2024 Joint Annual Conference General Sessions
The three General Sessions at the 2024 Joint Annual Conference featured four speakers, each engaging attendees in extraordinary ways and delivering messages of hope, trust, change, and resiliency.
First General Session
At the First General Session, the ceremonial opening of the Joint Annual Conference, attendees were welcomed by the Homewood-Flossmoor CHSD 233 Jazz Band Ensemble, and that was only the beginning of the amazing sounds of the session. The Presentation of the Colors by the Danville High School JROTC was followed by the Pledge of Allegiance and a rendition of the National Anthem by the Kaneland High School Madrigal Singers.
This celebration of sound continued with the arrival of keynote speaker Mickey Smith Jr. Known as an educator, encourager, and musician, Smith is a seven-time Teacher of the Year and recipient of the 2020 GRAMMY Music Educator Award. He inspires children and adults through a unique motivational mixture of music and message. An international keynote speaker and presenter, Smith also continues to serve as a full-time teacher at The King’s Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Smith’s Friday afternoon presentation energized the Conference’s opening day by alternating exuberant tunes from his ever-present saxophone, a joyful call-and-response number with the audience, and a heartfelt reminder to the education community that “what you do matters.” Smith encouraged the Conference attendees with a theme of “keep on going” and noted that “Trust opens the door to relationships … which open the door to influence.”
After sharing enchanting and impactful stories of his childhood and teaching career, and how they brought about the concept of VIC, “vision, intentionality, consistency,” Smith closed with an elevating saxophone rendition of the power ballad “I Will Always Love You.”
IASB Board of Directors President Mark Harms offered the welcome to the First General Session, and a group of statewide education organizations announced the new Vision 2030, a blueprint for excellence in K-12 public education through future-focused learning, shared accountability, and predictable funding. The busy First General Session also featured the presentation of the Binotti Award for Risk Management excellence to Zeigler-Royalton CUSD 188 and the announcement of the honorees in the 2024 Exhibition of Educational Environments. The first cohort of scholarship recipients were recognized, as were student participants from the Friday Focus Workshop, “Breaking Down the Walls: Bringing Student Voice to the Board Table.”
Second General Session
The Second General Session on Saturday morning was opened by the amazing sounds of the Joliet SD 86 Mariachi Ensemble, featuring the talents of students in the sixth through eighth grades.
David Horsager, CEO of Trust Edge Leadership Institute and a global authority on building high-trust teams and organizations, addressed the gathering. Horsager is the inventor of the Enterprise Trust Index™, Director of Global Study with The Trust Outlook®, and bestselling author of The Trust Edge, The Daily Edge, Trust Matters, and Trusted Leader. Horsager’s decades of trust work have served as a catalyst for trust awareness and development across the globe.
From that, one might expect a humdrum lecture on trust, but Horsager’s Saturday morning delivery was anything but dull. Horsager interwove personal family stories with the professional trust and leadership conversation that he has developed. He defined trust as “a confidence belief in a person, product, or organization” and notes that trust takes “an enormous amount of work.”
Horsager works with organizations in building trust with their constituents and communities, noting that when trust increases, everything good follows. Specifically in education, he referred to studies which indicate that trust leads to increased learning, safety, connections, engagement, peace, and job satisfaction or retention. Horsager’s message includes the advice to attendees to craft messages that are MRA (memorable, repeatable, and actionable).
Prior to Horsager’s keynote, the Second General Session was opened by IASA President Anthony Scarsella, Ed.D., who presented the 2024 Superintendent of the Year Award to Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat, Ed.D., of Peoria SD 150.
Third General Session
The opening remarks for the Third General Session, closing out the 2024 Joint Annual Conference on Sunday morning, were presented by Tamara L. Mitchell, the President of Illinois ASBO. Two awards were presented. The Illinois ASBO Distinguished Service Award went to Lyndl Schuster, Ed.D., Assistant Superintendent for Business Services/CSBO for River Trails SD 26 in Mt Prospect. The Illinois State Board of Education presented the 2024 Thomas Lay Burroughs Award to Adina Hoover, M.D. the Board President of Westmont CUSD 201.
Attendees who stayed until the end of the 2024 event were treated to a lively lesson in promoting, provoking, and embracing positive change by the stand-up comedy duo better known as Superintendents Michael Lubelfeld, Ed.D., and Nick Polyak, Ed.D., of North Shore SD 112 and Leyden CHSD 212, respectively.
Pulling from years of experience in education and from their books including Unlearning Leader: Leading for Tomorrow's Schools Today and The Unfinished Leader: A School Leadership Framework for Growth & Development, Polyak and Lubelfeld entertained and encouraged the audience, from the sounds of Katrina and the Waves, to the wisdom of Brene Brown, to the exciting innovations taking place in their own school districts.
Noting that “It starts with a mindset,” Polyak and Lubelfeld noted that “We are all unfinished,” and discussed the lenses of unfinished leaders: Empathy, equity, adaptability, development, and communication. They encouraged the attendees to “Stop fearing change,” and further to “Create conditions that allow our organizations to embrace change.”
