Breakout Session G – 2024 ICGS Conference

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Breakout Session G
Wednesday, June 26
9:40-10:30 a.m.

Challenge Success: Understanding Student Well-Being, Engagement, and Belonging
For the past nine months Challenge Success – a nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education – has been gathering student voice data from ICGS member schools around the globe. In this session, you will be the first to hear about the preliminary research results, including insights into the well-being, engagement, and belonging of students in ICGS member schools. We’ll explore some pressing questions such as:

  • How engaged are ICGS students in their academics? Are they finding value, meaning, and purpose in their schoolwork?
  • What are the major sources of stress for girls, and how does that compare to students in co-ed schools?
  • How are girls in ICGS schools spending their time (homework, sleep, extracurriculars, etc.)?
  • To what extent do girls feel connected to teachers and peers? Are they struggling to feel a sense of belonging at school?

Presenters: Sarah Miles, Director of Research; Drew Schrader, School Design Partner | Challenge Success (United States)

Audience: Upper/Senior/High School; Heads of School/Principals/Presidents/Headteachers; Senior Administrators; Teachers/Faculty; Admissions/Enrollment; Communications/Marketing; Student Life; Extracurricular/Co-Academic Programs; School Counselors; Alumnae Relations; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Practitioners

What it Takes to Develop Healthy Resistance in Girls: Continuing the Conversation Begun by Carol Gilligan at ICGS 2023
2023 Keynote Speaker Carol Gilligan laid out what she called a “bad bargain” in girls’ education: that often, in the name of academic success or inclusion, girls are enjoined not to say what they really feel or know first-hand on the basis of their experience. This, Gilligan said, is one of the most urgent challenges of girls’ education: how to help girls develop the skills needed to break this bargain, in order to stay aligned with themselves and stay present in their relationships with others. In this session we’ll define and explore further what Gilligan termed “political” and “psychological” resistance and the implications for helping educators in girls’ schools understand what it takes to educate and develop a healthy resistance to the incentives girls are offered, coming as they do at the total expense of girls’ moral/psychological well-being.

Presenter: Randy-Michael Testa | Professional Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Audience: Elementary/Primary/Lower School; Middle School; Upper/Senior/High School; Heads of School/Principals/Presidents/Headteachers; Senior Administrators; Teachers/Faculty; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Practitioners

Nurturing Growth: Designing and Structuring A Holistic Advisory Program for Young Women
This session will focus on our scaffolded advisory program designed to address the holistic development of students in grades 6-12. The program centers on our collective goals of academic advisement, social-emotional learning (SEL), and community building, and fosters a supportive environment where young women feel heard, seen, and valued by their peers and advisors. Our program provides formatted lessons that not only guide advisors but also encourages differentiation to meet the unique needs of their student groups.  In this session, we will share our planning process, sample lessons, as well as student and teacher feedback and results.

Presenters: Kristen Edma, Middle School Counselor; Pamela Wachutka, Grade 9 Dean and Academic Support and Counseling Coordinator | The Holton Arms School (United States)

Audience: Elementary/Primary/Lower School; Middle School; Upper/Senior/High School; School Counselors; Grade Deans; Learning Specialists; College Counseling

Elmwood’s Brand Evolution: Creating a breakthrough brand foundation.
What do you do when the mission of your 100-year-old school isn’t telling the whole story?  In this session, we will outline Elmwood School’s year-long (and counting) effort to create a brand foundation that would unite the staff and faculty, excite students and families and help prospects understand what they need most and how we are positioned to deliver it.  All while paying tribute to our founder, whose vision in 1915 was that Elmwood would be a place where students could be “joyous, companionable, strong and free.”

Presenters: Jennifer Irwin-Jackson, Director, Marketing and Community Relations | Elmwood School (Canada)

Audience: Early Childhood; Elementary/Primary/Lower School; Middle School; Upper/Senior/High School; Admissions/Enrollment; Communications/Marketing

Increasing Uptake of Coding for Girls – Make It a Language of Choice
It is well-evidenced that there is gender inequality in Computer Science and related fields. The challenge schools face is providing curriculum time to teach valuable coding skills whilst also delivering a broad and balanced curriculum in system of measurable outcomes. In this session we will examine the challenges girls face in Computer Science and suggest how these can be reduced in a school setting. By repositioning how we delivered coding, more than half of Year 9 students opted into our Python programme, with positive impacts elsewhere in Computer Science.

Presenter: James Mutton, Deputy Head (Digital Innovation and Curriculum) | Putney High School GDST (United Kingdom)

Audience: Middle School; Upper/Senior/High School; Heads of School/Principals/Presidents/Headteachers; Teachers/Faculty; Extracurricular/Co-Academic Programs

Studio Art Teaching Practices to Support Courage, Community, and Creativity
Creativity is one of the most sought-after skills in the 21st Century and yet many female students struggle with perfectionism and a fear of ambiguity.  This breakout session will discuss teaching practices to support creative thinking and exploration that builds classroom community while creating a foundation for girls’ self-knowledge and courage.  Genevieve Ploch is an art educator with additional experience blending Reggio-inspired interdisciplinary projects and forest school practices along with time spent in urban, suburban, public, and private school settings to offer reflections on how these teaching experiences can blend together to support and empower female students.

Presenter: Genevieve Ploch, Art Educator | Visitation Academy (United States)

Audience: Early Childhood; Elementary/Primary/Lower School; Middle School; Upper/Senior/High School; Heads of School/Principals/Presidents/Headteachers; Teachers/Faculty; School Counselors

No Head is an island
Drawing on experience from leadership in the military and in schools as well as from the experience of co-facilitating the Headways global cohort of school leaders, Alison will talk about the importance of  Heads’ leading whilst drawing on the expertise of others. School leadership is an emotionally hard job and this session will look at the role of coaching and mentoring to support leadership development. Taking over as a school leader is a daunting task and you can feel like you must have all the answers all of the time, but you don’t… No Head is an island.

Presenter: Alison Sefton, Head | Norwich High School for Girls (United Kingdom)

Audience: Elementary/Primary/Lower School; Middle School; Upper/Senior/High School; Heads of School/Principals/Presidents/Headteachers; Senior Administrators

Cultural Humility and Special Education 
Cultural Humility is an ongoing endeavor that Nurturing Minds has been engaged in since its inception. As a Non-Profit specializing in raising funds for and supporting the infrastructure for the SEGA (Secondary Education Girls’ Advancement) Girls’ School in Tanzania, we understand the need for JEDI training and implementation for all stakeholders involved in educating and empowering young women. Furthermore, as a Special Educator, Diamond has used her NYC teaching experience to ensure that the “Special” in “Special Education” also applies to gifted learners who can be trained to use their cognitive ability to see themselves as change agents and the next leaders in Herstory. Join us for music, stats, and joy, and to learn how your most gifted students can create international change.
Presenter: Diamond Emerald Skinner, Advisor to the Board | SEGA Girls’ School (Tanzania/United States)
Audience: Elementary/Primary/Lower School; Middle School; Upper/Senior/High School; Heads of School/Principals/Presidents/Headteachers; Senior Administrators; Teachers/Faculty; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Practitioners; Advisory

Mission in Practice: Designing Frameworks to Guide and Inspire
In this session, we’ll demonstrate how we use key frameworks developed by Laurel’s Center for Research on Girls (Ownership of Learning, the Five Pillars of Resilience, and the Building Blocks of Civil Discourse) as foundational resources that underpin institution-wide systems like classroom observations, report-writing, conferences, and instructional practices in our school. The rest of the session will give time to participants to workshop ways they can use learning frameworks that already exist in their schools – or revise or design a new framework – to help center an institution’s unique mission and values within the everyday life of the school.

Presenters: Megan Weiskopf, Director of Teaching and Learning; Rachel Herlein, Assistant Head of School for Academic Excellence | Laurel School (United States)

Audience: Elementary/Primary/Lower School; Middle School; Upper/Senior/High School; Heads of School/Principals/Presidents/Headteachers; Senior Administrators; Teachers/Faculty; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Practitioners; Advisory