top of page
ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM
January 21, 2019, marks the
6th Annual Professional development day.
We welcome you to the West Central Winter Symposium
and hope you have a great day of learning.
FROM THE BEGINNING...
The West Central Winter Symposium had some humble beginnings. As technology began to increase in usage in the district, we began training staff through our inservice days before school started, during the school year, and often after school had started. Staff members were issued laptops for the first time in the summer of 2009 and trained in the fall. High school students were issued laptops in the fall of 2010, and the January in-service concept began to materialize. In winter of 2011 we brought TIE and ESA staff members to help train teachers on the use of technology. In the spring of 2011, the state cut funding for education and one of the hits was in the professional development area for our schools.
PARTNERING FOR MORE...
In looking for creative ways to produce high-quality professional development, we turned to the idea of West Central staff members delivering course knowledge to each other. This allowed for the differentiation of content as well as diversity of topics. Having done some modified plans in other ways, our fearless team of educators took to the challenge of creating a worthwhile day of PD. Thus in January of 2012, the first real grass roots day was conceived. With only West Central staff members, we created a high-quality PD day, complete with many topics. A retirement and subsequent rehire at Madison of our long-time Curriculum Director, Dianna Tyler, we forged a partnership with the Madison School District. This began in January of 2014 whereby the two schools shared several sessions together for the first time.
EVOLUTION AT ITS FINEST
As we touted the symposium concept in our AdvancEd review in the spring of 2014, the visitation review team made a bold suggestion to “spread the wealth” of this day to other districts. We invited several area schools for the 2015 version and added Baltic, McCook Central, and Viborg-Hurley. In 2016, Garretson, Montrose, and Tri-Valley schools joined the symposium and in 2017, Colman-Egan. The 2018 Winter Symposium served and provided presenters from 8 area districts, making it the most popular year yet. 2019
bottom of page