Signature Experiences
Preregistration is required for Signature Experiences, and there is an extra fee to attend.
We invite you to take part in NAIS Thrive in a fresh and exciting way. Our Signature Experiences offer focused explorations of urgent themes:
- Signature Experience 1: Growing Great Teachers: A Hands-on Playbook for Observation, Feedback, and Mentorship
- Signature Experience 2: Schools and AI: Running in Two Directions at Once
Each experience has limited space and includes an exclusive keynote from industry experts, deep discussions with an engaged cohort, and actionable takeaways for your chosen theme.
Each of the experiences has programming on both Thursday and Friday, and you still have access to the conference’s keynote speakers, workshops, and networking.
Signature Experience Schedule
Thursday, March 4
- Signature Experience: 11:15 AM–12:30 PM ET
- Cohort Lunch: 12:30–1:15 PM ET
Friday, March 5
- Signature Experience: 11:15 AM–12:30 PM ET
- Cohort Lunch: 12:30–1:15 PM ET
Signature Experience Descriptions
Signature Experience 1 With Joshua Wolf: Growing Great Teachers: A Hands-on Playbook for Observation, Feedback, and Mentorship
Learn how to differentiate support, leverage veteran expertise, and build meaningful growth structures for every teacher. This isn’t just inspiration—it’s an experience designed to equip you with tools you can use at your school immediately.
Division heads, faculty deans, and department chairs wear many hats, serving as mentors, supervisors, and often therapists. They play a crucial role in catering to the diverse needs of faculty members, from novices to seasoned professionals. They must provide guidance, affirmation, and constructive feedback to support new and second-year teachers in their growth and development, while simultaneously offering inspiration, leadership opportunities, and encouragement to veteran faculty, helping them navigate challenges and explore areas for growth. Balancing these varying needs requires a multifaceted approach that emphasizes mentorship, professional development, and a supportive organizational culture.
On Thursday, start thinking about your leadership style and areas of expertise. Then address the three primary obstacles that interfere with administrators’ abilities to give feedback that promotes professional growth: finding the time to see every teacher, knowing how to take observational notes that will help, and eventually sharing these notes with teachers in ways that inspire them to reflect on their practice (and ultimately become stronger educators). Focus on the efficient and effective “15-minute drop-in” and design customized observation grids to build rapport and share meaningful feedback with your faculty.
On Friday, learn to meet the needs of both new and veteran faculty. Our beginners and second-year teachers need guidance, affirmation, and constructive feedback while the seasoned faculty need inspiration, leadership opportunities, and encouragement to lean into their blind spots. Focus on three specific ways to help your faculty grow, no matter their age or stage: collecting and sharing “short” data, giving feedback using aspirational criteria, and offering personal professional development projects. Walk away with several concrete, actionable tools for supporting all your faculty.
Joshua Wolf
Joshua Wolf serves as K–12 director of teaching and learning at The Park School of Baltimore (MD), where he has spent more than 30 years serving students, parents, faculty, and staff—first as a Spanish teacher, then modern language department chair, boys’ varsity basketball coach, and middle school principal. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s in educational leadership from Columbia University, where he studied and wrote about why teachers don’t always love being observed! His writing has appeared in Baltimore's Child magazine and The Baltimore Sun, and he has led workshops for NAIS, Association of Independent Maryland & DC Schools, Independent Schools Association of the Southwest, Virginia Association of Independent Schools, and Association of Independent Schools in New England.
Signature Experience 2 With Peter Nilsson and Indu Singh: Schools and AI: Running in Two Directions at Once
Attention all school leaders: From heads of school to division and department heads, to admissions and communications directors, to technology and auxiliary program leaders, this program is designed for anyone concerned that AI and human-centered practices cannot exist together in schools. They can!
AI is pulling us ever further into technologically mediated experiences—how we work, how we communicate, how we decide. Yet educators know the most powerful learning remains a social, human-to-human experience. The result is that schools must travel in both directions at once in order to continue providing the relational experiences excellent schools are known for while also preparing students for a technologically inundated world. Join us to surfaces both the high-level principles needed to navigate these seemingly divergent paths and also the practical tools needed for the deliberate work of uniquely human thinking, learning, and relationship building. Engage in a variety of formats that draw on technology and on contributions only possible from people together in a room.
Leave with:
- A working map of AI's strengths and limits: Further glean how these tools have developed, what they do well, where they reliably fail, and what this means for the decisions leaders make and the learning teachers design. During our time together, create artifacts that demonstrate AI’s capabilities well beyond the chatbot. Examine slides and documents identifying the kind of thinking and knowledge work that AI performs better than humans, such as particular modes of research, analysis, strategy, and more—as well as areas where AI can fall short.
- A deeper understanding of uniquely human knowledge work: Develop a clearer map of what capabilities and traits define our human thinking, learning, and relational experiences, gathered both from facilitator expertise and also from firsthand experiences generating knowledge in ways that can only be forged with other people. During our time together, create records of knowledge through visceral, lived experiences that remind you of the features and strengths of human knowledge. Examine slides and documents identifying the kind of thinking and knowledge work that humans perform better than AI, drawing on our individuality, embodied experience, intention, and more—thus enabling leaders to deepen your commitment to the humanist component of high-quality education.
- A protocol for reconciling technological and human modes of learning: Build frameworks for balancing and/or bringing together both human and technological thinking and work to guide decision-making at your school. Delve into a decision framework and guide to help you determine when, whether, and how you might integrate AI and/or deepen human engagement in your school’s programs and protocols. Examine documents and slides that clearly present the challenge facing schools—that we must simultaneously lean into our human, relational experience while also leaning into students’ ability to navigate a technology-saturated world—so you can bring this clarified understanding back to your leadership team and stakeholders.
Peter Nilsson
Educator, author, and musician Peter Nilsson has served as a head of school, administrator, teacher, tutor, coach, and board member in schools for over 20 years. Most recently, he was head of school at King’s Academy in Jordan. Before that, Nilsson taught, coached, and served in a variety of roles at Deerfield Academy (MA), where he taught English and digital humanities. He is the vice-chair of the board of trustees at the Canterbury School (IN).
Deeply engaged in the intersection of technology and education, Nilsson is the co-author of Irreplaceable: How AI Changes Everything (And Nothing) in Teaching and Learning. He won a 2017 Innovation Award from Wolfram Research for the design of a digital humanities course, the first Wolfram Innovation Award given to a high school teacher. Nilsson is the founder of Athena Lab, a technology platform for teachers to share practices, and editor of The Educator’s Notebook, a newsletter that circulates education and learning-related news from around the web for the purpose of promoting innovation in education.
Nilsson serves on the advisory boards for SXSW EDU and the Center for Curriculum Redesign. He also serves on the advisory team for the Middle States Association Responsible AI in Learning endorsement.
As a musician, Nilsson composed and performed in New York City with bands, in classical settings, with hip-hop performers, in off-Broadway theater, and in other contexts. His current project, Schooled the Musical, has had readings in New York, San Diego, Austin, and Pittsburgh.
Indu Chugani Singh
Indu Chugani Singh is the founder and principal consultant of Door 21 Consulting, LLC, where she partners with independent schools to design human-centered systems that support adult learning, instructional leadership, and organizational learning. She works with faculty, department chairs, and school leaders to strengthen instructional practice, design structures for professional growth, and create the conditions in which educators can learn, reflect, collaborate, and continuously improve. Singh currently serves on the board of trustees of the Association of Independent Schools in New England.
Prior to founding Door 21, she served for nearly a decade as the inaugural dean of teaching and learning at Milton Academy (MA). Throughout her career, Singh has experienced the transformative power of adult learning firsthand, both as a participant and facilitator. She also served for nearly a decade as an instructor in the Independent School Teaching Residency (ISTR) at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and previously taught with the Bard Institute for Writing & Thinking, facilitating writing-based professional learning grounded in reflection, inquiry, and collaborative learning. Earlier in her career, Singh taught English at Phillips Exeter Academy (NH) and The Winsor School (MA).