Our school hosted the Dupage County Social Studies Conference for its second time last week on March 1, 2019. This was in association with Institute Day, where teachers meet up to discuss personal and professional growth.

It was organized in order to promote this core concept in Dupage and Kane counties by providing programs that will benefit the schools. It also provides opportunities for the teachers of many different schools to meet up and share their own ideas that proved successful in their own class environment.

“This helps us keep our teachers fresh and up to date on changes of what’s going on in the world… there are others who are history teachers who give greater depth of knowledge on topics that maybe we didn’t know about, or talks on how you become better at teaching.  I would hope that as a result of the institute, some of the stuff that we learn transfers to the classroom,” Department Chair of Social Studies, Donald Pankuch said.

Over 850 teachers were present at this event in order to discuss professional development. Some of these included college professors talking about the latest updates on content, as well as teachers discussing how to improve their curriculum with improved teaching strategies.

Aside from teachers, students that were associated with the Rho Kappa program were also present as volunteers, giving them an opportunity to help the teachers go where they need to go.

The event was divided into three sessions, each going on at a different time of the day. The speeches touched on a variety of topics, from the most significant battles of US history to the administration of Trump. Many of them touched on innovations in education and how they can be incorporated into our curriculum. This helped the teachers learn what they can do in order to improve themselves as educators.

The teachers and presenters all hope that the institute day event will be helpful to not only them but eventually become impactful for the students and their overall education.

“First of all, I think the teachers leave here with a broader understanding of what information is available to them, and then they are able to evaluate what we do here and provide to them versus their actual students in the classroom. The students in the classroom are probably the most precious gift you have. They’re the ones who are the future generation. They’re the ones you need to educate in such a way that they’ll be able to go out in American society and succeed. So what we try to do is give them broader ideas that they may not consider and topics they may not always study, and provide them with different types of information in that way so they can evaluate that versus their student audience, and decide if the curriculum they’re offering appropriate in order to satisfy the students needs,” presenter Dr. Walter Kretchik said.