2024 TLC Conference

Dr. Christopher Emdin is the Maxine Greene Chair for Distinguished Contributions to Education and Professor of Science Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is also the Director of Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship At the STEAM DREAM and Ideal Lab.

He previously served as Robert Naslund Endowed Chair in Curriculum Theory at the University of Southern California, where he was Director of Youth and Community Partnerships at the USC Race and Equity Center.

Dr. Emdin is an alumni fellow at the Hip-hop Archive and Hutchins Center at Harvard University, Scholar in Residence at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and was STEAM Ambassador for the U.S. Department of State and Minorities and Energy Ambassador for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Dr. Emdin holds a Ph.D in Urban Education with a concentration in Mathematics, Science, and Technology; Masters degrees in both Natural Sciences and Education and Bachelors degrees in Physical Anthropology, Biology, and Chemistry.

He is the creator of the HipHopEd social media movement, Science Genius BATTLES and the CREATE Accelerator – an initiative that funds non-profits focused on culture and education. He has been named one of the 27 people bridging divides in the United States by Time magazine and the Root 100 list of most influential African Americans.

He is the author of numerous award winning works; including the Strage Prize awardee, Urban Science Education for the Hip-hop Generation and the New York Times bestseller, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood and the Rest of Ya’ll Too.

His latest books are STEM, STEAM, Make, Dream and Ratchetdemic: Reimagining Academic Success.

Joellen Killion champions educator learning as the primary pathway to student success. She serves school systems, schools, regional, state, and national agencies within the U.S. and abroad as a consultant and learning facilitator. She is senior advisor to Learning Forward and formerly was its deputy executive director. Joellen leads, facilitates, and contributes to a number of initiatives related to examining the link between professional development and student learning. She has over 30 years of experience in planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of professional learning at the school, system, state, and international level.

Joellen is a frequent contributor to education publications and the author of multiple books, numerous chapters, and papers on the design, implementation, and evaluation of professional learning, coaching, and teacher leadership. Her particular interests are collaborative learning teams, coaching educator success, evaluation and program audits, standards for professional learning, policy to support professional learning, and comprehensive planning and implementation of high-quality, standards-based, results-focused professional learning. Joellen works with teachers, coaches, teacher leaders, principals, district leaders, education consultants, and education agency staff to support the practices of continuous learning and development for all educators.

Joellen led a number of national initiatives on professional learning, including the third edition of Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning and the accompanying Innovation Configuration maps. She has conducted evaluations of projects funded by federal and private foundation grants including U.S. Department of Education Technology Challenge Grants. She has also led projects funded by the Washington Mutual Foundation, Dodge Foundation, GE Foundation, Wachovia Foundation’s Teachers and Teaching Initiative, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, MetLife Foundation, Sandler Foundation, and Wallace Foundation. Most recently she directed Transforming Professional Learning for College- and Career-Ready Students, a national study with Kentucky as the demonstration state and including six other states as critical friends examined and revised policy and practices for establishing comprehensive professional learning systems to support national and state initiatives and resulted in 13 publications to support other state and district efforts.

Her books, What Works in the Middle: Results-Based Staff Development, What Works in the Elementary Grades: Results-Based Staff Development, and What Works in the High School: Results-Based Staff Development, summarize studies of content-specific (social studies, science, mathematics, and language arts) professional development.

Her study of schools that have received the U.S. Department of Education’s Model Professional Development Awards sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and WestEd resulted in Teachers Who Learn Kids Who Achieve: A Look at Model Professional Development. She has studied online learning and its role in professional development. This study resulted in E-Learning for Educators: Implementing the Standards.

Other books resulting from studies and initiatives include Collaborative Professional Learning Teams in School and Beyond: A Tool Kit for New Jersey Educators; The Learning Educator: A New Era in Professional Learning (co-authored with Stephanie Hirsh); Becoming a Learning School (co-authored with Patricia Roy); The Feedback Process: Transforming Feedback for Professional Learning, 2nd edition; Taking the Lead: New Roles for Teachers and School-based Coaches, 2nd edition (co-authored with Cindy Harrison), Assessing Impact: Evaluating Professional Learning, 3rd edition, and Coaching Matters, 2nd edition (co-authored with Chris Bryan and Heather Clifton). She has authored a number of monographs and papers, contributed to the International Handbook on Mentoring and Coaching in Education, and contributes blogs on topics in professional learning.

The creed Joellen lives by is:

Excellence can be achieved if you . . .

Care more than others think is wise . . .

Risk more than others think is safe . . .

Dream more than others think is practical . . .

Expect more than others think is possible . . .

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Joellen Killion was recently a guest on Episode #55 of the Coaching Conversations podcast with Jim Knight. Listen to her episode on your favorite podcast platform.

Dr. Jim Knight, Founder and Senior Partner of Instructional Coaching Group (ICG), is also a research associate at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. He has spent more than two decades studying professional learning and instructional coaching.

Jim earned his PhD in Education from the University of Kansas and has won several university teaching, innovation, and service awards. The pioneering work Jim and his colleagues have conducted has led to many innovations that are now central to professional development in schools.

Jim wrote the first major article about instructional coaching for the Journal of Staff Development, and his book Instructional Coaching (2007) offered the first extended description
of instructional coaching. Jim’s book Focus on Teaching (2014) was the first extended description of how video should be used for professional learning. Recently, writing with Ann Hoffman, Michelle Harris, and Sharon Thomas, Jim introduced the idea of instructional playbooks with their book on that topic. Jim has written several books in addition to those described above, including Unmistakable Impact (2011), High-Impact Instruction (2013), Better Conversations (2015), The Impact Cycle (2018), and The Definitive Guide to Instructional Coaching (2021). His upcoming book Data Rules, will be available this fall.

Jim has also authored articles on instructional coaching and professional learning in publications such as “Educational Leadership”, “The Journal of Staff Development”, “Principal Leadership”, “The School Administrator”, and “Kappan”. Jim is also a columnist for “Educational Leadership”.

Through ICG, Jim conducts coaching workshops, hosts “Coaching Conversations” podcast, and provides consulting for coaching programs around the world.

Dr. Haesun Moon is a communication scientist, an educator, and author of Coaching A to Z: The Extraordinary Use of Ordinary Words and several collaborative books, including Thriving Women, Thriving World, and Foundations of Brief Coaching, a short handbook for professional coaches.

Haesun received her Ph.D. in Adult Education and Community Development from the University of Toronto. She cares about people experiencing better conversations at home and at work – and she does that by training, coaching, and consulting. She believes that conversations can change the world, and she defines this process as hosting dialogic conditions in which people participate to imagineer and perform their preferred change.

Her academic and professional research in coaching, dialogues, and pedagogy from the University of Toronto led to the development of a simple pedagogical framework, the Dialogic Orientation Quadrant (DOQ). The DOQ has transformed the way people coach and learn coaching worldwide. The DOQ also serves as a research framework in communication studies that offer evidence-based process research of coaching and mentoring conversations.

She was most recently celebrated as one of the world’s leading thought leaders in “Coaching and Mentoring” by Thinkers50, an accolade often referred to as “the Oscars of Management Thinking” by the Financial Times.

Her most current contribution in the field of coaching and mentoring includes active speaking engagements, both in-person and online, at the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, International Coach Federation, Institute of Coaching at Harvard Medical School, and WBECS by Coaching dot com. Haesun was voted as the highest-ranking speaker in the WBECS pre-summit in 2022 and 2023, where over 12,000 people worldwide registered in her session.

She serves as a faculty at the Institute of Coaching, Harvard Medical School affiliate, where she is currently teaching on the topic of Efficacy of Coaching.

Haesun contributes to the coaching and mentoring community in Canada as she serves as a chair for the Canadian Universities and Research Alliance Summit (CURAS), where coaching research, praxis, and community of practice are actively organized and growing. Haesun teaches Brief Coaching at the University of Toronto and serves as Executive Director at the Canadian Centre for Brief Coaching and Principal at The Human Learning Institute.

Kate Murphy is a Houston, Texas-based journalist who has written for the New York Times, TheEconomist, Agence France-Presse, and Texas Monthly. Her eclectic and widely shared pieces have explored an extraordinary range of topics including health, technology, science, design, art, aviation, business, finance, fashion, dining, travel, and real estate.

Kate is known for her fresh and accessible way of explaining complex subjects, particularly the science behind human interactions, helping readers understand why people behave the way they do. She also holds a commercial pilot’s license, which she puts to good use when called upon to report from remote locations.

Dr. Christian van Nieuwerburgh is Professor of Coaching and Positive Psychology at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences and Global Director at Growth Coaching International. He is a thought leader in the areas of coaching in education and the integration of coaching and positive psychology. Christian is passionate about the creation of positive learning environments and works with schools, colleges, and universities all over the world.

Christian is the author of the best-selling Introduction to Coaching Skills: A Practical Guide (2014; 2017) and the editor of Coaching in Education: Getting Better Results for Students, Educators, and Parents (2012) and Coaching in Professional Contexts (2016). He is also a co-author of the recently-published The School Leader’s Guide to Coaching in Schools (2017) and the Editor in Chief of one of the field’s leading academic journals: “Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice”.