This past Monday, February 3, students enjoyed a three-day weekend while IUSD staff, attended the District’s Professional Learning Summit focused on teaching and learning. Organized by the Education Services Department, more than 2,000 teachers, staff and administrators were able to choose between more than 335 breakout sessions developed and presented by more than 285 staff members at four IUSD high school venues.
Some of the many topics included early childhood education, Special Education, science, technology, engineer, mathematics, literacy, fine arts, counseling, wellness, physical education, student engagement, teaching methods for all learners and social emotional learning.
“No other district in the nation does or is able to offer this level of professional learning conference to all of their teaching staff, using their own personnel,” said Catherine Holmes, IUSD Executive Director of Education Services. “We think it is a testament to our IUSD culture of empowering leadership, continuous improvement, and our commitment to modeling intellectual risk taking that we are able to secure so many of our own teacher leaders to lead this day.”
The day started with four education experts delivering keynote speeches at each respective venue.
Dr. Jean Feldman spoke to Early Childhood, TK, First-Grade, and Special Education teachers, along with Elementary Speech Pathologists and Administrators about applying brain research to teaching and learning strategies. She encouraged attendees to use creativity, heart and playfulness when teaching education standards and provided examples such as music, games and other fun activities to engage students.
Larry Ainsworth delivered his keynote address to Elementary and Special Education teachers, Elementary Science Specialists and Administrators. He spoke about integrated teaching and learning systems that align standards, assessments, instruction, curriculum, and data analysis to set clear goals and assessments for student learning.
Tom Schimmer spoke to English Language Arts, Special Education, History and Social Science, Visual and Performing Arts, and World Languages teachers, Librarians, Counselors, Psychologists, and more. Schimmer discussed approaches to standards-based grading to ensure grading is a true indicator of students’ mastery of concepts and to identify areas where they may need supports.
Rock Wormeli inspired his audience, which consisted of Secondary Science, Psychical Education, Math, and Health teachers, Administrators and more. His candid keynote was developed to affirm and provoke listeners with compelling questions about contemporary education practices and specific action steps to consider to continually improve how we teach and students learn.
IUSD’s dedicated staff, who attended the Professional Learning Day, are lifelong learners and embrace continuous improvement so that they can empower students and prepare them for challenging college, careers and post-secondary goals.