The North Pike School District and North Pike Elementary School have been recognized as a Professional Development District and an Exceptional Practices School, respectively, by William Carey University.
Dr. Barry Morris, dean of William Carey’s College of Education, announced the designations at a meeting of the school district’s board of trustees Thursday evening.
Morris also awarded five certificates for one tuition-paid graduate course at the university to district mentoring teachers Kitty Sasser, Patricia Allen, Julia Adams, Jennifer Smith and Mary Lou Smith.
The certificates, worth $4,500, allow the teachers to attend a graduate-level course at William Carey at no charge.
Morris said the professional district concept was developed by William Carey to form a partnership between the university and school districts showing good practices in education to provide an opportunity to share those practices with new teachers and other school districts in the state.
He said North Pike is one of four school districts in the state selected as a professional development district.
“School districts are like universities,” Morris said. “They tend to stand alone and don’t share information. We want to change that.”
He said William Carey has a history of working with North Pike that runs more than 10 years.
“Their teachers have gone through our master’s degree program,” he said. “We’ve had more teachers from North Pike go through our master’s program than from any other school district William Carey has worked with.”
Morris said teachers from North Pike Elementary will participate in a summer workshop at the university’s Hattiesburg campus to discuss classroom programs with prospective teachers.Morris said the program was developed by the elementary school’s P-16 council. The P-16 stands for grades pre-kindergarten through age 16, Morris said.
The council is composed of teachers who volunteer for the school planning and advisory group, and North Pike Elementary Principal Bobbi Jean Dunn.
“What we proposed was to get together several small presentations and present them in an all-day workshop.” Dunn said. “What we’re doing is bringing real world needs to them. It’s bringing the clinician to the lecture hall. We’re showing them basic information on what happens in the classroom.
“Some of the things we want to show are practical things like behavior systems in the classroom — explain how to teach that (accepted behavior) to the children and reinforce or redirect until they are where they need to be so you can teach them,” she said.
Besides the summer workshop, William Carey is working on a plan to make North Pike Elementary a laboratory school to train prospective teachers.
Morris said the program will put a student in the classroom with a teacher and having them “co-teach,” or teach the class together.
“We don’t want the student sitting in the back of the classroom,” he said. “We want them teaching with the teacher.”
Morris said the best practices designation for North Pike Elementary is based on the school’s use of research-based instruction.
“Elementary schools are big risk-takers as far as teaching methods go,” Morris said. “They’re willing to try and implement different methods — they’re willing to experiment.”
Dunn said one of the staff development programs at the elementary school involves taking the most recent publication by a noted education researcher and discussing it.
She said teachers use some of the items discussed in the publications and find that in some cases they are already using the recommendations or programs in their classrooms. She called the best practices designation an affirmation of the staff’s work at the school.
Dunn said many of her teachers have attended William Carey to get their master’s degrees and for continuing education.
“We’re really proud that the hard work of our elementary teachers has brought this honor to North Pike Elementary,” said North Pike Superintendent of Schools Dr. Ben Cox.
“It’s also good that beginning teachers and prospective teachers will have a school in our area to come to see best practices,” he said.
“We’re also glad to see that we will be able able to help train teachers, and the mentoring program will be a big help to our school system and the rest of the state.”
