2026 Summit

RECORDING

Identify your purpose and the type of leader you want to be. Understand
how every emotion drives behavior and how to utilize emotions individually and collectively to drive positive impact and belonging. Share our experience using a powerful tool to develop Team Commitments and align norms.

Presenters

Griffin Gervais, Leadership Team, SEL4NC & Founder Come Home Collective

Leela Harpur Heyder, Leadership Team, SEL4NC & Founder/CEO Calm Minds, Kind Hearts

Dr. Beth Rice, Ed.D., Co-Founder SEL4NC & Founder Wellbeing4Learning

RECORDING

Review North Carolina’s collaborative efforts across state, district, and grassroots levels, to prepare students and adults for success in an evolving world. Share practical insights and resources for effectively integrating social and emotional competencies into educational practices. Explore ways to build buy-in and sustain support for educators.

Presenters

Anne Nixon, MA, LPA Statewide MTSS Consultant

Justyn Burgess, State Coordinator for Character Education

Dr. Beth Rice, Ed.D., Co-Founder SEL4NC & Founder Wellbeing4Learning

RECORDING

Schools everywhere are struggling to meet the social and emotional needs of their students and families. To face the challenges at hand, we urgently need to focus on healing our schools, supporting students’ wellbeing, and making sure our students are ready for the future. When you think about what makes a great school, it’s a place of caring and belonging for everyone who is part of it. That can feel like a challenge, especially in these times. But what if it isn’t? What if your school can become a community where support and kindness are norms and everyone can thrive? This webinar, Brick by Brick: A Guide to Building Social-Emotional Competence and Character in Schools gives you the building blocks to bring SEL/SECD into your school today and inspire your colleagues to join you in this mission. Now is the time to make it happen!

Presenter

Maurice J. Elias, Professor of Psychology, Rutgers University, Co-Founder and President, SEL4US

RECORDING

What will it take to actually improve conditions for wellbeing in schools? Where do you begin? Educational leaders in California have been learning and improving their systemic SEL implementation through the CalHOPE initiative for over a decade. In this session they share what was learned through this process and how other states can move SEL forward.

Presenters

Dr. Mai Xi Lee

Dr. Valerie Shapiro

RECORDING

Experienced business leaders and experts in business sales will provide smart and doable ways and resources to obtain a range of SEL support from local, state and national businesses. For parents it includes how to develop support from your own employers and those of your partners, family members and friends. Our panelists are on a team developed specifically to help SEL organizations learn how to attract business support. The theme of the day is addressed by their knowledge of why companies need SEL and how to get them behind it. For business people who attend or watch later, it also addresses the overwhelming self-interest reasons companies should support SEL.

Presenters

Greg Holsen, National Sales Expert

Barbara Annis, Corporate Ledershp Expert

Patrick Welsh, Corporate Relationships

Victor Brown, Chambers of Commerce and Business Associations expert

RECORDING

Two groups of high school students from two rural communities in northern NM will speak about how emotional and social skills have contributed to their willingness and capacity to contribute to their communities and how these skills have impacted their thinking about their post-secondary futures. One community is largely a ranching community in the north eastern corner of the state; the second is from the central western mountains of NM, drawing students from the nearby Navajo Nation and the Pueblos of Zia and Jemez. Both high schools explicitly integrate SE skills development into community capstone projects, career and work internships, and daily Advisory classes. SE dispositions and skills are recognized and figure prominently in their community-created Profiles of a Graduate.

Presenters

Tricia Delgado, SEL Coordinator at Cuba ISD, and student panels

Kodi Sumpter, Des Moines HS Principal, and student panels

Krissy Long, Des Moines Community Liaison, and student panels

RECORDING

We can teach things like what respect, kindness, and compassion are. And we can teach kids how to show respect, kindness, and compassion. But when young people (and adults) end up bullying, stealing, or lying, it’s usually not because they didn’t know what they were doing, or they didn’t know how not to bully, or how not to steal. It’s usually because they did not feel like doing the right thing at the moment. This presentation will introduce adults to four skills (easily learned, easily practiced) tested and proven to help young people to increase both their sensitivity to others and their motivation to do the right thing for themselves, and for those around them. A bonus for teachers is that using these skills increases students’ academic performance, too.

Presenter

David Streight, SEL4OR (Leadership Team), Educational Editor for Center for Self-Determination Theory

RECORDING

Student identity and belonging lie at the heart of the Yazzie-Martinez vs State of New Mexico lawsuit. The findings and remedies of the lawsuit highlight the need for curricula, pedagogy, educators, educator preparation and an educational ecosystem that centers the diverse communities, traditions, ways of knowing and heritages that have formed the young people in our schools. At the center of the case is the understanding that in order to learn and develop into fully contributing adults our school systems need to reflect our students so that New Mexican students will be successful because of, rather than in spite of, who they are and where they are from.

Presenters:

Melissa Candelaria, JD, NM Center for Law and Poverty
Amy McConnell Franklin, SEL4NM