Workshops and Presentations

Jean Day is excited to offer the following workshops and presentations that can be tailored to meet your needs. We also offer specialized workshops created just for you. To request a workshop, please contact us.

Backward Design Made Easy: This is a crash course in designing learning experiences with the end in mind, which is a foundational piece of a guaranteed and viable curriculum and effective teaching.
Becoming a 10x School: The Leader’s Guide to Greatness. This workshop, designed for all types of leaders, adapts the major lessons learned from Jim Collins’ book Great by Choice for schools and districts: Fanatic Discipline. Empirical Creativity. Productive Paranoia.
The Formative Mindset. Assessment for learning for all—all the time. This workshop helps us see that formative assessment is more than exit tickets. It’s an all-inclusive belief in the non-linear, zig zag nature of deep, meaningful learning.
The Keys to Collaborative Teaming in K12 Schools. This workshop explores ways to enhance all teams, including leadership and PLC teams through talent management, productive conflict, and doing your job.
Vertical Teaming in K12 Schools. This workshop focuses on the crucial need for teams to design and align curricular experiences in levels of increasing complexity to ensure the durability and endurance of learning for the long haul.
What Makes an Expert Teacher? This workshop explores expertise theory and the challenge of determining what effective teaching means and provides immediately usable strategies to help teachers go from good to great.
Making the School Mission Matter. This workshop focuses on the importance of a mission in schools and how we can reclaim the mission statement from the realm of clichés and drive our entire school toward our true north.
Want to Be More Effective? Be Reflective. The research is clear: In order to be effective, you must be reflective. This workshop highlights the power of reflection and self-evaluation and how to become a more reflective leader or teacher right now.
Learning in a Risk-Ready Environment. Failure is a powerful teacher. This workshop introduces participants to a learning environment that truly celebrates failing and risk-taking. In a risk-ready environment, students can try and try again in order to experience flow inside a safe haven where errors truly are opportunities for learning.
The Science of Learning: A Crash Course in What Works. Retrieving, spacing, and interleaving to learn. These three key strategies, as described in books such as Make It Stick and Powerful Teaching, help students learn for now and for the long haul. Participants will leave with six reliable and customizable ways to unleash the science of learning in their classrooms right now.
Rebooting Enrichment to Authentically Answer PLC Question 4. Providing authentic enrichment can be challenging, and too often PLC Question 4 gets ignored. In this session, teachers will learn six strategies to help reboot enrichment for students who deserve genuine extension and opportunities for critical and creative thinking. Each strategy in this workshop, whether it’s providing challenge tasks or building R and D labs, is customizable to multiple grade bands and content areas.

The Promises and Pitfalls of Differentiation. Teachers must be agile in order to know when, how, and why to differentiate for learners. However, differentiation isn’t always the answer. This session will provide sound and practical strategies to help teachers make the right call and harness the powerful promises of differentiation while also learning how to avoid the pitfalls.
To Group or Not to Group? How to Know What to Do and When. Student collaboration and peer-to-peer learning can be powerful. However, it’s not always the right play to call. Learn when, why, and how to group for effective learning in this workshop.
The Key Ingredients for Creating Great School Culture. Building a healthy school culture takes time and effort, and this workshop will help school leaders focus their time and efforts in the right way to create a school culture that’s built to last.
Achieving Better Behavior Management through the Science of Human Motivation. Behavior has long been a key challenge for teachers and school leaders, and the science human motivation can help increase our effectiveness in managing student behavior without the use of carrots and sticks.
The Expert Teacher is the Agile Teacher. Classroom expertise is built over time and through countless errors and near-wins. In this workshop, participants will learn about the major take-aways from expertise theory and how to apply them in order to develop the agility needed to become an expert teacher.
Developing a Tinkering Mindset in the K12 Classroom. Experts try and try again to get to their best work. This workshop will introduce participants to a learning environment that truly celebrates error and iteration in the learning process. Participants will study and discuss the tinkering processes of experts as well as the research base behind the power of failure as a learning tool.
Do We Learn Best by Knowing or Doing—or is it a Little Bit of Both? The longstanding debate on how we best learn too often forces teachers into a false choice. This workshop will help teachers see that learning happens through both direct instruction and discovery learning and know which approach to employ when.
Starting and Sustaining Standards-Based Grading in K12 Schools. Grading and assessment can often be a sensitive subject. In this workshop, teachers and school leaders will learn how SBG can provide the best evidence of student learning no matter the grade or subject. Participants will also learn that starting and sustaining SBG takes time, teaming, and coherent planning.
Critical Thinking: Defining It and Doing It. Buzzwords fill our field in education, and this workshop focuses on clearly defining critical thinking in order to reclaim and reframe such a powerful concept for classroom learning.
What Must Students Know and Do? A Guide for Creating a Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum. With too much to teach and too little time, educators must decide what they can promise students will learn in the time given. This workshop will help teachers and school leaders make those crucial curricular decisions.
Teaching Signature Thinking: Strategies for Unleashing Creativity in the Classroom. This workshop is designed to bust the myths of creativity and learn how to leverage creativity for learning using proven, research-based strategies.
Project-Based Learning Done Right. Project-based learning can deepen and enrich student learning—if done right. In this workshop, learn how to avoid the pitfalls of project-based learning and unlock its power instead.
Moving Beyond Icebreakers: Building Safety, Trust, and Belonging in the Classroom. Building a positive classroom environment takes time and explicit, consistent strategies that extend beyond August. Learn how to make it happen for the long haul in this classroom culture workshop.
Becoming a Creative School Leader. Today’s schools need innovative and dynamic leaders. However, this workshop will help school leaders leverage what works and avoid the fads and frills that often hinder becoming a truly creative school leader.
Exploring the Art and Science of Questioning. Becoming an expert questioner takes time and countless tries. This workshop will provide a foundation in the research base on effective questioning and how to effectively apply it in the classroom.
Leveraging the Four Data Types for School Improvement. Teachers and school leaders must learn how to tell the data story to uncover root causes and solve critical problems. This workshop will help us learn how to make demographic, achievement, process, and perception data talk.
Creating Effective Infographics to Inform School Stakeholders. Helping all stakeholders understand the data story of a school is imperative. Learn how to create engaging and accessible infographics to help all involved understand the trends, patterns, and story of their school.
Applying OKRs to School Improvement Initiatives. The Objective and Key Results approach to school improvement is a simple and clear game changer. Learn how to leverage OKRs for school improvement whether it’s a classroom, school, or systems level.
Spotting, Sustaining, and Securing School Talent: A Guide for School Leaders. Talent management a crucial, multi-layered skill that school leaders must possess. Learn how to make it happen in your school or district with this practical talent management workshop.
What Do Effective Instructional Coaches Do? The role of the instructional coach is paramount and yet the lines are often blurred regarding what instructional coaches do. This workshop will provide a grounding in the research on instructional coaching and clarity on what the role can and should be.
Feedback: What Teachers Need to Know. Unleashing the power of feedback for learning is easier said than done. This workshop will clearly present the tenants of effective feedback for teachers and school leaders in order to impact student learning in every classroom.
What We Let Slide—Slides: A School Leader’s Guide to School Culture. School leaders can have the culture they want, but they have to hold the line. Learn about key strategies to create and sustain the school culture you’ve always dreamed of in this practical, research-based workshop.
Clarity, Simplicity, Consistency: The Trifecta for Effective School Leadership. Demystifying effective school leadership and cutting through the noise can be overwhelming. In this workshop, learn how to keep it simple and become an effective leader with just three keywords.
How to Get Your Classroom Genius Written and Published. Classroom teachers are constantly innovating and creating, and these ideas must be shared with the world. Learn how to navigate the publishing world to unleash your genius in this practical workshop for aspiring writers.
How to Present Your Ideas Like a Pro: From Conferences to Keynotes. Presenting to crowds, big or small, can be unnerving. Learn a host of practical, reliable strategies to help you present like a pro from this workshop.
Creating a Culture of Problem-Finders in K12 Schools. The most successful and agile organizations are filled with problem-finders, meaning that the entire ecosystem is hungry to actively find and solve problems. Learn how to intentionally create a problem-finding school culture together.
Teaching 21st Century Skills for Lifelong Learning. What will students need to know and be able to do in the future? Can we future-proof our schools? Learn about the varied discussions on 21^st century skills in this workshop and begin to steer your school, in an effective way, toward lifelong learning.
Look Up and Lift Up: Combatting Teacher Burnout in Times of Crisis. Conversations about teacher morale, retention, and burnout are important to navigate and must be handled with care. Learn how to help teachers stay engaged and empowered in this workshop grounded in what works from multiple domains.
Doubling Down on New Teacher Mentoring. This workshop details how teachers and school leaders can establish intentional and iterative mentoring programs that help novices face the cognitive and emotional overload of teaching alongside trusted allies.
Strip Rank and Tell Hard Truths: What School Leaders Can Learn from the SEALS. The infallible leader is no leader at all. Learn how to look the evidence in the eye, check the ego, and start getting better as a leader.
The Non-Negotiables for New Teachers. What must new teachers know and be able to do in order to be effective? In this workshop, learn how to help novice teachers get small and play to win in their classrooms from the first day onward.