Inside the Gather Experience
Gather is designed to do more than fill a schedule with speakers and workshops. Across the conference, you will find opportunities to build a shared foundation, practice new ways of engaging across difference, connect through identity and experience, invest in your professional growth, and begin each day with joy and reflection.
Together, these experiences reflect the purpose at the heart of Gather: to nourish the people doing the work of inclusion and belonging, equip schools to put it into practice, and challenge our community to move forward together.
Explore the Gather Experience
Foundation Courses
Begin with shared grounding.
Gather will open Wednesday afternoon with three expert-led Foundation Courses, each aligned with one of the conference pathways: Renewing and Growing, Sustaining School Belonging, and Engaging Across Community.
Designed for anyone who wants grounding in the essential concepts connected to a pathway, these courses will establish foundational knowledge, introduce useful language and frameworks, and help you engage more deeply with the programming that follows.
Foundation Courses are different from workshops. While workshops invite participants to explore particular questions, practices, and examples, these extended learning experiences are developed and taught by invited experts at a professional master-class level. There is no additional fee, and any registered attendee may participate.
Schedule:
- Wednesday, December 2, 2:00–3:15 PM: Attendees can choose one foundational session from any of the three pathways: Renewing and Growing, Sustaining School Belonging, or Engaging Across Community.
Community Dialogues
Turn toward one another.
Community Dialogues are a three-part experience within the Engaging Across Community pathway, designed to deepen engagement around issues of inclusion, belonging, and community within independent schools.
You’ll join a consistent dialogue group that meets throughout the conference, working with the same dedicated facilitator for all three sessions. Through structured, facilitated conversations, you’ll engage with colleagues from different backgrounds and school contexts while creating space for curiosity, reflection, perspective-taking, and authentic connection across differences.
Along the way, you’ll build practical skills for navigating complex and emotionally charged conversations and reflect on how dialogue and belonging-building practices can strengthen your own school communities. Leave with new insights, relationships, and strategies to support inclusion and belonging efforts at your institutions.
Because the three sessions are designed as a connected experience, participants should plan to attend all three parts.
Schedule:
- Part I: Wednesday, December 2, 1:45–3:15 PM
- Part II: Thursday, December 3, 11:15 AM–12:45 PM
- Part III: Friday, December 4, 11:15 AM–12:45 PM
Affinity Circles
Find connection through shared identity and experience.
Affinity Circles will create space for you to connect, share stories, and process your experiences in independent schools through the lens of identity.
On Thursday and Friday, participants may choose to begin the day in Affinity Circles. The circles will be led by volunteer facilitators who have completed extensive training in supporting identity-centered storytelling and reflection. NAIS is partnering with VISIONS, Inc. to help prepare facilitators and shape the experience. Breakfast is provided.
Affinity Circles may center identities and lived experiences related to race and ethnicity, religion, neurodiversity, sexuality, and other dimensions of identity. The final offerings and available capacity will be informed by conference registration so that the experience reflects the communities at the conference.
More information will be provided for registered attendees in the conference app.
Mentoring and Coaching
Make space for the next step in your growth.
Whether you want focused guidance on a question you are navigating now or a professional relationship that can continue beyond the conference, Gather will offer two distinct ways to connect.
COACHES’ CORNER
Coaches’ Corner offers a complimentary, focused, one-time conversation with a certified professional coach. Bring a question, challenge, or goal and use the session to gain perspective, clarify your thinking, or identify a next step. You may choose to work with a coach independently after Gather, but there is no expectation of an ongoing relationship.
Sign-ups will be available in the conference app for registered attendees. Space is limited.
MENTOR MATCH
Mentor Match is a more informal opportunity to begin a potentially longer-term professional connection. Participants may identify as a mentor, a mentee, or both, and Gather will provide a dedicated space for participants to meet and connect. From there, each pair can decide whether and how they would like the relationship to continue.
Information will be available in the conference app for registered attendees.
Morning Renewal
Begin the day in joy and reflection.
On Thursday and Friday, the Gather community will begin the day together. Rather than opening with a traditional keynote presentation, Morning Renewal will use the arts to create space for joy, reflection, and connection before the day’s learning begins.
Thursday’s experience will invite the full audience into a participatory choir experience. On Friday, an independent school educator will stage the first act of an original musical exploring belonging in independent schools. NAIS speakers will help frame each experience and connect it to the day ahead.
Morning Renewal is part of the General Session program, and all attendees are encouraged to participate.
Come Ready to Gather
Come with your questions, your experiences, and a willingness to engage. Leave with stronger relationships, practical approaches, renewed energy, and greater confidence to advance inclusion and belonging in your school community.