IAG

thinkLaw Annual Institute for

2025-2026 Partnerships

Interested in learning more about partnering with thinkLaw for the 2025-2026 school year & attending our 2nd Annual Institute? Click the button below!

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Schedule: thinkLaw at IAG 2024:

Monday, December 9th

8:30am – 9:30am

Keynote Speaker: Colin Seale

Location: J.W. Grand Ballrooms 5 & 6

Keynote:
The Heart Work: The Equity Case for Prioritizing Psychological Safety in Gifted Education and Beyond
Brilliance is distributed equally, but opportunity is not. For almost a decade, Colin Seale and the thinkLaw team have used this framing as an impetus for obsessing over opportunity-creation and helping educators create systems where critical thinking is no longer a luxury good. But the tools to unlock brilliance and unleash critical thinking are meaningless when our students (and sometimes our adults) lack the psychological safety to be brilliant. In this session, Colin Seale will make the equity case for prioritizing psychological safety as a pre-requisite to learning and share powerful, but practical strategies to integrate psychological safety into instructional practices in gifted education and beyond.

Monday, December 9th

9:45am – 11:00am

Speaker: Colin Seale

Location: J.W. Grand Ballroom 2

Featured Session:
Don’t Worry, Be a Critical Thinker: The Equity Case for Prioritizing AI (Actual Intellect)

The historic case for valuing education as a society revolves around the notion that knowledge is power. And the prioritized knowledge for those accessing this power has historically been knowing the “what” and the “how to.” But with the proliferation of artificial intelligence creating a present threat that almost any job capable of being reduced to an algorithm is at risk for automation, K-12 teaching and learning must shift its path. In this session, Colin Seale, educator, attorney, author of Thinking Like a Lawyer: A Framework for Teaching Critical Thinking to All Students and Tangible Equity: A Guide for Leveraging Student Identity, Culture, and Power to Unlock Excellence In and Beyond the Classroom, and thinkLaw Founder and CEO, will make the case for prioritizing a different kind of AI: Actual Intellect, as a key priority for today’s learners, and provide powerful, but practical tools educators can use to make critical thinking accessible to all students.  

Monday, December 9th

1:45pm – 2:45pm

Speaker: Colin Seale

Location: J.W. Grand Ballroom 2)

Breakout Session:
So Many Moves, So Little Movement: Tips for Transferring the Learnings of Gifted Curriculum into Core Instructional Practices
Have you ever used GPS for directions to the same place repeatedly? It’s not shocking when you realize you don’t actually know how to get there yourself. This is a key issue thinkLaw has faced as a provider of gifted curriculum that is common across the board: how do you translate the plethora of instructional moves outlined in gifted instructional resources to a teacher’s core instructional practices? Join the thinkLaw team for a hands-on workshop that makes the invisible magic of high quality gifted curriculum visible and inherently doable for ALL educators.

Monday, December 9th

3:00pm – 4:00pm

Speaker: Colin Seale

Location: J.W. Grand Ballroom 2

Breakout Session:
Finding the Funk: Culturally Responsive Critical Thinking Strategies for G/T Educators
When is a circle not just a circle? The standard curriculum will cover important concepts like radius and diameter, but we can go beyond the standards by asking students important questions about how that curriculum intersects with their lived experiences. What if that circle described the distance between your house and the nearest healthy food options? The nearest hospital? Any time we give gifted students the opportunity to not just analyze the world as it is, but to use their knowledge to grapple with how the world ought to be, we explicitly permit them to not just be problem solvers, but to embrace their identity as problem finders. This intensive workshop provides educators the opportunity to discover with their students what’s funky about even the most seemingly cut-and-dry learning goals.

Tuesday, December 10th

9:45am – 11:00am

Speaker: Colin Seale

Location: J.W. Grand Ballroom 2

Featured Session:
Leaving Genius on the Table: Practical Tools to Identify, Nurture, and Sustain Brilliance
Equity does not have to be the enemy of excellence. Opportunities to participate in advanced academics and gifted education can be transformative for students living in under-resourced communities. However, creating these opportunities can be a daunting task. This session explores the why and the how of providing high-quality programming for underserved high-ability students and offers a low-floor, high-ceiling framework for transforming Tier 1 instruction so that ALL students, regardless of their previous academic success, can access powerful, high-level critical thinking every day.

Tuesday, December 10th

11:15am – 12:15pm

Speaker: Colin Seale

Location: J.W. Grand Ballroom 2

Breakout Session:
From Accountability to Inevitability: Practical Tools to Help Systems Prioritize Gifted Education Beyond Mere Compliance
Accountability does not work. We’ve tried carrots, we’ve tried sticks, but there remains a huge gap in meeting the needs of gifted students at all levels of our education system. But what if unlocking the magic of gifted students wasn’t a checkbox you fought for, but an inevitable outcome of purposeful design? Join the thinkLaw team for an interactive workshop that will give you practical, but powerful tools to help you accomplish your advanced academics priorities without feeling like “one more thing” for the systems you work in.

Books by Colin Seale

Get your copy of Colin Seale’s bestselling titles:

  • Thinking Like a Lawyer: A Framework for Teaching Critical Thinking to All Students
  • Tangible Equity: A Guide for Leveraging Student Identity, Culture, and Power to Unlock Excellence In and Beyond the Classroom

thinkLaw Founder & CEO on the
"Adventures in Being Gifted" Podcast!

In this powerful conversation, Colin Seale, Founder and CEO of thinkLaw, joins Jill Hartsock & Jessica Mullen, of the podcast Adventures in Being Gifted podcast, to discuss how educators can reject “these kids can’t” syndrome and the power of teaching kids how to access their innate critical thinking gifts.

Shirts & Swag

Stop by and say hello to the thinkLaw team!

Grab a t-shirt, book, or get more information on a thinkLaw partnership.

Check out our swag shop for t-shirts and hoodies with our powerful quotes:

  • Doing Right > Being Right
  • Don’t Raise Your Voice. Improve Your Argument.