There, I witnessed something powerful: students leading discussions. A teacher explaining not just what students were doing, but why and how they redesigned the experience. A district leader sharing the decision that made this shift possible and the trade-offs along the way.
Throughout the day, I saw something else: leaders from school districts around the country sitting with their teams and asking: What did we see? What matters most? What could this look like in our system?
This is the type of hands-on, experiential, and collaborative learning that defines League convenings.
Unlike other professional learning experiences, there are no long stretches of passive listening or “one-size-fits-all” takeaways. Instead, convenings are designed as active, shared learning experiences where district leaders engage with real work alongside peers navigating similar challenges.
At Gibson Elk High School in Issaquah School District (Washington), high school students spoke about how their internship experiences, which they designed in partnership with teachers and community partners, are helping to shape their post-secondary plans.
At the heart of the League of Innovative Schools network is a belief that meaningful learning happens through connection. Being a systems leader can be both deeply rewarding and, at times, isolating. The League creates space for leaders to learn with and from one another. It is a network grounded in trust, openness, and a shared commitment to improving outcomes for students.
League convenings are multi-day, immersive experiences hosted by member districts, where leaders step into one another’s systems to see teaching, learning, and leadership in action. Throughout the League Spring 2026 Convening in Seattle, participants engaged in school site visits, district deep dives, partner sessions, and League member-led panels and showcases.
Convenings are built around a clearly-defined, peer-to-peer learning cycle, not a series of sessions. This cycle is the cornerstone of our design and ensures that learning moves beyond exposure and leads to meaningful action in districts. Every moment at the Spring Convening was designed to move leaders through a deliberate process: observe, make meaning, share, and act.
Throughout the spring convening, League members from around the country shared about specific, innovative approaches they’re leading in their own school districts, giving fellow members the chance to learn from their successes and lessons learned.
Throughout the spring convening, leaders moved through classrooms, presentations, panels, and conversations that made promising practice visible. They explored school visit pathways across Issaquah and Kent School Districts, engaged in host district deep dive sessions, and learned through League member and partner showcases and panels that brought different approaches to shared challenges into view.
Hearing directly from students, educators, and district leaders gave greater texture and context to the work, helping leaders see not only what is happening, but the decisions and trade-offs behind it. Throughout the experience, they captured their observations in a convening workbook that invited reflection around powerful learning and helped connect new learning to their own systems.
A hallmark of all League convenings are the school visits, which give members the opportunity to go into classrooms and hear directly from school leaders, educators, and students about their learning experiences and identify promising practices to adapt for their own districts back home.
Following the school visits, districts teams reconvene to reflect on what they observed and begin to compile action plans for how they might apply similar approaches in their own contexts.
Numerous sessions—from workshops to panel discussions—highlighted cutting-edge work being led by League member districts across the country. This exposure to different approaches plays a key role in helping members to think creatively about how to address similar challenges in their districts.
This is how the convening becomes more than a moment of learning. Ideas move from reflection into action, then travel back into districts where they can be adapted, tested, and strengthened over time.
Convenings give members opportunities to brainstorm and pressure test new approaches not just with their own district teams, but across the network, in turn broadening their perspectives around what’s possible.
Are you a district leader looking for the sustained type of peer-to-peer learning that the League offers?
