PUSD Summit offered PD for teachers
Last Wednesday after the minimum day for students, middle school and high school teachers attended the Porterville Unified School District Summit Series with approximately 20 different professional development choices at Monache. Sessions were offered by instructional coaches, math coaches, media tech specialists, teachers, outside consultants and district personnel.
Raul Contreras showed how to create an assessment, performance task, or writing project that incorporated videos to prompt writing in various content areas. Using Playposit, Youtube, Ted-ed, and Wevideo as a springboard, teachers saw examples of how to help students to develop quality essays.
Jake Winter offered a session on writing in math that was intended to assist students with solidifying their reasoning. Writing helps students better understand and make conceptual connections. Jose Velazquez presented a session that taught how to use the new Big Ideas Math curriculum’s online resources for homework and assessment. Students can take quizzes with multiple choice formats as well as written responses that mimic the CAASPP assessment.
Special education teachers met with Kevin Jessee to discuss PUSD procedures for Least Restrictive Environment and improvement strategies for CAASPP performance. Aaron Yniguez shared an electronic program called Moby Max to assist with individualized assessments for IEPS.
Teachers new to the district met as a cohort with Rhonda Lombardi to review pedagogical shifts introduced before their arrival with a focus on student engagement strategies.
Total Participation Techniques were presented by Noemi Reyes. She demonstrated several strategies that allowed all learners to be active participants all the time. For example, each student in a group of four wrote one sentence taking a stand on the issue. Trading papers, students then add a supporting fact to their neighbors’ paper. Trading a third time, a counter argument sentence was added. The fourth concluded the paragraph by supporting the original statement.
Teachers wanting to use technology to insure 100 percent participation met with Natasha Efseaff to learn how to utilize Socrative, Google Classroom, and Google Forms. The Explain Everything App for ipads was presented by Sara Herrera to help students read, write, speak, and present more effectively using their ipad. Jeff Bochat taught teachers the difference between Nearpod and Peardeck as a means of facilitating student participation in a one-to-one tech environment.
Teachers interested in building their own Illuminate assessments met with Veronica Wickersham. They logged into this new online testing bank to grab questions to combine with their own to be used for immediate feedback on student progress.
Blanca Gomez shared the basics of implementing Google Classroom to build electronic assignments as well as import and export grades. Using Google Classroom saves teachers time at the copy machine and at looking for missing assignments.
Bobby Styles and Nate Wallis taught teachers how to use Adobe Premier while Linda Neuhaus showed interested educators how to use Adobe Photo Shop.
Sam Nofziger presented a session for secondary content teachers about developing speaking and writing for English Language Learners (ELL’S). Teachers learned tools and strategies to help their students prove that they mastered their grade level content.
Cindy Brown and Salma Aziz met with Career Technical Education (CTE) teachers to review California Department of Education (CDE) College and Career Indicator (CCI) requirements and to build knowledge of local course content and sequences.
Sarah Rector facilitated the music teachers collaboration with Porterville College music department with the purpose of bettering the performing arts in Porterville.
My growth mindset and neuroplasticity session focused on recent findings by neuroscientists about the malleability of the brain. Growth mindset videos, activities and strategies help change students’ thinking about their ability to be successful in school. Teachers were encouraged to infuse mini-lessons to change negative student self-talk, overcome failure, and increase perseverance.
Teachers appreciate the opportunity to select the type of professional development that they attend. Having learned something new, they are now tasked with implementing an aspect of their session with students in their classrooms.