Ignite conference gets underway

May 29—With an eye toward sharpening teachers' skills, Ector County ISD kicked off the Ignite Your Light with the Power of Literacy conference at Odessa College.

The conference began May 29 and will continue May 30 with keynote presentations at the Globe Theatre and breakout sessions at other buildings on campus. More than 500 teachers are expected to attend. The event is in its second year.

Guest speakers include Ken Shelton, Katie Martin, Gretchen Bernabei and Marlon Styles.

A motivational speaker, Shelton has been an educator for more than 20 years, spending most of his class time teaching technology at the middle school level.

Martin is the author of Learner-Centered Innovation and Evolving Education. She is the co-founder and Chief Impact Officer at Learner-Centered Collaborative.

Bernabei is a popular workshop presenter who has taught writing to middle and high school students for more than 30 years.

Styles, also a motivational speaker, has a website that states, "his mission is to inspire educators to see themselves as empowered Unifiers capable of creating the types of learning experiences today's modern learners need to thrive."

ECISD Associate Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Lilia Nanez said the district focuses on literacy throughout all content. "Our intention is to elevate our teachers with their skill and their practice of teaching. We have a diverse group of students in Ector County and we want to make sure that we equip all our teachers to be ready to serve all types of learners that we have in our classrooms," Nanez said.

Nanez said the district is always thrilled to be able to develop their teachers in any way, at any time of year.

"This is especially exciting for us because we get a bulk of our teachers, so we will get over 500 teachers over today and tomorrow, and this is a way that we can bring quality professional development, quality speakers and provide more personalized options for them through breakout sessions," she added.

Shelton talked about being a middle school educator for 13 years and his experience in graduate school.

"His background really didn't fit or conform to how education is in many areas. We want to make sure that our teachers understand that they can be themselves and they can provide a voice to all the children that they serve within the confines of their classroom. We want to make sure that teachers understand that learning should be fun. Kids should have ownership of what they are learning and understand the purpose of everything that they are learning in the classroom," Nanez said.

Shelton said he used real life to illustrate math by using lottery tickets to teach ratios and probability. He also talked about two parents working minimum wage jobs and have to use 60 percent of their salary to pay rent and still have money for school uniforms, health insurance and food in LA.

Nanez said Shelton's main message was to use the standards and make the connection of the standards to the kids in the real world.

"So what does that standard really mean for students in the real world? His main objective is to make it real for the students. Don't respond to the students by saying you have to know it because it's going to be tested on STAAR or end-of-course. ... That's what we want to encourage all our teachers to do is to find that real-world connection with all the standards that we're teaching," she added.

Shelton also talked about artificial intelligence, and in an interview after his presentation, Nanez spoke about how AI is being used in ECISD.

"AI changes as each day goes by. We are being proactive with engaging with artificial intelligence in Ector County ISD. We already are engaged in several activities with AI; a study with Stanford University where some of our high-impact virtual tutors are being tutored by an artificial intelligence large language model, which really support the tutor in helping the students understand the concepts that they're learning. We're also teaching our teachers how to leverage AI in the classroom. We are going to engage in a pilot in sixth grade this year in Ector County ISD where students can interact with literature. They can respond to the literature and then the AI will provide questions that the teacher can engage with individual students based on how the students answered or responded to the literature they read," Nanez said.

The sixth-grade language arts pilot will begin in September across all the middle schools in ECISD.

Students will get an immediate response from the AI tutor that will be built into the ECISD system and tied to their curriculum resource.

"But what's exciting about it is it will help the teacher personalize for the individual students, which sometimes is difficult for one teacher to do when you've got 30 kids in a classroom. The AI tool will actually help personalize for each one of the students that are engaged in that text and are responding to the text," Nanez said.

Secondary ECISD students have Chromebooks and laptops so students can access the curriculum through their device. The software is going to be mixed in with the curriculum resource using the large language model, she said.

The district will use reliable providers that have been vetted.

"This partnership happens to be with Chiefs for Change and Class Mojo. Chiefs for Change actually asked us to do this pilot. so we can definitely work (with) Class Mojo, that's the AI app that we will be using with our sixth-grade literature curriculum. It is vetted and designed by educators for educators, so it is a very reliable resource," Nanez said.

Martin, who was an audience member for Shelton's presentation, said he had important things to say about seeing students for who they are and get to know them so teachers can grow them.

Cavazos Elementary School kindergarten teacher Chris Maldonado said she appreciated Shelton saying that they should manage their classrooms to make sure everybody feels part of it.

"They own that classroom. It's not like it's just being dictated to them on how they have to behave and how that structure has to be. That's what I enjoyed," Maldonado said. "He also had a lot of energy, which I thought was outstanding; a great motivational speaker."

Nanez said she appreciated the community sponsors that supported the conference.

"Not only Odessa College, but you saw Forrest Tire. ... We are seeing that the community believes in what we're doing in Ector County by supporting conferences like this. They are investing in Ector County ISD because we are serving the children of this community. That is our goal and our goal is for the community to see how we serve our students, and it's great to see their support," she added.