Folio Signature Workshops
Empowering Educators. Transforming School Culture.
Join us for interactive professional development workshops designed
for independent school leaders and educators.
Navigating Difficult Conversations
As educators at independent schools, having meaningful and sometimes difficult conversations is a vital part of professional growth and student success. "Navigating Difficult Conversations" is an interactive workshop designed to help you approach these critical discussions with confidence, empathy, and clarity.
This session will help you reflect on your current communication practices and build stronger relationships within your team. Participants will explore the true value of feedback, learning how to solicit it genuinely, process it productively, and deliver it effectively to support transformative change.
Key Learning Outcomes:
- Discover Actionable Frameworks: Discover actionable frameworks for managing challenging discussions from multiple perspectives, including Coach-to-Teacher and Teacher-to-Parent dynamics. Learn how to set the stage, move past defensive reflexes, and establish shared goals and collaborative next steps.
- Master Proven Feedback Models: Move beyond the "compliment sandwich" and learn how to use formats like the Four-Part Formula (Micro Yes, Data Point, Show Impact, Question) to ensure your feedback is specific, objective, and highly receivable.
- Promote Psychological Safety: Understand how to frame work as a learning problem, model curiosity, and create a trusting environment where educators feel safe, seen, and understood.
- Build Reflective Mindset: Gain practical tools to establish a reflective mindset in your daily practice, such as self-questioning and asking questions that seek reasons and evidence to facilitate deeper reflection after an observation.
- Engage in Active Practice: Practice new ways to confront and offer feedback through role-play exercises, allowing you to develop new habits and better support your colleagues.
Date: October 27, 2026
Time: 1:30 - 3:00 PM ET
Member Pricing: $75.00
Group Rates Available Upon Request
Facilitator
Melissa Fast
With over 25 years of experience driving educational excellence, Melissa brings a rare blend of system-level strategy and hands-on engagement to adult learning cultures. Her career spans roles as a versatile educator, edtech specialist, and professional development executive, all defined by her capacity to build deep strategic partnerships.
As the Director of School Success at Folio Collaborative, she anchors her people-first leadership in a sharp command of digital tools. In this role, she collaborates with schools to systematize professional growth, equipping teachers, staff, and administrators with the process and systems they need to thrive. By balancing real-time data with qualitative feedback, she helps institutions actively combat teacher burnout, meet accreditation standards, and foster environments rooted in peer-to-peer celebration.
Melissa has spent over a decade ensuring that instructional goals translate into measurable outcomes. She has dedicated more than 14 years to designing and delivering evidence-based professional development, establishing herself as a skilled and trusted facilitator. She has led sessions at major regional and national education conferences, including:
- SAIS Annual Conference (Fall 2026)
- TABS Annual Conference (Fall 2026)
- SAIS TransformEd Teaching & Learning Conference (2026)
- United Leadership Conference (2024)
- South Carolina Association of School Administrators (SCASA) i3 Conference (2023)
- National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) & National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM) Annual Conferences (2020, 2018, 2017)
Integrating SEL Competencies in Faculty Growth and Classroom Practice
Each day, our world becomes more complex as global connectivity and technological advances accelerate. In order to thrive, students need strong relationships and relevant, enduring skills—such as self-regulation, communication, problem-solving, adaptability, collaboration, and conflict resolution. Heads of school, academic leaders, and educators must intentionally design the learning environment to cultivate these skills, while simultaneously promoting student wellness, belonging, and agency.
A school-wide approach goes far beyond an isolated lesson or advisory activity. It ensures that social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies are seamlessly integrated across all divisions, departments, and aspects of school life, actively engaging both students and faculty in practicing and modeling these skills. This systemic focus shifts institutional climate and deeply embeds wellness into the long-term culture of the school, allowing educators to bring their best selves to their craft and giving students the foundation they need to flourish.
Crucial to this institutional shift is how we support and develop the adults in our community. This workshop will demonstrate how independent schools can leverage myFolio to operationalize SEL within their professional growth culture. Participants will explore practical ways to utilize myFolio for tracking faculty wellness goals, fostering reflective practice, and facilitating meaningful growth conversations. By anchoring SEL competencies within your school's professional development frameworks, you ensure that educators are actively supported, mentored, and empowered to model these vital skills for their students.
This interactive session will deepen your understanding of the role of SEL in future readiness. It will also provide a framework of simple but meaningful school-wide approaches and effective classroom strategies that can be effortlessly infused into any independent school campus, division, or classroom.
Key Learning Outcomes:
- Analyze the link between systemic SEL and future readiness: Participants will evaluate how shifting from isolated advisory lessons to a school-wide culture of wellness directly impacts student agency, belonging, and long-term success.
- Define adult SEL within the independent school context: Participants will identify the critical role faculty wellness, modeling, and professional growth play in establishing a sustainable school climate.
- Leverage myFolio for professional growth and wellness: Participants will learn how to design and integrate SEL-focused goals, reflective practices, and growth conversations into their school’s existing myFolio Growth Process.
- Formulate a divisional or classroom SEL strategy: Participants will draft at least two concrete, actionable strategies (either systemic or classroom-level) that can be seamlessly infused into their specific division, department, or daily routine.
- Audit current school climate practices: Participants will assess their current campus culture to identify gaps where SEL can be more deeply embedded into institutional routines, faculty mentorship, and community norms.
Date: January 27, 2027
Time: 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM ET
Member Pricing: $100.00
Group Rates Available Upon Request
Facilitators
Noalee McDonald-Augustine
Noalee McDonald-Augustine is in her 28th year as an Educational Consultant, specializing in School Culture, Social-Emotional Learning, Classroom Management, Behavior Interventions, Brain-Based Learning, Teambuilding and Group Development, and Poverty. She coordinates the SHESC Crisis Consortium, which provides support for school safety and crisis intervention. She was co-chair of the Kansas Social, Emotional, and Character Development (SECD) standards-writing team and the SECD revisions team. She is a Kansas State Department of Education Teacher Leader Consultant for Health, PE, and Climate & Culture. Noalee has a BA in Mathematics and a BA in Sociology with an emphasis in Criminal Justice, and her master’s work is in Physical Education with an emphasis in Adapted Populations.
Melissa Fast
With over 25 years of experience driving educational excellence, Melissa brings a rare blend of system-level strategy and hands-on engagement to adult learning cultures. Her career spans roles as a versatile educator, edtech specialist, and professional development executive, all defined by her capacity to build deep strategic partnerships.
As the Director of School Success at Folio Collaborative, she anchors her people-first leadership in a sharp command of digital tools. In this role, she collaborates with schools to systematize professional growth, equipping teachers, staff, and administrators with the process and systems they need to thrive. By balancing real-time data with qualitative feedback, she helps institutions actively combat teacher burnout, meet accreditation standards, and foster environments rooted in peer-to-peer celebration.
Melissa has spent over a decade ensuring that instructional goals translate into measurable outcomes. She has dedicated more than 14 years to designing and delivering evidence-based professional development, establishing herself as a skilled and trusted facilitator. She has led sessions at major regional and national education conferences, including:
- SAIS Annual Conference (Fall 2026)
- TABS Annual Conference (Fall 2026)
- SAIS TransformEd Teaching & Learning Conference (2026)
- United Leadership Conference (2024)
- South Carolina Association of School Administrators (SCASA) i3 Conference (2023)
- National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) & National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM) Annual Conferences (2020, 2018, 2017)