Leading Through Polycrises: Building Community and Improving Learning in Complex Environments

School and system leaders in Alberta are leading in a moment unlike any other. At the same time as they are nurturing learning communities and improving classroom and organizational conditions, they are also responding to repeated and compounding shocks—labour disruption, staffing shortages, growing student complexity, fiscal constraint, policy volatility, and heightened public scrutiny. The result is leadership work that is more emotionally demanding, cognitively complex, and relationally intensive than ever before.   Drawing on Alberta-specific findings from TALIS 2024 and Alberta Teachers’ Association pulse research, this session explores what the data tell us about leadership conditions, workload, well-being, trust, and professional agency in today’s public education system. Participants will examine how system pressures are experienced in schools and impact culture.  This session will also explore how school leaders can use compassionate approaches as powerful mechanisms to strengthen community, sustain staff, and protect the core work of teaching and learning.   This session will invite school and system leaders to move beyond deficit narratives and crisis management toward evidence-informed strategies for leading through uncertainty. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of the structural forces shaping their work, shared language for naming complexity and moral tension, and practical insights for fostering collective resilience, relational trust, and purpose-driven leadership—even when the system itself feels unstable.