Kentucky Teacher

Bellarmine University’s Center for Regional Environmental Studies is hosting a free public symposium on climate change Sept. 22.

Advance registration, available online at http://buclimate.eventbrite.com/, is required.

The symposium, funded by a grant from NASA Kentucky’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, is open to anyone wishing to hear directly from scientists involved in climate change research. Teachers attending the event will receive free educational materials based on national science standards and designed for classroom use.

Online event registration: http://buclimate.eventbrite.com/

Center for Regional Environmental Studies: www.bellarmine.edu/green/

For more information, contact Jason Cissell at (502) 718-6512.

September marks an important month for Kentucky’s preschool program. In September, school districts are required to certify that they have collaborated with their Head Start partners to ensure that the use of federal funds were maximized during the school/Head Start enrollment process.

Full utilization ensures  state resources are leveraged with our federal resources. It also fosters a stronger partnership between school districts and Head Start, reduces duplication of services and allows the maximum number of children to be served. It makes good business sense, and it is in the best interest of all our children and families.

For more information regarding the requirements of full utilization, contact Joe Roberts, Governor’s Office of Early Childhood, or Bill Buchanan with the Kentucky Department of Education.

Education Commissioner Terry Holliday is encouraging school districts to participate this fall in the Gallup Student Poll, a survey for students in grades 5 through 12 which measures three positive indicators for student success: hope for the future, engagement with school, and wellbeing.

An overview of the Gallup Student Poll can be found at here. Districts must register to participate in the poll and that can be done at this same link.

Students will take part in the free, 10-minute poll in October. The survey tracks three key indicators of success in 5^th-12^th grade students:

• Hope – the ideas and energy students have for the future.  This drives attendance, credits earned and GPS of high school students and is often a better predictor of college success than high school GPA and ACT scores.
• Engagement – student’s involvement in and enthusiasm for school.  Engagement can distinguish between a high-performing and low-performing school. Continue Reading

Professional development training credits are being offered for participation in the 2012 Kentucky Historic Preservation Conference, Sept. 20-22, in Princeton, by the Kentucky Department for Local Government, Kentucky League of Cities, Kentucky Real Estate Commission, Kentucky Chapter of the American Planning Association, Central Kentucky Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Kentucky Main Street Program.

Educational sessions will take place in Princeton, while additional activities including tours and workshops are being offered in Dawson Springs, Eddyville and Kuttawa. Registration after Sept. 7 is $150 for Preservation Kentucky members and $175 for others. Details about continuing education credits, programming and registration are available at http://www.kypreservationconference.org/

For more information, contact Diane Comer at (502) 564-7005, ext. 120.

Kentucky’s new school and student accountability and assessment system meets the requirements of Senate Bill 1 and the pledges of the state’s waiver from the No Child Left Behind Act. For Kentucky school board members and superintendents, one of those challenges will be explaining the Unbridled Learning system and what the measures of student achievement mean at the local level.

To help school board members, KSBA is devoting the program of this year’s Fall Regional Meetings to this topic. The program will include an examination of:

• school and district measures of achievement, growth, gap, college and career readiness and high school graduation rates
• how those numbers lead to an overall score, resulting in a first-ever set of rankings by the state for every elementary, middle and high school and district
• what parents will see in the new school report cards, which measure each student’s test scores in reading, mathematics, science and language arts skills. Continue Reading

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Environmental Education grants program supports environmental education projects that enhance the public’s awareness, knowledge and skills to make informed environmental decisions and take responsible actions towards the environment.

EPA will host a webinar/conference call for potential applicants interested in additional information about the application process on Wednesday, Sept. 26 at 4 p.m. EDT. For more information, click here.

Those interested may submit questions up to two business days prior to each webinar/call to EEGrants@epa.gov. A consolidated list of the questions will be answered on the calls and/or on the Frequently Asked Questions page.

The deadline for applications for the 2012 EE Regional Model Grants program is Nov. 21. Sign up for e-mail updates.

The Real World Design Challenge (RWDC) is an annual competition that provides high school students, grades 9-12, the opportunity to work on real world engineering challenges in a team environment.

Each year, student teams will be asked to address a challenge that confronts our nation’s leading industries. Students will utilize professional engineering software to develop their solutions and also will generate presentations that convincingly demonstrate the value of their solutions. The RWDC provides students with opportunities to apply the lessons of the classroom to the technical problems that are being faced in the workplace.

Every teacher who participates in the RWDC gets $1 million in professional engineering software along with training, curriculum materials and access to mentors. Teams of 3-7 high school students use these resources to solve an engineering challenge that is currently faced by industry.

Students first compete in a state level Governor’s Cup. The team with the best design in each state gets an all-expenses-paid trip Continue Reading

Kentucky Geographic Alliance (KGA) has started Kentucky in the News for the 2012-13 school year.

This KGA initiative takes a recent piece of Kentucky news and relates it to geography through a map, creating a geographic learning tool for teachers to share with students. Those interested should e-mail KGA to request a larger version of the map or to request the data used for calculation (to use in mathematics) to integrate geography into lessons.

All older editions of Kentucky in the News can be found at www.kga.org/kynews.html. The first edition features the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The Kentucky School Boards Association (KSBA) is accepting nominations of outstanding education leaders and advocates for recognition during the association’s 77th annual conference Feb. 1-3 in Louisville.

The nominations are being accepted for the following awards:

KSBA Friend of Education Award

This will mark the 24th presentation of the KSBA Friend of Education Award. One award will be presented to an individual, an organization, a business or a corporation in recognition of support for public education in your home community as well as across the state. Board members and superintendents may not be nominated for this recognition. Nominations may come from any district that has not had a nominee selected for the award in 10 years. Selection is by a statewide panel of education leaders. Continue Reading

The 77th Annual Kentucky Council of Teachers of English/Language Arts conference will be Feb. 22-23, 2013, at the Cincinnati Marriott at River Center in Covington.

This year’s theme is Exploring Literacy and the Common Core Standards, and proposals to present are being accepted until Nov.1.

Proposals can be submitted at http://conference.kcte.org/call.html.

For more information, contact Kerry Stephenson at conference@kcte.org.

Visit www.kcte.org/ for updates.