Attending UNITED 2024 in Nashville was an invigorating experience for us. My husband, John, and I are longtime educators. Between us, we have 52 years of school leadership experience as department chairs, assistant principals, principals, and district office personnel, and we have been to our fair share of conferences including PLCS at Work, Model Schools Conferences, AVID, No Excuses University, and ASCD just to name a few.
UNITED was one of the best that we have attended. Combining with NAESP broadened the perspective of the sessions, and we brought back home a plethora of ideas to jump-start our school year. From nationally acclaimed speakers like bestselling author Jon Gordon, who talked about setting the intention to be positive to NBC News’ Chief Education Correspondent Rehema Ellis who provided information about her travels learning about education all over the country, we were inspired to return to school and share with our teams. At the conference, peer principals spoke on solutions-based approaches to the challenges we all face such as attendance, student apathy, standards-based education, grading policies, lifting up our staffs, and elevating student voice. The conference reinforced the work we are doing, while giving us new approaches and fresh perspectives. 
Whether you are an experienced administrator or a brand-new leader, this conference had a strand of learning to appeal to your needs: building leadership capacity; instructional leadership; leveraging student voice and agency; school climate, culture, and inclusivity; and whole school wellness. There were so many choices in the strands that we had to narrow them down and prioritize them to pick where we would go each day. At the end of the conference, we both wished our full leadership teams had been present to learn together. Here’s hoping they can join us next year.
