Teacher taking local education to new heights with summit

For educators in Yuma, the search for professional development opportunities often requires traveling far and wide – and often on their own time and dime. Well acquainted with this challenge, Josh Cecil – a seventh grade teacher at Centennial Middle School – decided to build a “high quality, low cost” conference that meets teachers where they are here in Yuma.

It all started, coincidentally, at a conference in Las Vegas last summer.

“One of the presenters said something like, ‘Teachers need to recognize that they don’t need to move out of the classroom or move up the ladder to be leaders – the time for leadership with teachers is immediately,’”

Cecil said.

Motivation kindling and ideas sparking, the Scholastic Reading Summit he attended next in Denver set them ablaze.

Cecil was deeply inspired by the story of Colby Sharp, an educator and author from Parma, Michigan, who designed a conference for teachers in his village. Though Parma has only about 800 residents, the event attracted best-selling authors and nationally-renowned leaders in education.

“Immediately the thought was just there: ‘Why are we not trying to do something like this in Yuma?’” Cecil said. “There are a lot of barriers to success, both in Arizona and in Yuma County. Schools in Arizona are faced with huge budget issues, which obviously limits what districts are able to do with training. But barriers don’t mean walls that we can’t overcome – they just mean we have to try different approaches.”

Rather than making a road trip playlist for the 14hour drive back to Yuma, Cecil made a nosedive into planning and networking, calling every fellow educator he could think of. The result was the conception of the Yuma Educators Summit.

“I gain so much when I go to a place where I’m hearing positive ways that I can impact kids in my classroom,” Cecil said. “Not only from an aspect of learning more and improving my teaching, but there’s also something very powerful about teachers gathering in one place for a common cause.”

The summit is slated for June 25-26, 2020, at Kofa High School. For $25 (or $20 with early-bird registration), educators will gain two days of presentations, panels and breakout sessions oriented around the summit’s theme: “Increasing Equity and Access in Education.”

According to Cecil, the training and learning experiences packed into this event are for current and future educators alike to learn from one another, regardless of their district or teaching background.

“We’re all here for the kids in Yuma County,” Cecil said. “My best learning has come from other teachers. Yuma has a lot of really good teachers and a lot of teachers who come from diverse backgrounds. We have an ability to get together and learn from one another and grow for the common cause of helping the kids in our community.”

From the vantage point of future teachers currently pursuing that path on college campuses, Cecil felt they, too, could use an atmosphere to find support and create connections among those who’ve traveled that route before them.

“It’s hard being a new teacher,” Cecil said. “Getting

them into the conference will help them to naturally network and hopefully give them a few friendly faces as they go out into the job field.”

With the summit’s framework in place, Cecil and his team are still looking for business and community sponsors who see the importance of strengthening Yuma’s “teacher core” for the sake of making a positive impact on young lives.

“If we think about it as a community, when we all get better, our kids benefit,” Cecil said. “In an indirect way, we’re hoping to impact the lives of more kids (through the summit) than any of us can individually.”

Further information on the summit, registration and sponsorship can be found at yesyuma.org.