Community Ecosystems & Partnerships

Can You Survive Poverty? The Game™: Experience the Barriers. Transform Your Leadership.

Verna Felder · Charlene Cutler, Service Learning School District / The Urban School Transformation LLC

What happens when educational leaders must make the same impossible choices many students and families face every day? Can You Survive Poverty? The Game™ moves beyond conversation and places participants inside an immersive simulation where every decision has consequences — and one unexpected setback can change everything. As you navigate housing instability, transportation challenges, food insecurity, attendance expectations, communication barriers, and limited resources, you'll experience how quickly circumstances beyond a family's control can affect a student's behavior, engagement, attendance, and academic success. Through powerful reflection and strategic debriefing, participants will examine how school policies, leadership decisions, and community partnerships can either create additional barriers or become lifelines for families. This is not a session you simply attend — it is an experience you will remember.

Session outcomes: identify how poverty-related barriers impact student success, examine the role of school-family-community partnerships in supporting students, and apply practical strategies to build more responsive, equity-centered systems within your school and organization.

Effective Listening for Understanding, Trust, and Collaboration

Beth Kohler, Special Education Mediation Services

Our school communities are dealing with a lot of heavy topics these days. We're so rooted in trying to problem-solve that when we speak with one another, we aren't truly listening — we're trying to solve the problem we believe the other person is presenting. When people feel unheard, it leads to avoidable conflict and discord among schools, parents, and school communities. What if, instead of rushing through every conversation like it's a problem to solve, we learn to truly listen to one another? Listening for deep understanding — the "why" behind what is being said — is a powerful tool for building mutual understanding, strengthening relationships, and fostering collaboration. This session covers why listening matters, what effective listening is, common barriers, and practical strategies, with time to practice and apply.

Session outcomes: understand why listening is essential to effective communication, identify common barriers that interfere with listening, and apply practical strategies that strengthen relationships, improve conflict resolution, and foster a deeper sense of empathy and inclusion.

Building Strong Industry Partnerships That Support Career-Connected Learning

Deborah Parizek, Henry Ford Learning Institute

We all need a clear vision and a guide to help us navigate toward our goals — especially when we are making the journey with others. In this engaging, interactive workshop for educators, industry partners, and community members, you'll develop your own "travel guide" that outlines your destination (strong career-connected opportunities), your recommended route (best practices), the tourist traps (challenges to success), and the experiences you won't want to miss (milestones).

Working through journey mapping and action planning, you'll actively explore how to build or strengthen partnerships for your own unique situation, then share and plan forward with a partner before a whole-group debrief. You'll leave with confidence, new tools and strategies, and access to additional resources from HFLI's online library plus contacts for follow-on coaching.

Session outcomes: describe your version of a strong partnership that supports community-connected learning, identify practices to eliminate, sustain, and add to make progress toward that future state, use the protocol to collaborate with your own stakeholders, and access session resources through the online portal.