.png)
As a teacher or a principal, you know your usual suspects. But do you know what they need to become who they could be?
Keynotes, workshops and programmes for teachers, coordinating staff and senior leadership teams.
Themes: behaviour, self-worth, toxicity and creating a context in which growth becomes possible.
Education has always mattered
Annick chose education as a natural next step after her work as a social worker with young people from challenging backgrounds.
She taught in vocational education, worked as a student counsellor and helped shape pedagogical policy. She supported teachers with the challenges they faced in the classroom.
She then spent 10 years building a training institute that trained thousands of therapists and psychologists in lasting behaviour change. She co-authored three professional books for psychologists.
For 15 years she worked with managers and managementteams around challenging leadership issues.
Today she brings all this experience together: the reality of the classroom and the staffroom, and a clear scientific framework for how behaviour develops and changes.
Moeilijk gedrag raakt iedereen
When you feel insecure in front of a classroom, you reach for whatever works in the short term. For school leaders, the same happens at team level.
You know exactly who your usual suspects are, and yet you keep going round in circles with the same people.
You start pleasing, trying to take control, handing out sanctions or getting drawn into a power struggle. Or you simply avoid the problem, hoping it'll go away.
You survive. But the joy in your job disappears. You drift further away from what you once chose this work for: creating an environment where young people can learn and thrive.
What clients say
"This keynote focused strongly on behaviour patterns under pressure, difficult conversations, psychological flexibility and conscious leadership. As a leader in a secondary school, it confirmed for me how important it is for a school leader to look not only at results, but also at the underlying dynamics in a team. Behaviour patterns are often visible long before they affect the school culture. This session gave me the language and insight to recognise those signals sooner.
What particularly struck me was the attention to difficult conversations. In a school, we regularly have conversations with teachers, parents and students where clarity and connection both matter. The keynote showed why such conversations are sometimes postponed, and how you can still approach them constructively.
I recognised how pressure and complex expectations influence our behaviour as leaders. The keynote showed that many reactions under stress are predictable, and offered practical ways to make more conscious choices instead of reacting on autopilot." - Jan Thijs Pedagogisch Directeur Atlas College Genk
From fear to curiosity: self-image in the classroom
Available as a keynote, coaching or workshop
A self-image develops in a logical and predictable way. It is a strong predictor of how someone behaves, and it colours every interaction between teacher and student.
A teacher whose own self-image is shaken often reacts from fear. That shows up as frustration, control or avoidance. In this keynote, Annick shows how to return to your curiosity and to the core of your role: how do I get this student to want to learn what I teach?
In doing so, something shifts in the student, and in the teacher too.
This is not about understanding everything and never correcting again. It is about engagement, without condoning the behaviour.
The keynote is story-driven and grounded in science. Annick has delivered it at large organisations in Belgium such as Bethanië and OCMW Genk, the city's public social welfare centre. Months later, people were still telling her how much it had stayed with them.
Who it's for
Teaching staff, student counsellors and pastoral teams, teacher training programmes
What participants take away
-
Insight into how self-image develops and shows up in behaviour
-
Recognition of their own reflexes under pressure
-
A way back to curiosity as the starting point in difficult interactions
Not everyone grows from the same approach
Available as a keynote, coaching or workshop
Someone reacts very strongly. The reaction itself tells you little about how to respond to it. Some students or colleagues just need understanding. Others need to calmly and rationally put everything in order. Others again need clear, directive communication. For a small group, only setting boundaries will break the deadlock.
If you can make that distinction, you gain energy. If you can't, you end up in conversations that achieve little, in avoiding those conversations, or in staying empathetic when that simply doesn't work for that person.
Behaviour is more predictable than we think. Annick teaches teachers and school leaders to anticipate what someone is likely to do and what that person will respond to. Learning to adapt your approach to this naturally makes your actions far more effective.
Who it's for
Teachers, coordinating staff, student counsellors, senior leadership teams, year teams
What participants take away
-
A framework to recognise who needs which kind of response
-
More options in difficult interactions, where before there was only irritation, surprise, avoidance or anger
-
More calm and more impact: you feel in control of the situation
Toxicity and values-based leadership in schools
Available as a keynote, masterclass or programme
for school leaders
Toxicity is an underestimated issue in education. It can occur within a leadership team, among teachers or among students.
Someone who is toxic to a team functions fundamentally differently from someone who is simply difficult or dramatic. That is why toxic behaviour calls for a different approach.
Mediation is often not the answer. What does help is when the leader learns how to lead that person: seeing what is happening, predicting what comes next, and steering from the school's values rather than from conflict avoidance.
Annick also addresses what comes after: a team that relearns how to behave towards one another and how to hold each other accountable.
Who it's for
Senior leadership teams, school groups and trusts, coordinating staff.
What participants take away
-
Insight into how toxicity shows up and which patterns come with it
-
An understanding of why toxic behaviour often escalates when you respond differently, and why that can actually help
-
Practical ways to steer from values, and to strengthen the team afterwards
Trusted by
