TC² Annual Leadership Conference
Beyond Thinking Classrooms
April 16, 2025
Registration for 2025 is now open!
Register for the Conference Now!
The Critical Thinking Consortium (TC²) is looking forward to hosting its fifth annual leadership conference this spring!
This year, we are offering more session choices for all educators, including teachers, school leaders, district leaders, and senior staff!
Attend dynamic sessions with fresh ideas and practical strategies designed to deepen your thinking, refine your leadership, and inspire impactful decision making.
And you won’t want to miss the special mid-day session featuring all five facilitators who will be sharing key elements of our revitalized framework.
Registration Details
Join us via Zoom on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. Register early to reserve your spot at the sessions of your choice!
Cost:
Partner rate: $200 per registrant + GST/HST
Non-partner rate: $250 per registrant + GST/HST
Registration deadline: Monday, April 14, 2025
Registration instructions:
Step 1: Register and pay for the conference
Step 2: Upon receipt of your registration confirmation email, you will be able to register for each session you would like to attend.
Additional information:
- Presentation slides will be shared as PDF documents upon request.
- Recordings of sessions will not be available.
- Registration fee is non-refundable.
- Conference registration cannot be shared between participants.
For conference registration inquiries, please contact Jacqueline Rajarathnam.
To learn more about customized sessions for your school or district, contact the Director of Professional Learning, Victoria Campoli.
Facilitators
 Garfield Gini-Newman |
 Laura Gini-Newman |
 Usha James |
 Maria Vamvalis |
 Warren Woytuck |
Session Schedule
Please note that all times are shown as Eastern Time (ET).
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9:00 - 10:00 ET |
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| Deep Learning Through a Sustained Critical Inquiry Framework Garfield Gini-Newman |
A Growth-Oriented Approach to Learner Accountability SESSION CANCELLED |
Walking the Path of Reconciliation: Stories, Guidance, and Tools for Educators Maria Vamvalis |
What Do I Do with All This Data?! Thinking Strategies for Educational Leaders Usha James |
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10:30 - 11:30 ET |
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| School Improvement Planning: A Practical, Critically Thoughtful Approach to Supporting Leadership Teams Usha James |
Using Assessment to Nurture Positive Relationships in the Learning Process |
Teaching Climate Change with Depth and Impact: Strategies for Empowering Learners Maria Vamvalis |
Leadership and Instruction That Supports Marginalized Voices Warren Woytuck |
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12:00 - 1:00 ET |
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Beyond Thinking Classrooms: An Introduction to Our Revitalized Framework to Nurture Quality Thinking in All Learners |
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1:30 - 2:30 ET |
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Using Ecosystem Metaphors to Guide Systems Improvement |
Critical Thinking Habits for Navigating a Challenging World Maria Vamvalis & Usha James |
Enriching the Learning Experience Through Assessment Practices That Really Work Garfield Gini-Newman |
Designing Classroom Environments that Complement Learning SESSION CANCELLED |
Session Descriptions
A Growth-Oriented Approach to Learner Accountability
Laura Gini-Newman
Every educator believes that professional and student learners should be accountable for their learning. After all, we all want learners who take responsibility, or ownership, for their actions or inactions. But what might that accountability look like? Recent research at the Harvard Business School has found that a growth-oriented approach to accountability creates a sense of responsibility that is more productive and healthier than the traditional form typically accepted across institutions. In this session, join Laura to explore what it means to be accountable, how accountability can best be nurtured, and the impact accountability can have on learners and the educational community as a whole.
Designing Classroom Environments That Complement Learning
Laura Gini-Newman and Nikita Gini-Newman
How does a learner’s external environment shape their cognitive development? Is it possible to intentionally design learning spaces to activate and reinforce the cognitive processes that constitute learning—perception, memory, attention, creativity, and problem-solving? Learning is the result of ongoing interactions between a person and their environment. At a time when nurturing learner agency is becoming an internationally recognized goal in education, mind-centered design acknowledges learning as a dynamic, relational experience that exists between the learner and their environment. Join Laura and Nikita in a session to explore how the power of mind-centered design enhances learning as a multi-sensory, multi-dimensional experience.
Using Assessment to Nurture Positive Relationships in the Learning Process
Garfield Gini-Newman and Laura Gini-Newman
In our ongoing efforts to create more equitable schools where all learners have the opportunity to flourish through healthy relationship with self, others, and their communities and natural environments, we are often confronted with traditional structures and approaches that need to be re-imagined. Carolyn Roberts, an Indigenous educator and lecturer at UBC notes that “…education is based on the structure of power.” Healthy relationships may struggle to flourish when defined by a hierarchy of power that may contain significant power imbalances. Those with less power typically become victims of manipulation and feel a sense of a lack of control, belonging, and as a result cannot function with autonomy. At the core of ensuring all learners flourish is an understanding of the role of power in building positive relationships that support learner agency. During this provocative session, Garfield and Laura will share practical ideas for addressing the power imbalances that inhibit genuine agency in the learning process by inviting students into the role as collaborators in assessment and learning. When learners see themselves at the core of the learning process, power shifts occur that allow them to think through how they express themselves best and encourages them to hold themselves accountable in the work they choose by playing a role in their own success.
Deep Learning Through a Sustained Critical Inquiry Framework
Garfield Gini-Newman
Inquiry can take many forms. At its most basic, inquiry is to seek answers. Practised as a vehicle to satiate curiosity by “finding out” it can often be a mere exercise in retrieval. Critical inquiry involves the seeking of answers to questions that cannot be retrieved. It involves the use of criteria and evidence to reach reasoned conclusion about issues. When we elevate critical inquiry to a process of sustained critical inquiry, through which students learn to live with a problem or challenge over time, we have the opportunity to nurture deep conceptual understanding and habits such as perseverance and resilience. During this session, Garfield will share a framework for supporting learners in engaging in sustained inquiry that leads to learning that transfers beyond the classroom and contributes to a learner’s understanding of their world and their opportunities to create the good life.
Enriching the Learning Experience Through Assessment Practices That Really Work
Garfield Gini-Newman
Effective use of assessment is one of the most powerful instructional tools in a teacher’s repertoire. This bold statement positions assessment as a vital form of instruction where learners are active participants, rather than something that is done to them. It positions assessment as seamlessly integrated into daily practice rather than periodic judgements made about learners. In this session, Garfield will share a variety of practical strategies including learning launches, thinking organizers, and Guides to Success, that, when used effectively, make assessment an integral part of the learning process while making teachers’ workload more manageable.
Critical Thinking Habits for Navigating a Challenging World
Maria Vamvalis and Usha James
How can schools nurture the thinking habits needed to prepare learners for a complex and challenging world? Join Usha and Maria in this dynamic session to explore a revised set of seven thinking habits necessary for navigating ambiguity and opportunity in meaningful and productive ways. These habits include being critically-minded, inquiry-minded, and holistically-minded; accepting of discomfort in learning; thinking relationally; and being both courageous and visionary in your thinking. This session offers practical strategies and collaborative approaches to embed these habits into school culture and classrooms, equipping educators and learners alike to foster resilience, agency, and hope in the face of pronounced uncertainty.
Walking the Path of Reconciliation: Stories, Guidance, and Tools for Educators
Maria Vamvalis
How can educators move beyond transactional approaches to reconciliation and engage in deeper relational work? This session introduces a new resource, guided by Mi’kmaw scholar Marie Battiste, sharing stories of educators navigating this complexity. Through real examples, we will explore how reconciliation in education requires ongoing relational accountability, critical reflection, and structural change. Educators will leave with insights, questions, and practices to engage this work with care, integrity, and humility.
Teaching Climate Change with Depth and Impact: Strategies for Empowering Learners
Maria Vamvalis
How can we teach climate change in ways that inspire critical, creative, and collaborative thinking while fostering hope and agency? In this session Maria draws on her doctoral research in holistic climate justice education to offer practical strategies for fostering regenerative climate action, building meaningful connections, and embedding justice-focused approaches into teaching. Participants will explore a framework for empowering learners to envision and enact positive change, integrating climate education with practices that prioritize equity, care, and the well-being of people and the planet. This session offers actionable strategies to create transformative, hope-filled learning experiences.
Using Ecosystem Metaphors to Guide Systems Improvement
Warren Woytuck
How might we use ecosystem metaphors to guide effective leadership of systems change and improvement? During the 2024 TC² leadership conference participants explored how concepts from ecosystem science and learnings from the land might help them think differently about numerous education leadership challenges. In this session, join Warren to dig deeper and examine how ecosystem metaphors might help us to effectively lead education systems change and improvement. Even though this session will talk about ecosystems and the land, no science expertise is required; this session is suitable for all education leaders and educators.
Leadership and Instruction That Supports Marginalized Voices
Warren Woytuck
How might we ensure that our leadership supports voices that have been traditionally marginalized by education systems? During the last four years TC² has been critically examining its organizational practices and the teaching and learning materials that have been developed. During those processes important lessons emerged about how leadership can ensure support for voices that have been traditionally marginalized. In this session Warren will share a variety of examples from TC² projects, resources, and professional learning sessions to highlight these key learnings.
School Improvement Planning: A Practical, Critically Thoughtful Approach to Supporting Leadership Teams
Usha James
How can we transform School Improvement Plans from onerous compliance exercises to meaningful and impactful processes that truly support educators in efforts to create more equitable learner outcomes and experiences? In most districts across the country, principals and their leadership teams are required to produce some form of a school plan that articulates goals for the year, actions to achieve those goals and, often some form of evidence gathering. Join Usha in this session to explore an innovative approach for school planning that makes this challenging task not only manageable but more likely to move the needle on student achievement.
What Do I Do with All This Data?! Thinking Strategies for Educational Leaders
Usha James
We are inundated with data at the school and system level. Leaders are expected to sift through mounds of data to surface a compelling concern and make plans that will result in improved data the following year. But when faced with numerous data sets related to achievement, well-being, attendance, or demographics, how do we make sense of the data without becoming paralyzed when faced with the urgency to choose “the right inch”? Join Usha in this session to play with thinking strategies to help get unstuck and move through complex data with greater ease and in sensitive and meaningful ways.
Beyond Thinking Classrooms: An Introduction to Our Revitalized Framework to Nurture Quality Thinking in all Learners
Usha James, Warren Woytuck, Garfield Gini-Newman, Maria Vamvalis, Laura Gini-Newman
For over 30 years, our small but mighty non-profit The Critical Thinking Consortium (TC²) has worked with educators, leaders, districts, and governments across Canada and internationally to nurture quality thinking in all learners. After a comprehensive and extensive equity review and collaborative efforts to critically assess and refine the TC² approach, exciting revisions to the powerful framework are ready to be introduced! Join Usha, Warren, Garfield, Maria, and Laura for a tour of the revitalized approach. This session will be a useful introduction if you are new to TC² and an inspiring refresher for long-standing friends.