Bri Hunter
Contributing Writer
More than a thousand K-12 teachers descended upon Murray State’s campus on June 11 and 12 to attend the 2019 Summit, a teacher and technology conference.
Attendees had the opportunity to receive up to 12 free hours of professional development or Effect Instruction Leadership Act credit, a credit given to educators that attend education conferences. The conference was split into two days.
The first day had keynote speakers and small group sessions. The second day consisted of only two keynote speakers, with one in the morning and the other during the afternoon.
Trent Lovett, Marshall County Schools superintendent and one of the keynote speakers, spoke on Tuesday about the Jan. 2018 shooting at Marshall County High School and the role he played by helping students, faculty and parents.
“We had one student that was flown from the scene,” Lovett said. “We had four others that were flown later when they were taken to the hospital… We had a crime scene. Every parent in the Marshall County School system was coming to get their kid – and I don’t blame them, but they could not come on the Marshall County campus. There was no way we could reunify them with their children because we had a crime scene.”
In order to reunite the parents with their children, Lovett said that the staff of the high school had to help relocate the students to a safer place to able to reunify children and parents in an orderly fashion.
As Lovett spoke, the audience was full of emotion, absorbing every word he said.
Other keynote speakers included Kasey Bell, Angie Judd and Christine Pinto. There were about 56 speakers in Alexander Hall, such Angie Judd from Davis county who spoke on trauma induced care.
On June 12, there were two keynote speakers, Matt Miller and Gerry Brooks.
Miller spoke on how teaching can be considered a craft and how to create memorable learning moments for students.
Brooks, Liberty Elementary School principal spoke about climate and culture in the school setting. Brooks showed some of his YouTube videos to the audience as he went through topics. Brooks is known for his comical videos from his own personal experiences in the school system for 17 years. He is currently followed by 950,000 on YouTube and Facebook.
“Let me tell what I never had when I was a 5 year-old in Kindergarten, any of my peers throwing chairs when they’re mad,” Brooks said. “Well let me tell you what I have now, Kindergarteners throwing chairs when they’re mad. We’re dealing with emotional and mental issues, we’re dealing with things that are bigger than I have ever seen before. We’re dealing with test stress, politicians that don’t support us and our other friends don’t get that…No one else understands what stress I go through except another elementary school principal, I want to challenge you to find someone who is in your exact same position.”
Brooks had his session broke into sections that he covered one by one along with some of his YouTube videos and challenged the audience many times throughout his session. The audience was not only full of laughter during his session, but applause for his wise words.
Christy Johnson, a first grade teacher at Washington Elementary school in Marion, Il. said that being able to gather ideas for her classroom from the conference was very beneficial to her.
“I hope they do this again next year, the lineup was fantastic,” Johnson said. “You couldn’t have asked for a better lineup of speakers and for free. Being this close to home was good for me being able to come and take part in it.”
Kem Cothran, Teaching Quality Institute coordinator said that this was set up in a way to help teachers from all over the region network with one another. Cothran said TQI’s mission is to advocate for teaching excellence, from teaching inside the college to teaching outside the college. The Summit is put on to offer the pre-service teachers and experienced teachers high-quality professional development training. They welcomed teachers from 81 districts from 5 different states at this year’s Summit.
Cothran thanked the University for its collaboration with this conference.
“We appreciate the collaboration between the University, the President’s office, the college, TQI and KATE [Kentucky Academy of Technology and Education], so it’s a joint effort,” Cothran said. “We are also very thankful to our superintendents and principals because they give us feedback every year that helps guide the focus of the sessions; because, many times there’s something going on… We ask for their feedback and then try to go and custom meet the needs, so whether it’s educational technology, safe schools or new math standards.”