Carroll ISD Hosts First Annual Summer Conference – Virtually!

Carroll ISD hosted its first annual Carroll Summer Conference from July 20-23, full of professional development sessions for teachers. This is Carroll ISD’s first time to offer professional learning in the summer in a conference format, allowing teachers to select from a variety of sessions to meet their needs.

Social/Emotional health sessions topics included yoga, emotional poverty, meeting students social-emotional needs through maker space, managing stress, and sessions by the House of Shine. CISD librarians also conducted sessions on diversity in reading, “Dragons Diving Into Diverse Books,” with tips on how to manage student discussions. “Technology and Tools” sessions were quite popular, given the start of the school year will be virtual only, and included tips and tricks to help teachers with virtual learning through Zoom, Seesaw, Canvas and Digital Notebooks.

The first day of the conference had 3 full-day sessions with over 260 total attendees, day two had 45 sessions ranging  from an hour to six hours with over 900 attendees, and the final day had 55 sessions ranging from and hour to six hours with almost 88 attendees.

The full day sessions included Special Education Academy and a session covering depth and complexity to meet the needs of gifted learners, as well as training in new state literacy requirements such as hand writing and phonics.

The Carroll Summer Conference would not have been possible without several important and popular sessions offered by the Special Programs and ITS departments, as well as the assistance of the Technology Department to take the conference entirely online.

It was a successful annual conference and CISD administrators are already eagerly awaiting next year’s event.