May 2022

Pictured here: Students and speech therapist from Appalachian State Academy at Middle Fork, enjoying the use of the lemonade stand they wrote and received a PSP mini-grant for.

The Fruits of Our Labor!

As is customary this time of year, you are naturally saying goodbye to students, staff, and families, and reflecting on all of the positive lessons learned throughout your year. Likewise, you may have just noticed a breakthrough with a certain student in reading, just made a connection with a certain parent who finally trusted you, or just finished a long unit, degree, or certification-- and now the year is over! You are finally able to step back and enjoy the profits or gains achieved as a result of your hard work, and it feels good! Do me a favor--don't forget that feeling! Take it all in, reflect on it, journal about it, and hold these victories close as you prepare to move on. These bite-sized moments of bliss will come in handy again one day when you're having a long day. Yes, victory is sweet and the fruits of your labor can taste even sweeter when you have worked hard, planted seeds, and cultivated success. Enjoy that fresh fruit! You deserve every bite!

Dr. Betsy Rosenbalm, NBCT

Public School Partnership, Director

NC New Teacher Support Program, Regional Director

Reich College of Eduction, Office 404 G

Appalachian State University; (704) 657-0764

rosenbalmem@appstate.edu

Calling ALL Beginning Teachers in the Public School Partnership!

Click HERE to register for this fun and informative FREE event!

Last year, App State was one of six institutions selected by the Principal Fellows Commission through a competitive grant process to be the recipient of recurring grants from the North Carolina Principal Fellows Program, which provides a pathway for 12 state school districts and the Northwest Regional Educational Service Alliance to train and support future principals through the Reich College of Education’s online Master of School Administration program.

To read more about our first cohort of 15 App State NC Principal Fellows, read the press release here! https://rcoe.appstate.edu/news/app-state-names-first-cohort-principal-fellows

Pictured above: Alexander County Spring Mini-Grant recipients at their ACS School Board Meeting on May 18, 2022

Summer Mini-Grant Winners!

Congratulations! The PSP Mini-Grant Committee chose the winning mini-grants this summer based on their alignment to our goals of collaboration, sustainability, and innovation. According to our evaluation process, we were able to fund TEN applications/projects! The current approved projects are as follows:

Fall PSP Mini-Grant money is available! Here is the revised Mini-Grant Application for the

September 30 deadline!

Applications must be emailed to rosenbalmem@appstate.edu no later than September 30, 2022 at 5pm. The Mini-Grant Committee will reconvene the second week of October to evaluate the applications for the Fall of 2022. Apply Now!

We are ramping up for another exciting summer of App State Mountaineer Readers! The Mountaineer Readers initiative began in the fall of 2007 as a partnership between App State’s Reich College of Education and App State Athletics with the purpose of supporting literacy in our surrounding counties. More recently, the group included students from schools in 13 regional public school units across Northwest NC! Thank you for continuing to participate in this exciting partnership!

Check out this article to read about last year's Mountaineer Readers experience!

https://rcoe.appstate.edu/news/mountaineer-readers-celebrated-app-state-football-game-november-13

To begin the process for the 2022-2023 year, the media coordinator for each elementary school will want to pass out the MR Reading Log sheet and the Mountaineer Reader Prizes flyer. Students will take the reading logs home at the end of the school year and complete reading logs according to how many pages they read over the summer. Parents will need to verify and sign the form(s).

When the students return to school in the fall of 2022, students will need to turn in their COMPLETED reading logs to the school-level media coordinator by the first Wednesday of the school year.

School media coordinators need to tally the student log sheet totals and complete a designated form electronically to submit to Dr. Rosenbalm no later than Wednesday, September 7, 2022. Email me at rosenbalmem@appstate.edu if you did not receive this information.

Dr. Rosenbalm will inform schools of the winners by Monday, September 12, 2022. More classroom-based and school-based award details are included in the attached image, but make note that the grand prize winners will be invited to participate in a football game recognition at Appalachian's Kidd Brewer Stadium this fall! Date, time, and rival team will be announced very soon!

Attention, Faculty & Staff!

The PSP needs your help with 2 initiatives! If you are interested in being a part of these partnerships, fill out the quick form(s) below!

1) Adopt a Teacher Cadet Classroom! The PSP and the NWRESA are working together in 2022 to build small teacher pipelines in each of our Partnering districts! We are doing this by funding the Teacher Cadet (TC) Program in each of our interested PSP high schools. By paying for a two day Teacher Cadet Training on June 2 and 3, 2022 in the RCOE, 28-30 committed Teacher Cadet Teachers will then go back to their districts and teach future educators in their Sophomore, Junior, or Senior years of high school with a project and practicum-based curriculum which exposes students to the wonderful world of teaching! We will be partnering with these classrooms to provide mini-grant funding, Teacher Cadet Days on our App Campus, and best of all---we want to provide one faculty or staff member from our App State Educator Preparation Program with each TC classroom! This liaison may do things such as:

Be a guest speaker in the adopted TC class once a semester, upon request
Provide resources for the TC Classroom, upon request
Connect the TC class with App State programs, upon request
Give/arrange a tour of the RCOE for visiting TC students, upon request

If you are interested in adopting a TC Classroom SIGN UP HERE! Betsy will meet with interested faculty/staff to discuss next steps in the summer of 2022.

2) Offer Mini-Grant Support! The PSP gives away up to $20,000.00 a year in mini-grant money to P-12 and/or App State educators who work together to create collaborative projects and opportunities in classrooms across our region! We had 34 mini-grant applicants just this spring of 2022 and have opened the window for summer mini-grants at this time. Read HERE for more details.

Ideally, mini-grant projects should be focused on the preparation and/or professional development of practicing teachers, practicing administrators, practicing faculty members, or current students. Projects should include the involvement of teachers, administrators, teacher education/RCOE faculty, and/or clinical interns in the planning/implementation/evaluation process, when possible. Projects should also be innovative, sustainable and collaborative in nature.

Unfortunately, many times our P-12 teachers do not know who to partner with from App State to enhance their projects and sustain their materials. The PSP Mini-Grant Committee would like to compile a list of faculty and staff who are willing to partner with a P-12 teacher who may need university support, ideas, or extension opportunities. If you are willing to be connected with a PSP educator on a mini-grant idea on occasion, SIGN UP HERE!

Thank you all for being willing to share you expertise and passions with our Public School Partners!

PSP Summer Book Club!

Can you believe summer is finally here? It's a perfect time to recharge and reflect. Those long summer days give us an opportunity to think about the educators we want to be and the impact we want to make. This summer, Chalk and Chances (led by App State RCOE Assistant Professor, Dr. Julie Hasson) will be providing a free, online summer book study of Safe, Seen, and Stretched in the Classroom. Julie will be dropping a video each week starting June 3rd. The videos will dive into the theme of each chapter, along with reflection questions and a weekly challenge. So grab your flip flops and your copy of Safe, Seen, and Stretched and join us! You can learn more about the summer book study in this short video.

Wishing you a wonderful end of the school year-
Dr. Julie Hasson

(and your friends at the RCOE Public School Partnership!)

Digital Teaching & Learning

NCBOLD (#ncbold) is a free digital teaching and learning conference hosted in each of North Carolina's eight educational regions. Sessions are created by and for public educators across North Carolina. Presenters were specially selected for their expertise in delivering high quality professional learning.

We are pleased to announce that NCBOLD registration is now open at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfn7L5LWm7FqtG64bzaxvxwsxSxsyXeGueZT4Z57DxTjYjJvQ/viewform.

The host sites and dates on our side of the state are:

July 18 - Central Wilkes Middle School, Wilkes County Schools | Northwest Region
July 19 - Oak Grove High School, Davidson County Schools | Piedmont-Triad Region
July 20 - Kannapolis Middle School, Kannapolis City Schools | Southwest Region
July 21 - Brevard High School, Transylvania County Schools | Western Region

Registration is free to all public educators in North Carolina. A light breakfast and lunch will served at each site. Participants can earn up to 0.7 CEUs in Digital Learning (participants must follow their PSU guidelines for the awarding of renewal credits).

Space is limited to 400 educators at each site. Participants should bring a fully charged device (laptop or tablet). Attendees should plan to be on site around 8 AM thru 4 PM.

Please direct any questions to either Lauren Boucher (lauren.boucher@dpi.nc.gov) or Brian Whitson (brian.whitson@dpi.nc.gov). Please share with others.

Resources for YOU!

Reference: https://blog.tcea.org/what-empathy-how-practice-empathy-classroom/

Links to Make Us Think!

Engaging Opportunities!

1) STEM Intensives Virtual Professional Learning Community

Are you seeking to improve your understanding and facilitation of STEM? Apply TODAY to participate in the STEM Intensives!

The STEM Intensives are a virtual professional learning community (PLC) that is centered on effective STEM facilitation and capacity building for up to 5 programs across North Carolina. The participating programs will utilize the PEAR Dimensions of Success framework as a guide, gain access to FREE lessons, engage local, state, and national STEM partners, and earn a stipend to purchase materials. Each program will be responsible for collecting data (i.e., pre-and-post surveys), attending a monthly session (1.5 hours), and implementing the STEM content within their programs.

The programming duration is June 2022 to February 2023 (9 months). Priority will be given to programs located in counties with less than five STEM Assets. To view the STEM Asset Mapping Database, visit www.ncafterschool.org/stem-opportunity-spotlight. Please note that two (2) professionals from a program must participate in the STEM Intensives.

APPLY HERE!!

2) Caminos: Building Pathways with Latinx Educators

Caminos: Building Pathways with Latinx Educators is an event hosted by the Friday Institute for K-12 Latinx educators in North Carolina. This event is an extension of our NC Conference for Educational Equity. We invite Latinx educators to convene on June 16, 2020, to share their journeys to careers in education, systemic obstacles they have experienced, and successful strategies to minimize those barriers. In addition, we are seeking to gain insight into how we can build stronger pathways for future generations of Latinx educators. This event will include a keynote speaker, panel discussion, and plenty of opportunities to network.

Travel reimbursements and hotel accommodations are available for up to 20 participants. Please contact Dr. Patricia Hilliard, plhillia@ncsu.edu, for more information.

3) NWRESA PD Opportunities for Summer & Back to School 2022

Check out THIS LINK for all of the amazing things happening at the NWRESA this summer and beyond!

4) 2022 NC Beginning Teacher Virtual Summit: Reaching for the Stars!

5) Next International ASU Summer Symposium on Film and Photography During and After the Holocaust

Appalachian State University’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies will hold the 20th Annual Martin and Doris Rosen Summer Symposium from July 23-28, 2022. This 20th Anniversary Symposium will focus on Film and Photography During and After the Holocaust. The language of instruction is English. The symposium will take place in the form of a hybrid event. Pandemic conditions permitting, we will hold in-person programs on the App State campus. In addition, we will include ZOOM programs and also make it possible for teacher-participants to join virtually and remotely.

Register HERE!

6) Summer Institute 2022: Finding Your Place to Write

We invite interested K-14 teachers of writing to join us for our inaugural Summer Institute, which utilizes the National Writing Project Summer Institute curriculum. We are accepting a maximum of 15 participants.

This year's theme is "Finding Your Place to Write." Through a series of writing activities and discussions, we will explore what it means to write about place, from a place, and in a place. Join us to find your own, unique place.

The institute takes place July 11-30 and is a HYBRID conference. Participants will spend July 11-13 on campus, then return home for virtual work that is both synchronous and asynchronous. Participants will come back to campus July 28-30 for shared readings, teaching and a final celebration. Housing and dining options are available during the in-person, on-campus days.