The NAA Convention 2020 in D.C. is designed to build and support leaders, like you! NAA20 Convention will offer inspiration, connections, and opportunities for leaders to share their passion, purpose, and persistence that strengthens the overall profession. Here are some of the leadership-focused workshops you won't want to miss!

Creating Leaders: Strategies to Inspire, Teach, Model, and Mold
Developing impressive leaders is key to growing and sustaining quality programs. Effective teachers may not be effective leaders, though. As a leader, it is your responsibility to inspire, teach, model, and mold the future leaders for your program and the profession. Through thought-provoking conversations and small group activities, participants will characterize the qualities of leadership, distinguish strategies that create leaders within their staff, and plan management strategies to build a productive and effective team.

Presented by Holly Scheibe, Ohio Child Care Resource and Referral Association; Kimberly Shibley, Ohio Child Care Resource and Referral Association.

Finding Your Art in Leadership: The Deep Dive!
Finding Your ART in Leadership is back with new content, but the same fun! Join us to engage your creative potential to enhance your leadership. This session is designed to bridge leadership development and theatre arts together to enhance your leadership quality in life and the workplace. In this hands-on and engaging session, you will explore how to be an effective communicator, become an active listener, evoke empathy through a professional lens, understand bias so leaders provide equitable and inclusive leadership, and dig deeper into our leadership as supervisors, managers, and directors. We want to create a more effective and affective workplace environment for both the leader and the employer.

Presented by Jessica Vann, Creative Spaces.

Leading your Leaders! Multi-Program Management
Being a leader in afterschool is as rewarding as it is challenging. Great leaders know that they are only as good as their team. How do you, as a leader, successfully oversee multiple afterschool programs? You can't be everywhere, so you need to lead through your team. How do you prioritize your to-do list to meet the needs of your people while encouraging them to become leaders themselves? Join us to share best practices in leading your team so you can focus on the bigger picture.

Presented by Kaitlin Grant, KCE Champions; Teresa Trawick, KCE Champions.

Leadership Tool Box
You're a good leader. You enjoy the challenges of the leadership role and the results you see when it all comes together. Leadership is a talent that is supported by many tools. Join this interactive workshop and take an in-depth look at a few critical leadership tools including non-violent communication, demand prioritization, strength leveraging, healthy risk-taking and responsible decision making.

Presented by Beverlee Wenzel, The ROCK Center for Youth Development.

Advocacy 101: Making Your Voice Heard
Advocacy does not need to be hard! It's more important than ever to tell the story of your program's impact. This session will provide tips, tools, and strategies to help make your voice heard in support of afterschool programs.

Presented by Katie Landes, Georgia Statewide Afterschool Network.

Leading a Multi-Generational Workforce
Imagine a 22-year-old frontline staff asking to share her lesson plans with her director in a Google Doc for feedback, or a frontline staff suggesting that the director communicate with staff in a GroupMe. Because workplaces today often include four generations of workers, our session will define generations and discuss the challenges in communication and collaboration between generations. Four tips for creating a cooperative and collaborative workplace will be shared along with discussions regarding the challenges that leaders have faced with different generations in their workplace and what solutions and techniques have worked for them.

Presented by Alice Hall, Georgia Southern University.

Adults as Mirrors and Models: Targeting Adult SEL Competencies
Out of school time programming is a great opportunity for young people to develop social emotional learning (SEL) skills. This development is dependent on the ability of the adults working within program to actively and consistently model and teach SEL skills. The challenge is that many adults are still working to develop their own SEL skills. This session will present the findings of a pilot evaluation study conducted by Ramapo for Children that explored adult SEL skill development and application in after-school programs in the New York City area. Participants will think strategically about their approach to assessment and development of SEL skills among their staff and how to build a program in which adults are SEL role models.

Presented by Brett Gurwitz, Ramapo for Children; Cecily Mitchell-Harper, Ramapo for Children.

How to Lead Your Teams Through Change
This session will provide tools for leaders to prepare, support, and manage their teams in times of change. In the ever-evolving field of afterschool, the adage "the only constant is change" can be challenging for staff to experience – this session will provide leaders with examples of how to develop manageable systems of change. Participants will explore the effects of change and create a plan for developing teams who embrace the change mindset and use it as a chance for opportunity, positivity, and productivity.

Presented by Jaclyn Aviles, Think Together; Irene Bobadilla, Think Together; Jeanette Cruz, Think Together.

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence: The Secret Sauce of Success
In a climate in which violence and hatred are preeminent in decision making and charismatic leadership is used to fuel fanatacism and hate, emotional intelligence and empathy are sorely needed. Modern day leadership defined by the skills, attitudes, and behaviors characteristic of emotional intelligence and empathy are essential ingredients of youth development leadership. This workshop will explore both as key levers of success for next generation leadership by specifically examining attributes associated with empathy and emotional intelligence through their definitions and applied context in afterschool settings. Participants will practice empathetic listening and tap into their threshold of emotional intelligence.

Presented by Tasha Johnson, YMCA of the USA; Shannon Matthews, YMCA Greater Grand Rapids; Kelly Wise, YMCA of the USA.

It's Time to Address Equity in Leadership
So, you're ready to address issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in your organization and in the field, but you don't know where to start. You're aware that leadership isn't reflective of the young people served and you know that more can be done to create change. You see the glass ceiling we're perpetuating and are ready to break it. If this describes you, join us for this session!

Presented by Jimena Quiroga Hopkins, Development Without Limits; Ruth Obel Jorgensen, Self-employed.

Learn more about our more than 170 educational sessions at NAA20 Convention or register today.