Pages & Pathways conference for regional educators hosts leaders in literacy, STEM and well-being
UND’s College of Education & Human Development hosted a conference for teachers from across the region on June 17-18, offering workshops on literacy, STEM and well-being as well as deeper dives into some of the hottest topics in K-12 education.
More than 120 people attended the Pages & Pathways: PreK-12 Science of Learning Conference, making for an unusually strong and impactful event, said Katie Stermer, an outreach specialist for the College and co-coordinator of Outreach for Teacher Recruitment and Retention.
From Jamestown and Bismarck and beyond
Attendees included teachers from across North Dakota. “We have educators from Williston, several from Jamestown and a number from the Bismarck-Mandan area, as well as Grand Forks, Thompson, Northwood, all of those great places,” she said.
Furthermore, a packed schedule let attendees choose from a host of learning opportunities, as three “headliners” plus more than 50 other presenters provided timely and relevant sessions. As Stermer had said in a pre-conference interview, “this isn’t a regular book study or one-size-fits-all professional event. Attendees will have up to nine options for learning within each session slot, so they can personalize their learning throughout the conference.”
Utility = Priority One
Topics explored during the hour-long workshops included family literacy, effective grading practices, how to start a robotics team (and thus inspire future engineers), math-teaching trends in North Dakota schools and “From Farm to Classroom,” a session on relating classroom topics to agricultural science.
Longer sessions looked in-depth at topics such as the Science of Reading, avoiding teacher burnout and “AI in Action: Empowering Your K-12 Classroom.”
The topics were chosen specifically for their usefulness to teachers, said Tisha Lopez, recruitment and retention specialist for the College.
Informed choices
UND’s College of Education & Human Development is the largest and most comprehensive education college in North Dakota. That means organizers feel a special obligation to make the College’s conferences stand out.
So, after last year’s conference, “we said to each other, ‘OK, what did we learn? What do we want to do different next year?” Lopez said.
“And we looked a lot at what North Dakota needs. We looked at surveys from the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction, among other sources, and we looked at what teachers are saying they’d like to see.”
The results helped bring about the conference’s focus on topics such as artificial intelligence, the Science of Reading and teacher well-being.
Hardworking headliners
Nationally known speakers – the conference’s headliners – also were chosen with those topics in mind. The speakers included literacy headliner Stephanie Stollar, the founder of the Reading Science Academy and an assistant professor at Mount St. Joseph University in Ohio; STEM headliner Bill Bass, innovation coordinator for Instructional Technology, Information, Library Media and Federal Programs in the Parkway School District in St. Louis; and well-being headliner Kelli Odden, dean and chair of the Division of Education at Mayville State University in Mayville, N.D.
Notably, the headliners were invited not to give keynote speeches at the conference, but instead to lead morning- or afternoon-long workshops in their fields. This gave conference participants the chance to not only learn from the headliners’ expertise, but also to ask questions and get guidance about situations in the participants’ hometowns.
For example, Leah Azure, a kindergarten teacher at Turtle Mountain Elementary School, was delighted to hear headliner Stollar single out – and discuss in detail – Reading Mastery, a reading series Azure’s school employs.
Reading Mastery is known as the “Cadillac” among effective, Science of Reading-based programs, and kudos to the Turtle Mountain school for using it, Stollar said from the podium.
High grades for event
That local knowledge and attention to detail on Stollar’s part was impressive, Azure said.
“I’ve seen some amazing presenters at this conference, and I’ve acquired a lot of information,” Azure continued. Moreover, “it’s so useful to get to see other teachers and to talk about what’s working for them in their classrooms.”
All things considered, Azure said, “this is my first year attending this conference, and I’m so glad I’ve had the opportunity to be here at UND.
““I’m very excited, and I’m sure I’ll be able to use what I’ve learned here.”
Thanks to a grant from North Dakota EPSCoR or Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, the teachers who attended the conference were eligible to receive up to two continuing education credits free of charge. That represented a savings of up to $160.
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