Mario I. Acosta, EdD, spent 20 years of his educational career as a teacher, instructional coach, assistant principal, academic director, and principal leading schools with diverse profiles in the state of Texas. He was named the 2022 Principal of the Year in the State of Texas while he was the principal at Westwood High School, a U.S. News & World Report top-50 campus and member of the High Reliability Schools (HRS) Network.

The goal of K-12 education is to shift the system’s focus away from tracking groups of students to ensuring success at the individual student level. Shifting the focus to success at the individual learner level involves creating a safe and supportive school culture, ensuring effective teaching in every classroom, a standards-focused curriculum, and tracking the success of individual students.

Schools are called on daily to serve learners of all ages who have varying degrees of abilities and differing social and academic needs. To be successful in this pursuit, it is important to have systems that allow educators to collectively pursue the learning ideal for all students. During this talk, Dr. Acosta will share ideas and examples from districts and schools that demonstrate what can be done to help schools be successful in their call to serve learners through coordinated systems that work interdependently to stay focused on the end goal of learning for all.

Jimmy Casas has been an educator for over 30 years, serving 22 years as a school leader, including fourteen years as Principal at Bettendorf High School. Under his leadership, Bettendorf was named one of the Best High Schools in the country three times by Newsweek and US News & World Report.

Jimmy was named the 2012 Iowa Secondary Principal of the Year and was selected as runner-up NASSP 2013 National Secondary Principal of the Year. In 2014, Jimmy was invited to the White House to speak on the Future Ready Schools pledge. Jimmy is also the author of nine books, including the best-selling books Culturize: Every Student. Every Day. Whatever It Takes, Live Your Excellence: Bring Your Best Self to School Every Day, and Handle with Care: Managing Difficult Situations in Schools with Dignity and Respect. Jimmy’s newest release, Recalibrate the Culture, is already a top-selling book on Amazon.

Jimmy is the owner and CEO of J Casas & Associates, where he serves as a professional leadership coach for school leaders across the country. In January 2020, Jimmy launched ConnectEDD, a publishing company aimed at giving back to the profession by supporting educators to become published authors.

Do you leave work every night exhausted from putting out fires all day long? Are you frustrated because you find yourself dealing with the same issues time and time again? You are not alone.

It is time to recalibrate. Recalibrate our why. Our work. Our values. Ourselves. Educators must explore their inner selves to understand the role we each play in how we can impact the climate and culture of an entire campus when we are strategic and aligned in our practices. The classroom, building, and district levels must see themselves as one and must be intentional in replicating their processes, protocols, and frameworks to recalibrate and bring about system-wide change and cultivate a healthier culture.

This session is designed to shine a light on students with emotional disturbance, the challenges they face in schools today, and research-based practices that are shown to improve outcomes in behavior and academics for these students. Participants will learn new statistics about this student population, and strategies that can be taken back and used at the classroom or campus level.

Learn how we dissected MTSS at our campus. Explore how you can use a similar setup at your home campus. The participants will understand how to tackle the complicated umbrella of MTSS, collaborate with others by sharing what has worked at their own campus, and leave with a plan of how to make adjustments when back on campus.

Participants will learn how to become a model PLC School. The session will outline specific ways that administrators can improve collaborative teams on their campus and the steps that are needed to move your campus from PLC Lite to PLC Right.

Everything starts with connection and influence! Culture is not static, it’s dynamic. It’s what you do every day. Being an effective campus principal is a demanding and multifaceted role that requires a diverse set of skills and knowledge. In this session, we will explore simple, yet complex lessons from the field.

Many APs spend so much of their time completing managerial tasks that they have little opportunity to conduct tasks associated with instructional leadership. Learn strategies for developing and empowering APs to become masterful instructional leaders.

"In this immersive, workshop, participants will embark on a journey to enhance school culture, making it a magnetic hub that draws in and retains our cherished teachers and volunteers. Engaging activities, powerful discussions, and real-world strategies will be interwoven in a way that inspires every attendee to actively shape and participate in creating an ever-thriving educational community."

Instructional Leadership Matters. Learn how to build capacity, distribute leadership, and grow teacher leaders who can support and develop the skills of novice and veteran teachers alike through the PLC process, facilitating teachers who are more confident and better equipped to deliver effective tier-one instruction, resulting in higher teacher retention and improved student outcomes.

Are the certifications of your appraisers up to date? Are your appraisers following the required timelines to promote teacher professional growth and development? When HR departments do not address these questions on a regular basis, appraisals become more susceptible to grievances. This session will take participants through the Texas requirements for appraiser certification/re-certification and the common mistakes that happen with teacher evaluation timelines. Participants will learn how to support appraisers with certification and recertification requirements and how to utilize evaluation timelines to maximize teacher growth, engagement, and retention.

With a unique structure of three principals, Forney High School maintains a unified identity while working harmoniously toward a common goal. This innovative approach ensures personalized attention, diverse opportunities, and consistent commitment to academic excellence through collaboration and unity to have a collective journey of growth and achievement.

An overview will be provided into five effective systems for instructional leaders. Communication, Collaboration, Data Monitoring, Lesson Planning and Instructional Snapshots will be dissected with practical strategies for easy implementation. Employing these systems are key to transitioning from school administrator to instructional campus leader.

In this engaging session, principals will explore the dynamics of escalation, discover its root causes, and learn effective strategies for de-escalation. Attendees can expect to leave with a deeper understanding of escalation triggers and a toolkit of practical techniques to foster a more peaceful campus environment, empower their teachers, and enhance overall school morale.

Discover resources and tools to level up your leadership by knowing yourself as a leader. Deepen your understanding of creating a trusting campus culture. Reflect on skills you can use to develop leadership around you to foster a culture of innovation.

The relationship between administrators and their students is a strategic one and plays a vital role in shaping the educational experience in fostering a positive school culture. With the principal as a school leader, a positive alliance must be created with students. Participants will leave with easy strategies that will promote or improve student choice/voice for an entire campus.

"How will you play Connect Four using Leadership, Instruction, Culture, and You?," We will explore the power of connection in shaping the future. Through a dynamic blend of leadership principles, effective instruction strategies, and the influence of organizational culture, we will unlock the potential within individuals and teams. By embracing the "Connect Four" theme, we will delve into innovative ways to forge meaningful connections, foster collaboration, and adapt to changing landscapes.

Learn how one middle school collected office referral data that led to innovative approaches to scheduling, disciplinary actions, and a partnership with an alternative community school. The participants will consider how curiosity leads to creative solutions, be equipped to collect office referral data that leads to school-wide initiatives and explore community partnerships to address the needs of office referral frequent flyers.

When we think about school improvement we often think about operational and strategic plans. Yes, this is very necessary! However, it is not the most important thing. Explore collective teacher efficacy through John Hattie's research on over 250 factors that affected student performance showing that the leading factor affecting student outcomes is Collective Teacher Efficacy.

Student absences are on the rise in schools across the country. It takes a unified commitment from the schools, families and community stakeholders to co-design actionable, innovative solutions to chronic absenteeism. Through this reflective and engaging session, participants will acquire a variety of tiered attendance-promoting strategies that can be implemented individually or integrated into intervention-based frameworks such as Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports (MTSS).

As educators, we must regularly ask ourselves: Have we grown complacent? Have we settled? For far too long, many practices have continued simply because “that is the way we have always done it.” The status quo and average results are no longer acceptable! In this session Jimmy Casas, twenty two-year veteran principal and best-selling author of Culturize: Every Student. Every Day. Whatever It Takes., will share his shortcomings and the critical truths that he learned the hard way on the importance of teaching and leading from a framework of core values and discover ways to act upon these values to improve the climate and culture of your classroom, school, or district. We all can do better when we have a better understanding of what we need to stop doing, why we need to stop, what we need to start doing, and the skills needed to develop a more effective approach to teaching and leading our schools.

Learn how Moore MS implemented Bobcat Hour based on data and feedback. Explore how you can change your traditional lunch to an hour investment for students and staff.

How to systematically make sense of your busy schedule and prioritize what really matters. Coaching, culture, and cohesiveness. Building a system for everything.

In this session, you'll embark on a journey through the fundamental concepts and capabilities of ChatGPT, powered by the cutting-edge AI architecture of GPT-3.5. As one of the most advanced language models available, ChatGPT is capable of understanding human language and generating contextually relevant responses.

Monitoring the effectiveness of campus practices and the ability of staff to execute these practices is a critical competency for effective school leadership. In this session participants will explore how to use data-driven leadership principles to create and use systems to monitor and support critical campus operations such as the collaborative teams process, effective classroom instruction, mutli-tiered systems of support (MTSS), and campus climate. Dr. Acosta will lead participants in reflecting upon current existing practices and accompanying monitoring systems while providing suggestions and tangible next steps for future application.

Program Coordinator - Supervision & Leadership Development

Email: zaida.saldivar@region10.org
Website: www.region10.org
Phone: 972-348-1044
Twitter: @R10_Innovate