| Joy Haynes

The Morgan County School system hosted their second annual MiniMega professional development seminar at Brewer High School Friday to help prepare for the new school year.

The seminar offered over 100 sessions in a variety of categories, according to TITLE Cherie Humphries.

“We had sessions on just about everything,” Humphries said. “Teachers and administrators were able to learn about a variety of topics including, math, writing, technology, music, ag and more. Most of them were MCS teachers who led the courses, but we also brought in people from AMSTI, Chalkable, DLK Software, Technology in Motion, Apple and more.”

Other presenters included Superintendent Bill Hopkins Jr., Director of Secondary Curriculum Patrick Patterson and Deputy Superintendent Lee Willis.

Humphries said presenters were allowed to send a proposal based on a seminar they had attended or an area of expertise. Some teachers suggested ideas for topics they wanted to learn more about.

“We had input from teachers about things they wanted to learn,” Humphries said. “Some of them wanted to get an opportunity to be a part of seminars they had missed in the past, so we were able to provide some of those. Others wanted to learn about specific ideas such as curriculum pacing, so we had presentations on those topics as well.”

MCS patterned their seminar after state-wide Megas offered to educators over multiple days.

“Megas are seminars teachers can attend where they get to attend sessions on a number of topics over several days,” Humphries said. “We took that idea and scaled it down into a MiniMega that had the same concept of letting the teachers pick their own seminars from a range of topics, but ours only lasts one day.”

Participants and presenters could keep up-to-date on the MiniMega through an app for smart phones that had updated schedules, presentation information, room locations and more. They could also share their thoughts on the day’s activities with a hashtag on Facebook and Twitter.

“We will be sending a survey to our participants to get their input about our seminar,” Humphries said. “We want to know what worked and what didn’t so we can make improvements for next year. This was just one of our many ways we try to provide our teachers and administrators with resources and professional development.”

| Joy Haynes