Events

As a principal, the challenges of leadership can often be stressful, but your role also serves as a vital support system for staff and students, helping to ease their stress in the workplace. This workshop is designed to explore the intersection of stress and leadership, providing practical tools for navigating stress and cultivating a positive work environment. In this session, we will dive into the basics of stress response and its role in the workplace, helping you understand how stress affects both leaders and those you lead. You’ll learn how to identify common stressors that may affect you and your team, and gain insight into how these stressors impact organizational effectiveness.

In addition, we will explore the critical role workplace attitudes play in fostering a positive school culture. Topics will include job satisfaction, morale, organizational commitment, and work engagement—key factors that directly influence productivity, team cohesion, and overall well-being.

To help you manage stress effectively, we will also cover several healthy coping strategies that can be easily implemented into your daily routine. These strategies are designed to promote personal well-being while simultaneously strengthening your leadership role within the school community.

By the end of the session, you will be equipped with practical tools and strategies to manage stress, foster a positive work environment, and support the well-being of both yourself and your team.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding stress responses and their impact in the workplace

• Identifying common workplace stressors and their effects on performance

• Enhancing job satisfaction, morale, and organizational commitment

• Developing practical coping strategies for stress management

• Building a positive and engaged work environment for yourself and your team

Join us for this transformative workshop and learn how to navigate workplace stress while fostering a thriving and resilient school culture. While this is geared towards the role of the principal, any administrator, leader, aspiring leaders are encouraged to attend.

Time will be spent the last portion of the breakaway in a roundtable format. Registration closes 4-5 days prior to the event.

Today's students are facing unprecedented levels of anxiety—more worried, more dependent, and less resilient in the face of challenges than generations before them. As anxiety continues to skyrocket among youth, how can school professionals effectively respond to this increasingly fretful generation? This workshop provides a deep dive into understanding anxiety in students, offering insight into the key red flags and exploring why it’s becoming more pervasive in our schools. We’ll explore how anxiety manifests in students and, more importantly, how we, as school counselors and social workers, can respond with strategies that truly make a difference in alleviating their distress. In the first half of this workshop, we will focus on practical, evidence-based strategies for addressing student anxiety in the classroom. From recognizing early signs to providing effective interventions, we’ll discuss approaches that foster emotional resilience and support students in building coping skills for academic and personal success. The second half of the session shifts to the critical role school professionals play in managing their own well-being. Educators, counselors, and social workers are often the first line of support for students, yet they can struggle with their own stress and burnout. In this segment, participants will learn self-care techniques and strategies to combat stress and anxiety, ensuring they remain at their best for the students they serve. Through guided reflection and discussion, attendees will develop a personalized Resilience Plan—equipping them with the tools needed to thrive, both in their professional roles and in their personal lives.

Location: Mascoutah # 19 (specific school TBD). This day is structured into four mini-sessions to ensure all PK-12 physical educators will leave with a wealth of information, strategies and resources to return back to your buildings and best support your programs and students. Session 1: Current Trends and Future Possibilities in PE Implications for Fitness, Health, and Wellbeing - This presentation will cover current efforts, expectations and activities associated with physical education. An educational approach connecting the physical to the physiological aspects of movement along with discussion of examples and options as to how we can easily provide a broader well-being perspective in PE. Session 2: Enhanced PE: What it means and why it’s important. Recent legislative efforts in Illinois recommend that schools deliver a health-related fitness approach in PE. This session will provide options and approaches to meet a health-related fitness approach in PE. Session 3: Fitness Testing: Is it Even Useful Anymore?  - This year re-establishes the Illinois fitness testing legislative data submission requirement with fitness testing data being submitted to the Illinois State Board of Education. While fitness testing is a routine part of PE programs, test administration, protocols, and results are often considered to suspect. Learn how to get more out of this process and make it meaningful. Session 4: The Relevance and Data Analysis of Fitness Testing While physical fitness tests are an important assessment component in PE, little is done with the data obtained from those assessments. There is a wealth of information that can be obtained from those fitness testing. Learn how to manage fitness data and the health-related applications of physical fitness assessments. Registration for this event will CLOSE on Tuesday, October 6, 2025 at 3:00pm, we will not be able to accommodate additional registrations after October 6.

This is a free workshop on behalf of the Illinois Masonic Foundation, lunch will be provided on site.  Boosting student motivation, engagement, and academic success can be incredibly rewarding and downright fun with the right mix of strategies and tools. Dive into these dynamic approaches and innovative tools that transform the learning experience into an exciting adventure for both teachers and students. Registration closes 4-5 days prior to the event unless tickets are sold out.

As an instructional coach or interventionist, you play a pivotal role in supporting educators and students, but your own work can be demanding and stressful. This workshop is specifically designed to help you navigate the pressures of your role while also equipping you with strategies to manage stress and foster a healthy, positive work environment.

In this session, we will explore the fundamentals of stress response and how it impacts both you and those you work with. You will gain a deeper understanding of the physiological and psychological effects of stress and learn how to identify common stressors that can influence your work performance and well-being.

We will also delve into the significance of workplace attitudes in creating a productive and supportive environment. Topics like job satisfaction, morale, organizational commitment, and work engagement will be discussed, highlighting how these factors directly affect your success and the effectiveness of your coaching and interventions.

Moreover, this workshop will provide you with practical coping strategies to manage stress in your daily routine. These techniques are designed to help you balance the demands of your role while promoting your own mental and emotional well-being, ultimately improving your ability to support others in the school community.

By the end of the session, you will leave with a toolkit of strategies to cope with stress, maintain a positive attitude, and enhance your work life, making you a more effective coach and interventionist.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding the stress response and its role in the workplace

• Identifying workplace stressors and their impact on your role

• Exploring the importance of job satisfaction, morale, and work engagement

• Implementing healthy coping strategies to manage work-related stress

• Building a positive work environment to support both your well-being and that of your colleagues

Join us for this interactive and practical workshop, and gain the tools you need to thrive in your role while supporting the success of those around you.

Time will be given (35 minutes) for lunch on your own. Registration closes 4-5 days prior to the event date.

PDC Member District $350.00, Non PDC Member $375.00 (lunch is included on site)

To be eligible to attend, each participant (initial or retraining) must complete and submit ISBE-required pre-work at least 72 hours (December 5, 2025 3:00pm) before the training. Registrants will receive handouts and detailed instructions for the pre-work at least one week prior to the workshop. 

Participants will need to bring a fully charged laptop to this academy.  Attendees will synthesize the School Leader Paradigm to understand the personal intelligences, knowledge, and skills necessary for school leaders to effectively lead a learning organization; evaluate the research base to communicate the impact that effective school leaders have on a learning organization; analyze the School Leader Evaluation Plan to discern how the process grows school leaders' personal intelligences and leadership skills that actualize school improvement and student growth goals; and critique Professional Practice and Student Growth Cycles of Inquiry to assess the approaches of each to a school's Problems of Practice.

The Illinois Performance Evaluation Advisory Council (PEAC) selected the School Leader Evaluation Plan as the state’s new default principal and assistant principal evaluation plan beginning July 1, 2024. Developed by the Illinois Principals Association in collaboration with 13 other state principals’ associations from across the United States, the School Leader Evaluation Plan (based on the School Leader Paradigm) was developed to assist school districts with the implementation of a school leader evaluation system that is relevant and useful. While Illinois school districts have the opportunity to choose whether to adopt the School Leader Evaluation Plan to evaluate their principals and assistant principals, the state-required principal and assistant principal evaluator training has been rewritten and will focus on the School Leader Evaluation Plan.

Starting on July 1, 2024, this two-day, in-person academy (AA#4050) will serve as the official training for educators seeking initial training qualification or retraining to be legally qualified to conduct evaluations of principals and assistant principals. The previous principal evaluator training (#2000, #1865, and #3000) will be discontinued as of June 30, 2024.

Registration closes Friday, November 28, 2025. Cancellations must be made on or before Tuesday, December 2, 2025 or the amount will be non-refundable.