Standard 6: Educators and leaders participate in an ongoing system of STEM-specific professional learning.
Concept 1: School/program facilitates professional learning opportunities for educators and leaders that lead to improved efficacy in specific areas of responsibility (such as STEM disciplinary content knowledge or instructional coaching)
Our school values Professional Learning. Below you will find examples of conferences we attend. In addition, the link below has a folder of workshop certificates.
Georgia Association of Career Technical Eduactors (GACTE)
Each summer, Carrollton High School pays for CTAE teachers to attend the GACTE conference. The conference has large group sessions related to being a CTAE teacher and smaller breakout sessions for specific learning topics. This conference is a multi-day conference usually in Atlanta or Athens. The Computer Science department has had 100% attendance at this conference over the last 5 years.
To learn more, visit www.gacte.org/.
To learn more, visit www.gacte.org/.
Regional Computer Science Summit/Workshop (CompSci Con)
Participation in Georgia’s first Regional Computer Science Summit/Workshop, CompSci Con provided engagement in the district training on how to implement Computer Science as a new K-12 discipline and moved the Computer Science initiative into all four levels of schools at CCS. In addition the roll out of new state standards for Computer Science was shared with the CCS group representing teachers, administrators and university partner professors who discussed some of the key characteristics for implementing K-12 Computer Science and the Georgia specific dynamics. This session led to the creation of a Computer Science Comprehensive Plan that would guide the implementation. Carrollton City currently has one teacher with the CS Endorsement and three enrolled in a Computer Science Endorsement program.
Georgia Educators Technology Consortium (GaETC)
The GaETC is a regional conference with several big speakers. The speakers usually have great tips, but year to year the topics stay similar. Our CTAE department doesn't typically send every teacher to this conference, but we usually take turns every third year or so. Dr. Moss has attended this conference 3 times in the last 5 years. Mr. Blakemore has attended it twice in the last 5 years.
To learn more, visit gaetc.org.
To learn more, visit gaetc.org.
RESA STEM Conference
The RESA STEM Conference is a local conference for the West Georgia area. We usually send 4-5 teachers to attend the event. We normally have between 2-4 presentations that we do as well. Most of the presentations are related to Computer Science, STEM or Technology.
To learn more, visit their registration page.
To learn more, visit their registration page.
Company Externships
Our Computer Science Department has made reaching out to the community a habit. We assembled a team of K-12 teachers to visit local and innovative companies. Our plan is to tour various companies to get information about what is required for entry level work. The goal is that initiating these relationships will benefit with more Work Based Learning opportunities and better prepared students.
Company Tours
Our Computer Science Department has also toured local higher education sites to learn about how technology being taught and implemented at the next level. We often discuss how curriculum being taught and the overall vision of the degree programs. We often adopt similar strategies and try to align the education pathway to prepare students to be successful. One specific example is how students use unit testing in program suites to provide comprehensive error checking. Unit tests are not apart of the high school curriculum, however, we started implementing unit tests in variety of assignments, so students would be more familiar when they encounter them.
Concept 2: School/program facilitates professional learning opportunities for educators and leaders that lead to improved efficacy in STEM-Specific practices (such as project-based learning, STEM integration, technology integration, etc)
Lunch and Learns
Our STEM team has been providing "Lunch and Learns" for a few years. They usually have teachers provide a 15 minute lesson during each of the 4 lunches.
Here are a few examples of lessons:
Here are a few examples of lessons:
Technology Team
The Technology Team provides teachers with tips for using technology in the classroom. They have compiled a lot of resources that they share as well.
Advisory Board
As documented in the previous standards, our Advisory Board functions as a way to learn what is happening in the Computer Science industry in our local community.