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| Overview: |
What is the purpose of education? What does it mean to be human in a world of Artificial Intelligence? And what happens to educators, and to students, when schools treat people as data points rather than human beings?
These are no longer philosophical questions. In an era when AI can replicate standardisation, efficiency, and recall, the most urgent task facing school leaders is reclaiming what AI cannot replace: the human qualities that make schools places of genuine growth, connection, and meaning. Yet across international schools on every continent, a crisis persists: dedicated educators entering leadership wanting to serve, and finding themselves inside systems that deplete rather than sustain them.
This four-session workshop series introduces the HUMANE framework: six interconnected lenses: Happiness, Understanding, Mindfulness, Appreciation, Neuroscience, and Empathy; that give educational leaders and teachers practical tools to reclaim their humanity, redesign their practice, and lead the schools their communities actually need.
Drawing on nearly thirty years of international experience across fifteen countries, including moments of profound failure and hard-won wisdom. Kate O'Connell combines personal story, brain science, and practical frameworks in a series that is simultaneously professional development and a genuine human experience. Participants will not just learn the HUMANE framework. They will feel it. |
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| Workshop Goals: |
Across the four sessions, participants will:
- Identify the external, internal, and philosophical forces that dehumanize educators and students in international school contexts
- Understand why AI makes the call for humanizing education urgent and what human qualities AI can't replace
- Explore all six elements of the HUMANE framework through personal story, research, and reflective practice
- Apply the HUMANE hexagon as a self-assessment and school design tool
- Develop a personal leadership commitment grounded in the HUMANE framework
- Build connection with a global community of like-minded educational leaders and teachers
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| Session Outline: |
Session One: Why Education Must Be HUMANE: The Diagnosis
What is happening to educators and schools, and why AI changes everything. This opening session establishes the landscape of the crisis facing international school leaders: unsustainable workloads, toxic cultures, philosophical confusion, and the urgent question of what schools are actually for. Kate introduces the HUMANE framework and its hexagonal structure, grounding every element in a vivid story from her thirty years in education.
Key understandings include:
- The three forces dehumanizing education: external (workload, culture, underfunding), internal (perfectionism, self-doubt), and philosophical (pendulum swings, shame)
- What AI can- and cannot -do, and why the human skills schools neglect are exactly what the future demands
- An introduction to the six elements of the HUMANE hexagon as interconnected lenses, not sequential steps
- A personal reflection: which element of HUMANE are you most depleted in right now?
Session Two: H & U: Happiness and Understanding
Two lenses that invite leaders and teachers to reconnect with joy and reframe how learning actually works. H - Happiness - explores the neuroscience of wellbeing as a legitimate leadership tool, not a luxury. U - Understanding challenges the culture of coverage and compliance that exhausts teachers and disengages students, offering instead a vision of learning as the slow, human, irreplaceable work of making meaning.
Key understandings include:
- The neuroscience of happiness: DOSE (Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, Endorphins) - and what it means for school culture
- Seligman's PERMA model and its application to educational leadership and classroom design
- The difference between knowing and understanding - and why schools so often reward the former at the cost of the latter
- Teaching for Understanding (Harvard) and the cycle of learning: confusion, struggle, insight, and deepening
Session Three: M, A & N: Mindfulness, Appreciation and Neuroscience
Three lenses grounded in brain science and daily practice. This session opens with a live mindfulness experience, and participants experience M before they discuss it. The session then moves through Appreciation (the neurological and cultural power of recognition) and Neuroscience (what brain research tells us about learning, emotion, stress, and the conditions in which people - and schools - actually thrive).
Key understandings include:
- Mindfulness as a leadership and classroom practice- practical tools for presence, attention, and decision-making under pressure
- The neuroscience of appreciation: how specific, effort-based recognition affects the brain of both giver and receiver
- Five key neuroscience principles every educator should know - and how to apply them to school culture
- A live appreciation practice: participants write and send a genuine message to a colleague during the session
Session Four: E & Integration — Empathy and the HUMANE School
The culminating lens and full framework integration. This session returns to the story that opened the series - with empathy and then invites participants to apply the complete HUMANE hexagon to their own school context. The session closes with a visioning activity: what does a truly humane school look like in your community? Participants leave with a personal HUMANE leadership roadmap and an invitation to join an ongoing community of practice.
Key understandings include:
- Empathy as a sophisticated leadership and teaching skill — distinct from sympathy, from emotional over-involvement, and from weakness
- Self-empathy as the prerequisite for sustainable leadership: why we cannot give what we do not give ourselves
- The HUMANE hexagon audit: applying all six lenses to your own school as a self-assessment and design tool
- A collective visioning practice: what does humanizing education look like in your context?
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| Potential Audience: |
This workshop series is designed for educators and educational leaders in international school settings:
- Principals and Heads of School seeking to lead with greater humanity and sustainability
- Assistant Principals, Deputy Heads, and Middle Leaders preparing to step into senior leadership
- Classroom teachers navigating dehumanizing systems who are looking for both validation and a practical way forward
- Educational coaches and consultants working with school leadership teams
- IB educators and coordinators looking to deepen their understanding of human-centred leadership
This series speaks to anyone who entered education to make a difference — and is still determined to do so. |
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| About Kate O'Connell |
Kate O'Connell is an international educational leader, consultant, leadership coach, and IB Workshop Leader with nearly thirty years of experience across more than 30 schools in 15 countries on four continents. A former Head of School and certified ICF/NLP coach, she is the founder of Vision to Impact - a human-centred coaching and systems thinking consultancy serving school leadership teams globally.
Kate trains educators and leaders through the International Baccalaureate, Compass Education, and Trust-Based Observations, and has spoken at major international education conferences, including EARCOS, ISS, AmCham, and IBC. She writes The Human Advantage, a LinkedIn newsletter on humanizing leadership in education, with over 2,000 followers, and has published articles for EARCOS and ISC.
This workshop series draws on Kate's forthcoming book, Humanizing Education in the Face of AI: The HUMANE Leader's Guide to Reclaiming Humanity in Schools, a teaching memoir that weaves thirty years of personal story with a practical framework for educational leaders navigating an AI-transformed world. She is based in Southeast Asia and lives with her two teenagers, her most humbling leadership challenge to date. |
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| Dates & Timings |
October 14th, 21st, 28th & November 4th, 2026
Each Session is for 2 Hours
14th & 21st October 2026
London 9:00 am | Zurich 10:00 am | Dubai 12:00 pm | India 1:30 pm
Hong Kong 4:00 pm | Melbourne 7:00 pm | Cambodia 3:00 pm
28th October & 4th November 2026
London 8:00 am | Zurich 9:00 am | Dubai 12:00 pm | India 1:30 pm
Hong Kong 4:00 pm | Melbourne 7:00 pm | Cambodia 3:00 pm
Note: This workshop will be recorded
Please click here to check your time for the workshop |
| Investment |
USD 400 Closing Date 10th October 2026
Includes: Certificate of Participation for 10 Professional Development Hours. |
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| Upcoming Workshops |
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| Differentiated Instructions Meets AI – Partnering with Generative Tools to Support Student Learning |
| This session will explore the foundational principles of a differentiated classroom and how they intersect with the emerging use of AI in teaching and learning. |
 October 15th, 22nd, 29th & November 5th, 2026 |
 USD 450 Closing Date 1st October 2026 |
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| When Assessment Meets Thinking and Learning |
| Assessment, thinking, and learning are inseparable. When they are disconnected, criteria become little more than lists, quantity statements, or vague descriptors of quality. |
| October 20th, 27th, November 3rd & 10th, 2026 |
| USD 500 |
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| The Role of Formative Assessment in Differentiation |
| While there is a great deal of conversation in schools about formative assessment, it is relatively rare to see it implemented in classrooms in ways that reflect its intent or its potential to be a game changer for teaching and learning. |
| November 10th, 17th, 24th & December 1st, 2026 |
| USD 500 Closing Date 1st November 2026 |
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