2026 CISC Leadership Symposium

AI isn’t the future of collaboration—it’s the amplifier. Discover how to integrate AI-powered protocols that streamline evidence analysis while preserving teacher expertise. This session demonstrates how the Analysis of Evidence (AOE) protocol, anchored in the metacognitive cycle, can help PLCs turn student work into actionable insight. Participants will explore tools, equity safeguards, and turnkey scripts that save time and deepen impact.

Participant Outcomes:

• Learn how to facilitate PLCs with AI-supported protocols aligned to the EAA framework.
• Examine safeguards for maintaining equity and teacher judgment when using AI.
• Leave with plug-and-play tools to streamline evidence analysis and action planning.

Loan Mascorro, an author and educator, will share her profound journey as a 6-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, revealing how learning dispositions transformed her educational experience in a new country. Through her personal story, she will introduce the E.M.B.R.A.C.E framework, a strength-based approach that creates inclusive learning environments celebrating students’ unique cultural strengths. The time together will explore critical habits of mind such as curiosity, resilience, and self-discovery, demonstrating how these dispositions help learners navigate complex academic and social challenges.

Participants will discover

• Strategies for shifting from deficit-based to strength-based perspectives,
• Understanding how learning is fundamentally an evolving journey of continuous growth. By emphasizing progress over perfection, Mascorro will inspire educators to recognize and nurture the inherent capabilities of multilingual learners. Her transformative message underscores that every student’s learning identity is a dynamic, powerful narrative of adaptation and empowerment.

Have you heard or spoken the words, “She’s too emotional to be a principal… We already have two women leaders…She’s not ready yet…. Who will take care of her children”? Participants in this session will hear more stories from recent interviews with aspiring and current leaders. Dr. Arriaga will share current data regarding gender inequities in our nation’s school districts. We will draw upon the research of feminism, intersectionality, Cultural Proficiency, and educational leadership to identify barriers that women leaders encounter on their career journeys as well as the support factors that helped them overcome those barriers. Join the author of “Leading While Female” in this dynamic presentation as we explore the unique barriers and contributions of female educational leaders. It is time to alter the narrative and identify the unique contributions.

Participant Outcomes:

• That women bring to educational leadership in all roles throughout the organizations as we confront and close the gender equity gap,
• A focus on Women Mentoring Women for Momentum will be introduced in alignment with the next book in the Leading While Female Series to be released in February of 2026!

Families are already experts in metacognition—they plan, monitor, and adjust every day. This session draws on Karen Mapp’s Dual Capacity Framework to move beyond asking families to “help” schools and toward shaping schools together. Learn how to facilitate story circles, goal-setting rituals, and evidence walks that make families true partners in learner agency. Leave with concrete structures for embedding metacognitive clarity into family engagement practices.

Participant Outcomes:

• Understand how to apply the Dual Capacity Framework to metacognitive clarity.
• Explore strategies for family goal-setting, evidence walks, and shared reflection
• Strengthen family-school partnerships by amplifying families’ existing expertise