Consulting

Let’s talk about your people

I have spent thirty-nine years in Alberta schools. Twelve of them are in the classroom teaching English and Social Studies — four at junior high, eight at high school. Twenty-one in school and division administration: seven as a high school vice-principal, eight as a high school principal, one as a district principal, five as an assistant superintendent. Six years as a regional director with the Alberta Professional Learning Consortium, where I still work as a consultant today. Along the way I completed a Masters Degree and Doctorate in Education focused on leadership and educational leadership.

I love learning, teaching, coaching, and striving to be the best I can be while helping others along the journey. It’s why I always felt it was important to teach at least one class a year during my time as a school administrator of the largest high school north of Edmonton.

I have also coached more than sixty football teams at every level below university, starting in 1974 as a high school student helping out with a junior high squad,this included pee wee, bantam, high school, provincial and regional all-star teams, and starting a girls high school tackle spring league during the early 2000’s, plus volleyball and basketball at the junior and senior high levels — over seventy teams in all.

The quantity of years, classes, teams, and the ongoing personal commitment to learning are shared in part to acknowledge I have had the opportunity to learn from plenty of mistakes, explore possibilities and experience success and challenges along the journey that I believe can help others in their journey.

If something below would help your people, let’s talk.

Who I work with

Teachers and school leaders

Sessions built on curriculum you actually have to teach, not curriculum in the abstract.

  • Alberta Social Studies, K–9 — the final K–6 curriculum and the draft 7–9 curriculum, including what changes for planning and what doesn’t
  • AI as a collaborator — practical, pedagogy-first work across NotebookLM, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude. Teachers are the architects; the tools serve the design
  • Understandings over facts — designing for the big, transferable ideas rather than coverage
  • Instructional leadership — for principals, vice-principals, and division teams

Formats: keynote, breakout session, half or full day workshop, multi-day engagement, online.

Leaders and leadership teams

  • Personal and organizational leadership — drawn from doctoral work in leadership and leadership development, and from twenty-one years of doing it imperfectly
  • Tiny Habits and behaviour design — I am a Certified Tiny Habits Coach in BJ Fogg’s framework. Small, doable, repeatable change that survives contact with a real week
  • Leading through hard days — crisis, loss, and what a community needs from the people in front of it

Formats: keynote, retreat session, half or full day workshop, ongoing coaching.

Coaches, athletes, and athletic associations

  • Way of the Warrior — hit hard, and always help the opponent up. Character is forged under pressure, not merely revealed by it
  • Character and sportsmanship that mean something — there is no good technical foul and no sportsmanlike unsportsmanlike penalty
  • Coaching the long game — what athletes carry out of your program twenty years later

Formats: keynote, clinic session, coaching staff workshop, team talk.

Student leadership

  • Choose Awesome — agency, and the daily practice of choosing your response
  • Team Awesome — a team with no limits on membership that cannot be defeated
  • Leading among your peers — influence without a title

Formats: conference keynote, workshop, school assembly, leadership retreat.

Parents and community

  • Raising kids who can choose well — agency, resilience, and what actually transfers
  • Understanding what’s changing in schools — curriculum, AI, and assessment, in plain language

Formats: evening session, parent council, community event.

Faith communities

I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and am always glad to accept invitations to speak at firesides, youth events, and other gatherings. Freely given, as it should be.

How to reach me

School division and curriculum work — rick.gilson@aplc.ca

Everything else — rick.gilson@gmail.com

Tell me who is in the room, how long you have, and what you are hoping they walk out with. We will figure out the rest together, including whatever the arrangement needs to be. I have sat on your side of that desk and I know what budgets look like.

I travel.

A little more

I host Change Maker Conversations in Education, the APLC podcast, where I have had the good fortune to talk with educators and authors including Myron Dueck, Julia Lindsey, Julie Stern, Katie Garner, Rebekah O’Dell, and David Robertson — our first three-time guest.

I write at Life is the School… about faith, family, football, leadership, and whatever I am reading.

I begin every morning by saying out loud, “Today is going to be a great day.” Then I go find out.

Cheers,
Rick