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Aubrey
Welcome to Mindful School Marketing. I’m Aubrey and I’m Tara. We’re so excited to share with you, in this special episode, key takeaways from the Virginia Association of Independent Schools Annual Conference, where they celebrated their 50th anniversary on November 3rd. This conference was so amazing. It was held at the beautiful location of Benedictine schools in Richmond, virginia, and it was just such a pleasure to meet the organizers and all the people and the participants and the speakers.
Tara
Yeah, there were about 400 attendees at this conference. This is their biggest conference of the year and it really focuses on educational concepts how to create a better environment at your school. It was great takeaways for everyone who was there mostly educators, heads of school and we were so delighted to be there and hear the takeaways from this conference.
Aubrey
Yeah, it’s been really fun taking the Mindful School Marketing podcast on the road, for sure. Now you might be asking, as you listen to this episode, or maybe as you’re starting it like, why is this important? And I would say that anyone who’s attended a conference and listened to the key takeaways, or attended a session and discovered some strategies that can impact their school, those are things that you can think about as you’re listening to these speakers. You can think about how can I apply this to my school? And another thing maybe there’s an interest that you want to follow up on, maybe a topic you haven’t thought of, and maybe you want to connect with a speaker or participant and learn more.
Tara
Yeah, so please enjoy these short little snippets that we’re going to share with you, and feel free to reach out to VAIS if you’d like to get in touch with anyone who you hear from or any talks that are mentioned.
Conference Attendee 1
Hey, good morning. I’m Betsy Johnson and I am the Executive Director of the Virginia Association of Independent Schools, vais. We’re so thrilled to be together today. There’s 66 member schools here with us today. Anyway, 66 schools, 400 plus participants. We are back in a school. This is our 50th birthday of VAIS, and this conference started small and scrappy on a school campus. Then we grew and grew and grew and moved it to convention centers and hotels, and then, with the world of technology, we found that people were getting there learning lots of different ways, and that capacity to be able to hold a very, very large conference just changed over time, and so we decided what better time to take it back to where it all started than, on our 50th birthday, to go back to a school campus? And so this gorgeous Benedictine Schools of Richmond campus brought us here, and the teachers are just so happy to be here and we are happy to be here.
Conference Attendee 2
Hi, I’m Darcie TeVault, director of Professional Learning here at VAIS. I’m having a great day at the conference. We just wrapped up the keynote and started with bagpipes from the Benedictine student band and then we led into some poetry and our keynote just got us all excited and reignited about teaching as a practice. Doctors have a practice, attorneys have a practice and as educators, you have a practice. And so filling that tank and thinking about what we do and the marks that we leave, the thumbprint on each student that we reach really inspiring and exciting. And to see nearly 400 educators here today attending sessions and getting to know one another. Can’t wait to see them back at lunch.
Conference Attendee 3
Hi, I’m John Matthews. I’m the head of middle school grades four through six at the Potomac School in McLean, virginia, outside DC. It’s a pleasure to be at the VAIS annual conference and just recently I finished my presentation on teaching financial literacy to upper elementary students. For the past 10 years I’ve developed a curriculum as the principal, working with larger groups and sort of an assembly setting to teach kids in fourth grade about the cost of living, what income is and how you get it, and the relative privilege of those who are in our school community without banging them over their heads. Fifth grade I teach about credit and debt, and then about savings and how to create it, and then in sixth grade I teach a lot about investments, not only the stock market, but also things like saving your money in the savings account and certificates of deposit, bonds and real estate.
Conference Attendee 4
Hi, I’m Amanda Berdeen, the IT director at the Richmond Montessori School, and I’m the speaker here today at the VAIS conference. We’ll be talking about assessing threats and building your threat reduction or threat assessment team, and we are specifically speaking on building that team from training to infrastructure specific to the independent schools and making sure that we’re working within their budgets and giving them the tools to have a successful threat assessment team built.
Conference Attendee 5
Hi, I’m Zach Minor. I’m a lower school teaching associate at Norfolk Academy and I had the pleasure today to attend the VAIS annual conference today and one of the breakout sessions that I was able to attend was getting vitamin N, which is vitamin nature, and they kind of explained that as adults we lose that childlike wonder and that childlike play of getting dirty, getting in the mud, getting in the environment, getting it outdoors, and that in society today we’re so technology driven, so technology focused, and there’s so much emphasis on getting into the computer or getting onto an iPad that we almost lose that childlike play and interest getting outdoors, and how much of a resurgence learners can have getting back to the basic and that you can almost get a brand new beginner’s mindset that is so unique to children that us adults sometimes lose. And just being reminded of that in the breakout session was super. I’m super appreciative and just learning something new or honestly reminded of something new, is super huge for us.
Conference Attendee 6
I’m Heather Moore. I’m the head of school of Streilitz International Academy and I am also a VAIS board member. A couple things from today’s conference. So far, I really loved Antonia Viva. He’s one of my favorite. I’ve been fortunate to hear him speak several times now, but every time I hear him I take something else away from it. Today I loved how he talked about joy and just bringing joy into your everyday life. So I’m hoping to accomplish that when I go back. I also went to a session about financial literacy for fourth graders through. Sixth graders loved it. Took a lot away from that and I’m my mind is spinning about how could I go back and provide that for my Fourth and fifth graders. I don’t have sixth graders, so I’m kind of like trying to calculate that in my mind as we speak and looking forward to the rest of the day.
Conference Attendee 7
Hey, I’m Shantanu and I’m an educational psychologist. I direct the research program at Chesapeake Bay Academy in Virginia Beach and I’m here because, well, I measure teaching and learning and it’s just really interesting to understand new practices that Teachers are engaging in across our independent schools in the state To do that. So I’ve been able to learn quite a bit.
Conference Attendee 8
I’m Scott Bathosh, head of Alexandria Country Day School in Alexandria, virginia. One of the things that I really appreciate about this conference is the Opportunity to see the level of skill and wisdom of our colleagues across the state. One of the things that we try to do at our school is build a real culture of professional growth and professionalism, and this conference gives our teachers a chance to Extend their skill and also to use this as a professional development opportunity to come and present, which is a great chance for them to grow professionally and intellectually. So once again, bis is doing a wonderful job of bringing people together and establishing that collegiality across the state.
Conference Attendee 9
Hi, I’m Colleen Savino and I teach at St Gertrude High School. I’m an English teacher and I’ve just had a really wonderful day. Today. There’s a few sessions that I really enjoyed. There was one that talked about like project-based learning, like creative assessments, and how to use those in your classroom and I, you know, my classroom is structured like that anyway. So the idea of being able to really delve into that and offer that to my kids even more opportunities was really exciting for me. And I just actually got out of a session that was about parenting and it was really, really eye-opening and the speaker was just really dynamic and wonderful. So a lot of great, you know ideas that were presented today.
Conference Attendee 10
Hello, I’m Karl Bohm from Help 100 Schools, an Everest Private School Growth Group, and I’m here at the VAIS 50th annual conference and the key takeaways for me is really I mean, I’m very inspired by how much problem solving is happening and to see hundreds of people walking around and really intentionally looking for a session that will help them solve their particular problem that they’re working on for their school is just fantastic. So seeing people, for instance, look for a communications plan that will help them specifically with increasing, improving their retention, seeing the different strategies that they would employ bridging enrollment, admissions and marketing Very fun. And then the inspiration that’s coming from the speakers and the key notes and all of the networking that are happening in the room. It’s really fun.
Conference Attendee 11
Hi, I’m Rachel Viar and I am a Makerspace teacher for all divisions at Chesapeake Bay Academy. Today we had a little talk about Makerspace with our new diverse students and we showed them how to showcase our classroom curriculum. And today we have learned a lot of different things about Tinkercad, 3D printing all the new technologies in the classroom that your students, that students, will enjoy and have fun while learning.
Conference Attendee 12
Hi, my name is Dr Wayne Bays. I’m very happy to be at the BIS conference today. My wife used to head the organization for 24 years and I attended two really interesting sessions. One dealt with artificial intelligence, which I set him on this morning, and the gentleman did a superb job, and one has to really wonder about all we’re going to be teaching in the next several years with the specter of artificial intelligence, so to speak. And then this afternoon I went for a very fine session on how to focus on using skills in teaching history. That, I thought, made me realize in some ways that all those years I taught I tried to do both skills and content, but maybe I should have done a little more on skills. Anyway, it was a very good day, thank you.
Conference Attendee 13
Hi, I’m Laurie Ehrlich, founder and chief strategist of Elevate Marketing Strategy.
Conference Attendee 14
And I am Miriam Stein from Saddle Rock Strategies.
Conference Attendee 13
And Miriam and I just presented, on Marketing and Admission, the Dream team where we connected and collaborated with about 30 Miriam would you say yeah, 30 Admission Directors, marketing Directors, heads of School, educational Leadership, advancement People to really hone in on why connection and good leadership with this team is so critical for enrollment of the school, from determining process to honing in on value proposition, to conducting audience research, and why all of these things are a recipe for enrollment success.
Conference Attendee 14
Basically, admission and marketing is a dream team. We want Heads of School to know that and creating a strong relationship there is a way to strong enrollment. That’s the bottom line.
Conference Attendee 15
Hey, so I’m Greg Angilly and I’m the head of the Virginia Beach Friends School.
I just had an awesome opportunity to facilitate a session on sort of the science of happiness or teaching happiness to our students, and it kind of was fun to end this way because our keynote speaker talked a little bit about the importance of happiness and the beginner mindset I think is a key in happiness is that finding that joy every day and some of the things that we do, instead of becoming hedonically adapted to it.
I think the best part of the entire day for me was I put the adults in my crew in my session through an activity that I do with my students and just stopped and paused and I actually took a photograph. They were all smiling, so they were doing a little bit of a social interaction thing, which is key to creating happiness, and every adult in the room was interacting with someone, laughs and grins, and I, just when we were done, I just asked them how does everybody feel? And they, authentically, were smiling and saying happier, and so it’s kind of cool to see the same things that we’re working on with students we can work on as a cohort of educators as well, but just a really rewarding opportunity and experience.
Conference Attendee 16
Hi, I’m Dr Judy Jankowski. I’m the head of school at Chesapeake Bay Academy. We are a K through 12 school serving kids with learning differences and mindful. This is an enormous part of our work. We look at children holistically. We need to get them into the mind space to be able to learn. So each day our students begin with a mindful minute. We have lots of people who have been trained in mindfulness in our organization, as we have a certified mindfulness professional who is our enrollment management person and she does an amazing job. So, looking at the social and emotional aspects of our learners, mindfulness just matches that beautifully. The teaching our kids, when they get frustrated with learning, to stop, feel themselves, take some cleansing breaths so that they can move on. It’s so effective and so important to our work.
Conference Attendee 17
I am Bob Greg. I am the head of school at St Michael’s Episcopal School. We are a kindergarten through eighth grade school here in Richmond of just shy of 400 students. I’m here today at the VAIS annual conference at Benedictine Schools of Richmond. Thank you, benedictine, for hosting all of us. I really enjoyed this morning’s program from Antonio Viva. He spoke a lot on the notions of creativity among educators and consistency. He asked us to remember and to thank some of our former educators, and there’s something that he said that really stood out to me and it reads as follows In the words of the excuse me, in the world of an expert, there are only a few options. The expert knows all the answers, but in the world of the beginner, the options are endless. And he asked us to take that perspective back to our classrooms, and that’s what I’m going back to my school with Wow.
Aubrey
I hope you found those key takeaways pretty inspirational and valuable. I know I did. Now I’d love for you to consider how can I apply this to my school.
Tara
Yes, and if you are hosting a conference or going to a conference and you’d like us to attend and chat with your attendees we love doing this and we’d love to come to your conference and hear about what’s happening in your region so please go to https://mindfulschoolmarketing.com and fill out the contact form and have a great day. Thanks so much for joining us.
