uLead2025 - The Summit of Educational Leadership

This is an inspiring exploration of Chrissy's journey as a school principal, breaking barriers at the age of 27 in a predominantly male profession. This session highlights her transformative leadership in revitalizing a struggling rural school and navigating the complexities of a large urban school in Auckland. Chrissy shares practical strategies for fostering positive learning environments and empowering future leaders while navigating challenges with resilience and courage. Attendees will gain valuable insights into strategic leadership and the importance of reimagining traditional leadership roles. Her story inspires educators to challenge the status quo and thrive against the odds.

Everyone has a unique story. Paying attention and harnessing the wisdom of your journey can enhance how you move through the world—the type of organization you run, the children you raise, the people whose lives you'll impact.
This session is designed to help you make sense of your story and sharpen your observation skills to better understand the stories that continue to unfold around you. It will help you to tease out the special details of a life and how to use those details to inspire, inform, and connect with others, putting your story to work to bring out the kind of change you want to create in your schools and communities.

Educational Leadership at the Intersections of Gender is a bilingual project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and co-led by academics (UofA) and the ATA. This research project investigated the effect of factors such as leaves and care taking roles and the impact of gender and intersectionalities on the career progression of women educators. Our data confirmed what we have long suspected, the progression of women through the teaching profession is significantly different than men and reinforced the importance of bringing women to the policymaking process. As the late justice Ruth Baden Ginsburg said, "Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn't be that women are the exception." With that in mind, our workshop will be dedicated to both presenting our research findings and to hosting a collaborative dialogue around policy-oriented questions. The Alberta based research is the first step to what we hope becomes a nation wide project, which will improve the live experiences of women as they move through the teaching profession.

It's not too radical, nor is it too extreme; the feminist paradigm is more than a zero-sum game. When evaluating theoretically situated feminist pedagogy as a foundation for school leadership, the transformative benefits are undeniable where an inclusive, empowering, and socially conscious educational environment becomes a lived reality. Step into a conversation about we might embrace a feminist pedagogy as a leadership blueprint fostering empathy, equity, resilience, and agency.

School leaders, as a regular part of their work, care for students, staff, and others in their school community. In fact, this relational approach to school leadership can be extremely rewarding or extremely challenging depending on the context of the school at any given time! Effective school leaders know the emotional labour that goes into caring for others is a critical component of building a thriving school environment. This presentation will explore what our research team, from the University of Calgary, the University of Ottawa and the Alberta Teachers Association learned when school leaders of all genders were asked about their experiences with emotional labour. This presentation will probe the question of whether emotional labour is different depending on gender. It will also consider the impact and mental cost of providing emotional labour on a regular basis. Finally, this session will explore methods that can be used to help school leaders care for their own mental emotional well-being.