District Day of Learning Helps Advance Dragon Staff

One of the behind-the scenes events before the start of each school year is Carroll ISD’s District Day of Learning. This year’s focus was digital learning and staff across the district were trained on new forms of educating Dragon students.

Teachers, Instructional Technologists and Administrators across the district helped train more than 650 teachers and professional staff on Wednesday at Carroll High School and Carroll Middle School. The day included 135 training sessions, with 65 dedicated to digital learning in the classroom. This has become a much-needed focus with the swift advancements in technology.

Each staff member was required to attend four sessions during the day and the campuses were split into high school/middle school and elementary staff. It was also a day of interactive training with the Dragon staff. Teachers from around the district had the opportunity to choose sessions they wanted to learn more about as well as learn from each other.

“I loved the opportunity to learn from my colleagues,” said Meredith Davis, a Carroll Elementary 3^rd grade teacher. “Mr. Mangham (6^th Grade Durham Intermediate teacher) presented on how to excite and engage students using project based learning. My team can’t wait to incorporate this new idea into our upcoming lessons.”

Carroll Middle School principal Matt Miller said after the day was over, “Folks loved to have the various options that they could apply to their subject area and own classrooms.”

Teachers and trainers tweeted their experiences, helping spread the word to other districts and promote the training being done in Carroll ISD.

“I appreciated seeing our staff value collaboration and be willing to grow professionally,” said Dr. JJ Villarreal, Assistant Superintendent of Student Services. “Our teacher leaders who facilitate each learning session were powerful in that their use of technology to teach was practical.”