Leadership in Education Conference
Lead from where you are

“I’m just...It’s a phrase we hear all the time. I’m just a teacher, I’m just an assistant principal, I’m just a tech director, I’m just a custodian….the list goes on and on and is always followed by reasons something CAN’T happen. Leadership is not a title, it’s an action, and it starts with you. Leading with INTENTION creates purpose. Leading with CONNECTION creates momentum. Leading with DIRECTION creates collective efficacy. Leading with all three in mind will not only build your capacity but foster an environment where everyone in your organization has the best opportunity to lead from where they are. 

Christ Chapel 
Creating a Culture of Shared Leadership (Admin Track)
Cindy Barwick, Principal, Sheldon Community School District 

What steps can you take as a building administrator to develop a culture in your school that is conducive to shared leadership?  How can sharing leadership positively impact your students, teachers, and you?  This session will illustrate ways to create a distributed leadership atmosphere in your school with some concrete ideas that can be easily implemented to start or push your own leadership journey.  

Vogel Community Room | DeWitt Learning Commons
Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement (Teacher Leader Track)
Doug Gee, Superintendent, Clear Lake Community School District

This session will discuss what a PLC is and is not and the difference between collaboration and cooperation. The term collaboration is used widely across the country, but the mere act of meeting does not necessarily fulfill the purpose and benefit, generated through true collaboration. Doug will take a deep dive into why true collaboration is the key to increasing the learning capacity within your school buildings and explore tools and protocols to assist collaborative teams in their work. 

Full group session
Christ Chapel

The Impact of 30-Second Moments
Dr. Joe Sanfellipo, Superintendent, Fall Creek School District 

960. That is the number of 30-second increments we get in an 8-hour day. 960 chances to change a life. 960 opportunities to share a story. 960 times to make a student, parent, or community member feel like they are part of your school. Moments have the ability to stick in our brains forever. A sight, smell, or taste brings us back to our childhood. We have a responsibility to be intentional about how we utilize these moments. The fact is simply this...you will be remembered, the only question is how. Every 30 seconds matters.

Christ Chapel
Building Your Day Around "And" (Admin Track)
Stacey Cole, Superintendent, Storm Lake Community School District     

In this session, Storm Lake Schools Superintendent Dr. Stacey Cole will talk about the concept of “and” when leading for all. She will address her community approach to bringing stakeholders together in a changing society. She will offer some tips on how to take steps toward equity using synergistic relationships within your community as well as within your school. This will not be a session on how to change your community or situation but instead, she hopes to provide some encouragement, motivation and inspiration in a time of growing division, hate and violence in service of transforming the lives of our youth and subsequently our communities. 

Vogel Community Room | DeWitt Learning Commons
Leadership and Living Your Values (Teacher Leader Track)
Janie Eischen, Director of Teaching and Learning, Algona Community School District 

All initiatives start with a purpose; the why for the change. Without the why, there can be frustration, anxiety, confusion, and even resistance. When the vision of the why is clear, change can begin to happen. Having a vision is only part of the plan. Your vision should reflect the values that make you and your district a great place to learn. Hear some suggestions on how to make your vision and values come to life along with some ideas of how to reflect on current values and determine if revisions may need to happen. School leadership is how you take your values from paper to processes for teaching and learning to occur!

Christ Chapel
Leadership in a Loose/Tight Culture, Focusing on the Right Work (Admin Track)
Doug Gee, Superintendent, Clear Lake Community School District

One of the most common challenges for leaders and teachers is the role of the district or school administrators in a Professional Learning Community.  It is hard to balance accountability with autonomy. Achieving the appropriate loose-tight leadership balance is critical for the PLC process. This session will identify how a healthy culture is simultaneously tight and loose and the things that must be tight in a PLC. Understand why you can't answer the four PLC questions without being tight on certain things. 

Vogel Community Room | DeWitt Learning Commons
The Three Gifts of Coaching: Listening, Questioning, and Giving Feedback  (Teacher Leader Track) 
Dr. Jill Brown, Director of Instructional Coaching, Northwest AEA

Quality coaching requires us to focus on serving the best interests of others rather than the interests of ourselves. Three of the most important gifts a coach must offer others are listening, questioning, and giving feedback. This session will focus on how coaches, teacher leaders, and administrators can best put these three gifts into practice. Attendees will leave with practical ideas that they can begin using immediately. A bank of questions and question stems as well as tips for listening and giving feedback will be shared.

Now What?
Dr. Roark Horn, Executive Director, School Administrators of Iowa

As difficult as the pandemic has been on teaching and learning, as we move forward it is critical that we spend quality time reflecting on what we learned as educators as we navigated the experience. Failing to do so could cause us to drift back to education as it was prior to the pandemic and lose the hard-earned innovations we discovered as we made sure students continued to progress in their learning. In this presentation, Dr. Horn will challenge us to use the best parts of pre-pandemic and post-pandemic teaching and learning to forge a new path to ensure that all students leave our schools prepared for whatever their respective futures might hold.

Cindy Barwick
Principal, Sheldon Middle School

Session: Creating a Culture of Shared Leadership

Cindy Barwick is the principal at Sheldon Middle School, a position she has held for 22 years. Prior to becoming a principal, she taught middle school language arts/reading in Decorah.  Cindy holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Iowa State University; she also has an educational specialist certification from the University of South Dakota.   In addition to being a principal, Cindy teaches a variety of courses for Northwestern College through their principal preparation program. 

Jill Brown
Director of Instructional Coaching, Northwest AEA

Session: The Three Gifts of Coaching: Listening, Questioning, and Giving Feedback

Dr. Jill Brown is the Director of Instructional Coaching at Northwest AEA. She has worked as a district instructional coach, reading, language arts and social studies teacher, special educator, and math and literacy interventionist. For the past several years, Dr. Brown has actively researched and written about how instructional leaders collect, reflect on, and act on feedback from those they serve to improve their leadership practices. She enjoys reading and growing both plants and people.

Dr. Stacey Cole
Superintendent, Storm Lake Schools

Session: Building Your Day Around "And"

Dr. Stacey Cole is superintendent of the Storm Lake Community School District, a diverse community in northwest Iowa. She serves more than 2,500 students and their families, specializing in overcoming barriers that impact marginalized populations. She has an interest in civic innovation toward finding solutions to issues of inequality. She believes the best decisions are made by keeping people as the focal point of all solutions. Stacey earned her undergraduate degree from Buena Vista University, she holds graduate degrees from Southwest Minnesota State University, Morningside University and Iowa State University. Most recently, she earned her doctoral degree in the area of Curriculum, Teaching and Teacher Education from the University of Florida.

Janie Eischen
Director of Teaching and Learning, Algona Community Schools

Session: Leadership and Living Your Values

Janie Eischen is an administrator for Algona Community Schools as the Director of Teaching and Learning.  I am able to work at the system level to ensure excellence in teaching and learning for both students and staff on an everyday basis with terrific students and staff. With 17 years working in education, she has had the privilege of having various roles throughout her educational career. Janie began her career teaching 4th grade at West Elementary in Emmetsburg, IA for six years. She transitioned to teaching reading and writing at the middle school. She worked with her middle school colleagues to integrate reading into the whole school day, setting up a system of support for students needing additional practice or re-teaching of reading and math skills as well as providing for students needing enrichment. She then worked with Prairie Lakes Area Education Agency in a School Improvement Role with an emphasis on literacy. She was able to learn from great leaders and teachers across the state about the importance of sound data analysis practices in schools and also the need for strong foundational literacy learning for all students to be successful. 

Doug Gee
Superintendent, Clear Lake Community School District

Session: Leadership in a Loose/Tight Culture, Focusing on the Right Work
Session: Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement 

Doug has served in education for over thirty years as a teacher, coach, activities director, assistant principal, principal, and now as a superintendent. He has worked in school districts from 400 total students to the largest school district in Iowa of over 30,000 students. He is in his ninth year as a superintendent, and seventh year as the superintendent of Clear Lake. In his current role, he focuses on leading the PLC process district wide from the school board to the rest of the staff and truly believes that all really means all. During his six years at Clear Lake, they have started a new computer science program, AG/FFA program, biomed program and Project Lead the Way (PLTW) Launch Program. Clear Lake has been recognized as a Model PLC at Work District by Solution Tree and a Distinguished PLTW Launch school. Doug is a member of School Administrators of Iowa Executive Leaders, serving on the Iowa High School Athletic Association Representative Council. He is a Solution Tree Associate and presents at local and state conferences and at the National PLTW Summit.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physical education from the University of Northern Iowa, master’s degree in educational leadership from Drake University and a specialist degree from Iowa State University. 

Dr. Roark Horn
Former Executive Director, School Administrators of Iowa (SAI)

Ending note: Now What? 

Dr. Roark Horn is the Pomerantz Endowed Professor of Educational Excellence at the University of Northern Iowa. He served for 7 years as the Executive Director of School Administrators of Iowa (SAI), the organization that serves Iowa’s principals and superintendents with professional learning opportunities, legislative advocacy, and legal consultation. He was a high school English teacher, coach, and principal for 20 years, a school superintendent for 8 years, and the Chief Administrator of one of Iowa’s regional service agencies (AEAs) for 5 years. Roark received his bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University and completed all of his specialist certifications in school administration at the University of Northern Iowa, where he also earned his doctorate. He and his wife Jean, a retired community college math teacher, have three adult children.  

Dr. Joe Sanfelippo
Superintendent, Fall Creek School District

Keynote session: Lead From Where You Are
Breakout session: The Impact of 30 Second Moments 

Dr. Joe Sanfelippo is the Superintendent of the Fall Creek School District in Fall Creek, WI...home of the Fall Creek Crickets. The Fall Creek School District was named an Innovative District in 2016 and 2017 by the International Center for Leadership in Education. Joe holds a BA in Elementary and Early Childhood Education, an MS in Educational Psychology, an MS in Educational Leadership, and a Ph.D. in Leadership, Learning, and Service. Joe has authored multiple books including the best-selling Hacking Leadership: 10 Ways Great Leaders Inspire Learning That Teachers, Students, and Parents Love and his latest Lead From Where You Are: Building Intention, Connection, and Direction in our schools. He was selected as 1 of 117 Future Ready Superintendents in 2014 and 1 of 50 Superintendents as a Personalized Learning Leader by the US Department of Education in 2016. Education Dive named Joe their National Superintendent of the Year in 2019.