Imagine all of Simi Valley Unified School District’s teachers and administrative staff coming together in the same location at the same time.
That’s what happened on April 21 when more than 900 people came to Royal High School for specialized training in Common Core State Standards.
Called Core Connections, the all-day event featured 118 sessions presented by 95 speakers for staff to choose from. The idea was to inspire and instruct teachers and support staff as all of the district’s schools transition to CCSS in the next school year.
Examples of sessions offered included Non-Fiction Connections to Sophomore Literature, Teaching Your Students to Make Great PowerPoints, Engaging Unmotivated Students and Modeling Quadratics Through Movement.
The event was organized and manned by the district’s team of Teachers on Special Assignments (affectionately called TOSAs), who spent months planning and creating the event to support the arrival of CCSS. It was only the second time in recent memory an all-district/one location program for staff development has been held, with the first being in February. Another staff development event will be held next year to continue the CCSS training and support.
CCSS was adopted by the State of California and will be fully used in classrooms beginning in the 2014/2015 school year. SVUSD began implementing CCSS in some schools and classrooms over the last couple of years and has been ahead of many other districts when it comes to professional development.
Besides the work of the TOSAs, many community partners stepped in to support Core Connections, and we could not have made this work without them! We’re giving a shout-out below to all of them, but a special thank you goes out to Red’s BBQ & Grillery of Simi Valley. Red’s donated and served all of the food provided to the participants. Thank you Red’s for supporting our teachers!
OUR SPONSORS
- Book Source
- College Board
- Education Station
- James Gonzales
- Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- Interdealer Trading
- Keller Williams Realty
- Kopy King
- McGraw Hill
- Pearson Publishing
- Scholastic
- Simi Educator’s Association
- Troop Real Estate
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