Regional Educator Summit held at Milan Middle School

MILAN, Tenn. — Educators across the state are spending part of their summer working to be better in the classroom by attending a professional development training session.

Although school is out for students, there are teachers using the summer to develop ideas that can benefit their classroom.

Dedicated, motivated and hard-working are a few words to describe educators attending the Regional Educator Summit. Most if not all of them have students in their classroom that perform at different levels.

“Whenever you have that wide of a range in one classroom, it’s hard to differentiate your instruction to address all of their needs,” regional literacy coach Jenifer Clark said.

Katie Hall, an educator for almost 37 years, said it’s worth the effort to stay up to date. “It’s always good to keep up with the newest and the latest of techniques to help us prepare our kids for being the best students that they can be.”

The state of Tennessee says two-thirds of students graduating lack the reading skills they should have by the time they finish high school. So over 35,000 educators are participating in this valuable training session.

“It’s hard to imagine that after 13 years of a public education, two-thirds of our students are graduating and are not proficient readers, and as somebody that’s very passionate about education I want to be a part of the change” Clark said.

The teachers say their ultimate goal is to take what they’ve learned and use it in their classrooms.