What Stuck With Coaches: Top Takeaways From Day 1 of the 2025 Coaching for Change Conference
Before launching into a second full day of learning, coaches at the 2025 Coaching for Change Conference gathered to reflect. The session — led by Dale Winkler, SREB’s senior vice president and interim president — asked attendees to think back on what they had already gotten out of Day 1 and what they would like to get out of Day 2 and beyond.
What emerged wasn’t just a recap of sessions from the day before. It was a powerful snapshot of what today’s instructional coaches care about, struggle with and are eager to take back to their schools.
Here’s what coaches said and what it reveals about the current moment in coaching.
Reflection 1: In three words, describe your takeaways from yesterday’s sessions.
In the first reflection activity of the day, attendees were asked to think about what they learned from the sessions they had already attended.
Their responses — captured in a live word cloud — offered a clear snapshot of what matters most to today’s coaching professionals.
Words like engaging, reflection, vulnerability and trust rose to the top — literally. These weren’t just popular terms; they represented themes that surfaced again and again in sessions and conversations throughout the day.
Other powerful ideas included:
- Relationships
- Growth mindset
- Intentionality
- Insightful
- Networking
- Enlightening
- Affirming
- Transformative
These weren’t pulled from a curated keynote or a polished slide deck. These were words from the coaches themselves — raw, unfiltered and deeply reflective of their experience.
Some of the most striking the attendees took from the first day weren’t about brand-new tools or trendy acronyms. They were about how coaching feels when it’s done right: honest, connected and human.
What does that tell us? That the real power of coaching doesn’t come from titles or frameworks— it comes from relationships, from taking time to reflect and from being brave enough to be vulnerable.
(Hey! Vulnerability was our focus with our last post in this series – if you want to learn more, make sure you read that one too!)
Reflection 2: Rank which coaching topics were of most interest to you.
Once they thought about what mattered most to them from their sessions, coaches were asked to think about which of the conference’s learning objectives mattered most to them.
The conference focuses on five main topics:
- Building strong teams
- Planning for success
- Turning challenges into change
- Trusting the process
- Sustaining change
While all five topics had their champions, three rose clearly to the top:
- Turning challenges into change
- Building strong teams
- Planning for success
What can we learn from this ranking?
In a time when many schools are still recovering from burnout, turnover and shifting priorities, this ranking makes sense.
Coaches want tools to solve real problems. They want strategies that help people work together. And they want clear, intentional plans that lead to visible results.
Reflection 3: With whom will you share the information gathered at this conference?
Reflection only works a little bit if you only focus on what you’ve already learned. That is why the final reflection prompt encouraged coaches and school leaders to think about what is next.
Who else benefits when a coach grows?
To answer this, attendees were encouraged to think about who else they could help with all the lessons they learned and would continue learning throughout the day.
Coaches responded with a wide range of answers:
- School leaders
- District staff
- Fellow coaches
- Teacher teams
This wasn’t just a reflective moment. It was a reminder that the goal of a conference like this isn’t to fill notebooks — it’s to ripple outward.
What they learned at the conference travels home with coaches and turns into better walkthroughs, stronger feedback and more supportive coaching cycles.
Key Takeaways on This Reflection for Everyone
Some of the reflections discussed above are more focused on attendees, but the process itself is important for everyone.
Reflection matters.
When you do anything, make sure you take the time to reflect on what you learned, what was most important to you, and what you will do with that knowledge going forward.
For the coaches and school leaders out there, Winkler added one final parting thought that should guide you in your professional development, whether you attended this year’s conference or not:
“What do our students need us to learn?”
It’s a question worth keeping at the center of your professional development goals — not just when you are taking a class or attending a conference, but for every coaching conversation ahead.
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