NDPC36 Breakout Sessions
These sessions give K-12 leaders and educators practical ideas they can take back to their schools, districts, and communities.
Student behavior often points to the systems adults create. This session uses a real district case study to show how purpose, connection, behavioral clarity, and authentic opportunities can shift engagement before discipline escalates.
Dr. Doran Gresham, Assistant Professor, The George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development
Explore how the brain learns, remembers, and adapts in today’s fast-paced learning environments. Participants will leave with brain-aligned strategies that strengthen attention, retention, engagement, and transfer.
Dr. Linda Jordan, Senior Consultant, Successful Practices Network | National Dropout Prevention Center
This session connects neuroscience with the R3 Framework to help educators design learning that challenges and supports students. Attendees will examine practical look-fors and strategies that build curiosity, belonging, persistence, and deeper thinking.
Dr. Linda Jordan, Senior Consultant, Successful Practices Network | National Dropout Prevention Center
Engagement is more than participation; it is shaped by safety, relevance, challenge, and connection. This session shares practical instructional moves that help students move from passive compliance to active, purposeful learning.
Dr. Linda Jordan, Senior Consultant, Successful Practices Network | National Dropout Prevention Center
Learn how Christina School District built an interconnected network of alternative pathways, special education supports, virtual learning, and workforce programs. The session offers a replicable look at how coordinated systems can keep students connected to graduation.
Kristina MacBury, Principal, Sarah Pyle Academy/Christina School District
Rebecca Ryan, Director of Student Services, Christina School District
Family engagement can be a powerful dropout prevention strategy when schools remove barriers and rebuild trust. This session shares research, lessons learned, and practical tools for moving families from disconnected to meaningfully involved.
Chrystal Hawkins, Education Strategist - Family Engagement, Systems, Team Development, Jefferson County Public Schools/Chrystal Power Consulting
Dr. Heidi Sanders, Manager, Comprehensive Coordinated Early Intervening Services, Jefferson County Public Schools
This session shows how game-inspired systems such as XP, levels, progress markers, and growth-based grading can re-engage students who have experienced academic failure. Participants will learn ways to make persistence visible and credit recovery more motivating.
Dr. A.J. Nottingham, Senior Consultant, Successful Practices Network | National Dropout Prevention Center
Armand Larive Middle School, Hermiston, Oregon
Dropout prevention starts long before senior year. This session helps leaders build early warning systems that track attendance, behavior, and course performance, then turn data into student-centered action plans.
Dr. A.J. Nottingham, Senior Consultant, Successful Practices Network | National Dropout Prevention Center
Music, spoken word, and culturally grounded arts can open meaningful access to literacy for students with disabilities. Participants will explore ways to use rhythm, lyrics, storytelling, and performance to build language skills while honoring student identity.
Dr. Doran Gresham, Assistant Professor, The George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development
This session challenges surface-level student-centered practices and pushes toward person-centered learning that honors identity, access needs, dignity, and long-term outcomes. Attendees will leave with strategies that strengthen belonging and reduce disengagement over time.
Ariael Brooks-Porter, Consultant, National Dropout Prevention Center
Kelsey Johnson, Workforce Training and Curriculum Development, SEEC
Case managers and service providers cannot carry fragmented systems alone. This session explores role clarity, shared ownership, and aligned service delivery models that support students while reducing burnout for the adults coordinating care.
Ariael Brooks-Porter, Consultant, National Dropout Prevention Center
Students often disengage when systems do not match their realities. This session shares flexible pathway strategies for alternative, correctional, hybrid, and adult learning settings that reconnect students to graduation and future opportunity.
Mrs. Kara Thompson, School Counseling Director, Whiddon-Rogers Education Center
Participants will work through a live instructional triage process focused on people, activities, and instruction. The session helps teams diagnose root causes of disengagement and design stronger responses before students reach academic flatline.
Dr. Felicia Turner, Senior Consultant, Successful Practices Network & The National Dropout Prevention Center
Career and college readiness is built through daily literacy expectations, not slogans or one-night events. This session challenges educators to examine whether their learning environments truly prepare students for the demands of college, careers, military service, entrepreneurship, and life.
Dr. Felicia Turner, Senior Consultant, Successful Practices Network & The National Dropout Prevention Center
Strong dropout prevention requires families, communities, businesses, colleges, and schools to share responsibility. This session offers scalable ways to build authentic partnerships that increase belonging, opportunity, and resilience.
Dr. Felicia Turner, Senior Consultant, Successful Practices Network & The National Dropout Prevention Center
Through the hands-on Brain Architecture Game, participants will see how early experiences, stress, relationships, and protective factors shape development. The session turns neuroscience into a shared language for building resilience and supportive learning environments.
Dr. Tammy Pawloski, Professor & Director, Francis Marion University Center of Excellence
Based on research into teachers who change students’ life trajectories, this session helps educators understand the barriers that drive disengagement. Attendees will practice strategies for building relationships, increasing motivation, and helping students rethink what is possible.
Dr. Rebecca Knighton, Author, Speaker, Trainer
Hermiston School District shares a 7-12 career-connected system that helps students discover strengths, build future-ready skills, and connect CTE pathways to graduation requirements. Attendees will hear practical ways to move career readiness from compliance to purpose.
Mr. Scott Depew, HSD Director of Secondary Education, Hermiston School District
See how an alternative public charter school serving pregnant and parenting teens transformed culture through shared norms, restorative practices, and community ownership. The session offers practical tools for building safer, more connected learning environments.
Abby Ferguson, Principal, The Chiles Academy
A schoolwide garden became a powerful tool for belonging, ownership, and resilience at Spectrum Academy. This session shares replicable strategies for using experiential learning to help disconnected students see themselves as capable of growth.
Mercedes L. Thurston, Assistant Principal | School Site Administrator, Spectrum Academy
The Rigor-Relevance-Resilience Learning Model gives educators a practical way to prepare students for a changing world. This session introduces the why, what, and how of R3 through research, examples, video cases, and collaborative reflection.
Adam Wallenfang, Director of Consultant Content & Training, Successful Practices Network | National Dropout Prevention Center
This session introduces Rigor, Relevance, and Resilience as a shared language for strong instruction. Educators will explore what each dimension looks like in practice and how R3 can support consistency across classrooms and teams.
Speaker to be confirmed, Successful Practices Network | National Dropout Prevention Center
Student behavior is often a form of communication, especially when trauma and chronic stress are present. This session introduces practical trauma-skilled mindsets and strategies that promote safety, regulation, connection, and consistency.
Speaker to be confirmed, National Dropout Prevention Center
Youngstown City School District shares how an ROI mindset helped move budgeting from reactive cuts to strategic reinvestment. Participants will explore ways to align people, time, and resources with measurable student outcomes.
Jeremy Batchelor, Superintendent, Youngstown City School District
Resilience grows through adversity, setbacks, and the way we respond to failure. This session offers practical perspective and strategies educators can use to help students persevere, recover, and turn struggle into future success.
Hal Dunlap, Consultant, National Dropout Prevention Center
Attendance improvement needs more than isolated initiatives; it needs a coordinated game plan. This session introduces GPS as a purposeful system for helping students understand where they are, where they want to go, and how to get there.
Hal Dunlap, Consultant, National Dropout Prevention Center
Teacher well-being directly affects student success. This session focuses on practical routines and mindset shifts that help educators stay prepared, focused, refreshed, and connected to the purpose that brought them into the profession.
Hal Dunlap, Consultant, National Dropout Prevention Center
CTE can prevent dropout when learning is relevant, accessible, and connected to student goals. This session uses Universal Design for Learning to help CTE educators reduce barriers and strengthen participation, persistence, and achievement.
Mike Woods, Director, CTE TAC of NY
Students enter CTE with different strengths, responsibilities, and support needs. This session introduces practical resources for supporting students with disabilities, English language learners, and other special populations so more students can persist and thrive.
Mike Woods, Director, CTE TAC of NY
One school improved discipline, achievement, growth, and graduation outcomes by teaching students to track and own their improvement data. Attendees will leave with a practical plan for building metacognition and student ownership in their own schools.
Meghan Lefevers, Principal, Warlick Academy
Move beyond event-based family engagement and build everyday trust with caregivers. This session shares practical text prompts, phone scripts, and proactive routines that help families become true partners in student success.
Nancy Nielsen, National Dropout Prevention Center
This reflective and energizing session helps educators reconnect with purpose, well-being, and the work that matters most. Participants will explore how adult wellness, resilience, and connection shape school culture and student outcomes.
Nancy Nielsen, National Dropout Prevention Center
Data can show who is off track, but students often know why. This session shares practical ways to gather student voice through listening sessions, empathy interviews, advisory groups, attendance conferences, and re-engagement conversations.
Dr. Gina Upshaw, Director, School District of Philadelphia
Secure your team's spots for the 36th Annual National Dropout Prevention Conference in Orlando, Florida. Coordinate your leadership, instructional, and support staff across our four updated strategy tracks to bring a unified graduation improvement model back to your school or district.