The Ohio Valley Educational Service Center hosted its second Common Professional Development Day on Friday October, 27. The Common PD day brought together the school systems of Belpre, Crooksville, Fort Frye, Marietta, Warren, Wolf Creek, Frontier, and the Washington County Career Center.
Dalton Summers, Superintendent of the OVESC, was pleased with the attendance and execution of the second year of this event. "This is the second year for the OVESC Common PD Day and we set the bar pretty high last year in that we had good participation and good feedback from our member districts. This year we even had more. I couldn't be happier with the way things turned out today, with the speakers we brought in and the teachers who stepped up to lead sessions. This is a huge opportunity for our area to bring in between 600 and 700 teachers from this region to share what they do best with each other. It has a positive impact allowing our member districts' educators to collaborate, share ideas, network, and form relationships that they can build upon throughout the year as they continue to educate our students."
The event was sponsored by Energy Optimizers, Horace Mann, Peoples Bank, Westlake Dimex and was hosted by Warren School District. Breakout sessions were held in the high school, middle school and elementary school buildings.
The day started off with OVESC Superintendent Dalton Summers addressing the districts in attendance before introducing the keynote speaker for the day, Dr. Jim Mahoney.
Dr. Mahoney is a seasoned educator who has dedicated his life to enhancing educational opportunities for all students. He’s served at every level of the education system serving as a teacher, principal and superintendent during his tenure in education. In 2001 Dr. Mahoney assumed the position of the inaugural executive director at Battelle for Kids. Battelle for Kids, works with school districts, state education departments, businesses and philanthropic groups worldwide. Dr. Mahoney’s efforts in one form or another, have made an impact in the lives of over 6 million students and 400,000 educators across the nation. He currently holds the position of Assistant Professor of Practice at Ohio University’s Voinovich School and serves as an educator in residence for the Buckeye Association of School Administrators.
After the keynote speaker, educators were able to disperse and attend their choice of over 50 separate breakout sessions. The first breakout session lasted 45 minutes, then after lunch there was a second breakout session for an additional 45 minutes. It was then that teachers formed Teacher Based Teams (TBT) so that teachers of the same content area from different districts were able to share their strategies, resources and what is working for them and their students. These group sessions lasted for 75 minutes and closed out the day.
Brad Silvus, Superintendent for Marietta City Schools, thought that the TBT sessions were particularly of value to educators amongst the different districts. “It’s such a great experience for all of our staff members, because it introduces them to things they might not have considered or encountered before. It provides time for subject/grade levels to dig down and discuss what is working in their classrooms to hopefully have a positive impact for the students of all the districts.”
You can see a complete list of all of the breakout sessions below. For more information on the OVESC’s Common PD Day visit their website at https://www.ovesc.org/
Breakout Sessions Offered during the day:
- 5 Pillars of Reading Instruction
- AI in the Classroom
- Building Relationships through Morning Meetings
- Classroom Management in Kindergarten-Sixth Grade
- Gifted
- Handwriting Improves Reading?!
- Higher Level Questioning K-6
- Implementing the Science of Reading in the Elementary School: Assessments, Programs, Small Group Instruction & Intervention
- Math-More Than Just Paper and Pencil
- Now You’re Speaking My Language- Ideas for Crisis Prevention in the Classroom
- Occupational Therapy Tips, Tricks, & Tools for the Classroom
- PBIS: A House System; 4 Houses, 1 Family
- School-Wide PAX in the Elementary School
- The Preschool Experience-Bowen/Mitchell
- The Preschool Experience- Swaney/Gainer
- Whole Child Behavior Strategies- Elementary
- 3D Printing: Bringing the World of Additive Manufacturing to Your Classroom
- Appalachian STEM Enrichment Academy- My Backyard Stream
- Behavior, it’s not my thing….. Or is it!?
- Building a Successful Music Program
- Creating Learner Profiles
- Deerassic Park Education Center
- Digital Programming for the Social Studies Classroom
- Drugs, Human Trafficking and Social Media
- Engaging and Tactile Lesson Strategies in Mathematics
- Getting Started With Number Talks
- Googling the Future: From Chalkboards to Chatbots- Unleashing Google AI in Education!
- How to Use Google Spaces for Testing Troubleshooting
- Incorporating Learner Voice, Choice, and Goal Setting through the use of Learner Profiles
- Intervention for K-12
- Intro to BB2C- Real World Problems
- Intro to BB2C- STEM
- New and Accelerated Licensure Pathway from the Classroom to the Superintendent’s Office
- Ohio STEM Learning Network and Ohio Academy of Science Opportunities
- Save Time with Google Sheets
- SST Using Data in Your Classroom
- Teachers Matter Too: Self-Care for Educators
- The Game of Life
- Trauma Informed Care with Youth
- UDL: Using a Pre-Flight Checklist for Accessibility
- Unlocking Potential: Imagine Learning-Beyond Ordinary Online Education
- Using Classkick and Blooket to Change How You Teach
- Using Lean Six Sigma in the Classroom
- Voice and Choice: Increasing Student Engagement By Building on Their Passions
- What Great Teachers Do Differently
- What is MakerSpace and Why Do Students Love Them?
- Who Owns the Learning?
- A Regional System of Support: Tech Prep
- Advanced Quantitative Reasoning- An Alternative to Algebra 2
- Full S.T.E.A.M. Ahead!
- Interdisciplinary Learning with Dystopian Literature and Speculative Fiction: Reflections from the NEH Human/Nature Institute
- Introduction to Coding: Making Middle School Computer Science Education Easy
- Learning Blade: Hundreds of Ready-To-Use Lessons for Middle School Career Exposure in STEM, CTE, and Computer Science
- McKinney-Vento: The Basics and Beyond
- MOV-ESC Driving School
- Secondary Social Studies/History
- Supporting Struggling Readers
- The Importance of Designing your Pathway to Success… EARLY!
- The Power of Student-Principal Advisory Committees (SPAC)
- Unleashing AI-Powered Time-Saving Strategies
- Using Noodletools for Research
- Using Transeo to Track Work-Based Learning
- Work Based Learning
- Resources to Improve CTE Technical Skill Attainment