Events Calendar

Attracting and retaining top faculty and staff is one of the most pressing challenges facing independent schools today. The Timely Challenge Conference brings together school leaders to explore innovative strategies for recruitment, retention, and workplace culture.

To meet the needs of K-12 students, Social and Emotional Learning can and must come alive within all subject areas. This experiential online course will provide techniques for integrating SEL into all teaching and learning.  Both practical and conceptual, this course offers participants the opportunity to collaborate with fellow attendees from a community of international educators from public, private, and IB Schools.

A two-day, intensive experience designed specifically for independent school leadership teams, the Blueprint Sprint helps you turn strategy into measurable progress.  Led by Dr. Brett Jacobsen, SAIS president, this high-impact workshop will give your team a structured blueprint and practical tools to bring a strategic priority to life—so you can return to your school ready to implement real change.

This student deliberative experience, hosted by NAIS, Close Up Foundation, and the Stanford University Deliberative Democracy Lab, invites high school students to critically examine the role of artificial intelligence in their lives and their future careers. Through expert panels, facilitated dialogue, and consensus-building exercises, students will gain the tools to lead meaningful conversations back at school and beyond. This runs concurrently with the 2025 NAIS Symposium on AI and the Future of Learning.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way we teach, learn, and lead. As a forward-thinking school leader, you’re invited to this two-day summit designed to equip independent school professionals with the insights, tools, and connections to navigate the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Join leading voices in education and technology to explore how AI can empower educators, strengthen school systems, and enhance student learning. Through expert-led sessions, collaborative discussions, and practical demonstrations, you’ll gain the knowledge and confidence to lead your school into the future—ethically, strategically, and creatively. This event runs concurrently with the 2025 Student NextGen Roundtable: From Classrooms to Careers: How AI is Shaping Our Paths, hosted by NAIS, Close Up Foundation, and the Stanford University Deliberative Democracy Lab.

This multi-session, virtual, team-based workshop series designed for school teams to explore innovative staffing models and analyze compensation structures. Using insights from the NAIS Salary Explorer, NAIS Data and Analysis for School Leadership (DASL), and other sources, as well as NAIS Strategy Lab curated frameworks and processes, your school team will work to generate ideas for connecting your vision of the future to optimizing staff size, quality, and retention. Leave with a pitch deck and a concise, compelling story that outlines new strategic approaches for your compensation and staffing model. This experience includes a pre-session on November 19 and a post-session on February 11.

 

This event brings together high school students from across the country to build knowledge, develop strategies, and hone leadership skills to make a positive impact. Through engagement with experts and collaborative inquiry into pressing national issues, students consider their individual and collective responsibilities and agency, identify best practices in community engagement, and develop vision statements and strategies to make a difference in their own communities. Students will present those plans to teachers, administrators, and other participants in the concurrent 2026 NNSP Annual Conference. 

This multi-session, virtual, team-based workshop series is designed for school teams who have previously completed AIM: The NAIS Assessment of School Culture. Through the NAIS Strategy Lab’s tried-and-true strategy-making model, this workshop helps teams continue to diagnose what your AIM insights reveal about your school and focus on areas of concern. Teams apply innovation frameworks and engage in thought exercises to generate exciting possibilities and plan for an effective implementation and rollout of new ideas. Leave with a pitch deck and a concise, compelling story that outlines how your AIM findings have led to innovative approaches to reach your larger community goals. This experience includes a pre-session on January 22 and a post-session on April 16.

This multi-session, virtual, team-based workshop series designed for boards to address what’s standing in their way when it comes best supporting their school and to generate innovative strategies to cultivate a thriving board structure and culture for the future. In this interactive experience, heads of school, board chairs, and governance committee leaders come together to identify their most pressing governance challenges and co-design strategies for strengthening board performance. Grounded in data and driven by collaboration, this workshop series offers structured frameworks for translating reflection into actionable next steps. Leave with an individualized professional development plan for your board, as well as a clear set of priorities and innovative approaches tailored to your school’s unique governance journey. This experience includes a pre-session on March 26 and a post-session on June 24.

How can schools, classrooms, and other educational spaces be best designed to support deep and lifelong learning? How can architects, educators, and designers create places for learning that incorporate the latest research and innovative practices from around the globe? This institute convenes teams in an interactive and intensive 3.5-day studio format in which participants learn from leading experts and apply lessons to their active projects—from modest redesigns of small settings to large school building renovations to ambitious new construction and campus planning projects.