unexpected challenges while continuing to address enduring priorities? While there is no right answer, we know that spending a few days at the Learning Summit will give us time, community, and concrete takeaways to prepare us for unknowns ahead.

Participants will have the opportunity to grapple with and make sense of these questions through sessions that are organized into three strands: Think, Do, and Lead.

What is the purpose of an education? What is your purpose as an educator?

Enduring Purpose will likely mean something different to each participant. In this strand, sessions will offer participants time to reflect on, reaffirm, and renew their sense of why, their own enduring purpose. When we can be clear on that, we can navigate ambiguity, change, and disruption with greater confidence.

Clarity requires time for reflection, and the Learning Summit is intentionally designed to provide it. What are our personal mission statements? How do we navigate dissonance between personal purpose and institutional initiatives? How can we hold on to what we know to be true and inspiring about our work in the face of the practicalities of day-to-day to-do lists? This strand will offer frameworks for reflection and protocols for participation that help us to prioritize what matters in what we do and why.

Session topics include:

• Navigating Dissonance

• Reflecting on Personal and Professional Mission

• Workflows for Wellness

What do you do when you don’t know what to do?

When our team talks about AI in schools, we often begin with affirming what educators already do well, because navigating new developments doesn’t mean replacing priorities; instead, we find new ways to amplify and enact those priorities. When we know our why, we can strategically do.

Rooting action in enduring purpose can look like partnering with AI for personalized learning, developing systems and structures for wellness, and keeping students at the center of our practice. From practical “how to” based experiences to strategy-rich experiences, the goal for sessions in this strand is to ensure that thoughtful frameworks lead to purposeful action.

Session topics include:

• Empower Student Voice

• How to Hub

• Personalized Learning with AI

• Purposeful Visual Design

• Systems and Structures for Belonging

How do you lead with purpose? How does your purpose lead you?

GOA’s Leadership Competencies are identified skills that every educator can develop and hone in their practice regardless of title or position.

Learning Summit will offer all participants the opportunity to strengthen their own leadership capacity, to practice purposeful decision-making, to align vision to strategy and strategy to purpose, to navigate polarities, and to cultivate wellbeing in themselves and their communities. Whether we are looking to change ingrained practices or ask new questions, sessions in this strand will help us to ensure that we are in alignment with our why.

Session topics include:

• AI Policies and Possibilities

• Anticipating the Unseen | A Leadership Framework for Navigating Uncertainty

• Purposeful Action | Decoding Strategic Planning

• Using AI from Data to Decisions

We welcome you to join us as we individually and collectively Think, Do, and Lead with Enduring Purpose. Whether this is your first GOA Professional Learning Experience or twentieth, we look forward to welcoming you and to learning from and with you.

Early bird pricing ends March 1, 2024. Learn more and register here.