Educators across the Danville Independent School District took part in many summer training sessions that aimed to prepare them for new or ongoing initiatives focused on student success. 

This included Career Connected Learning-focused training on Paxton-Patterson career kit labs and virtual reality (VR) opportunities, training through the Kentucky Coalition for English Learners, Edmentum training (which replaces Edgenuity), as well as special education, writing and secondary math training, and more. These are only a few examples of the professional development that happened over the summer. 

Eight teachers shared their experiences from six of these training sessions.

Photos of Paxton Patterson career lab kits from Susan Wheeler.

 

Paxton Patterson training

Edna L. Toliver Intermediate School Discover Lab Teacher Susan Wheeler was able to complete labs during summer training alongside Mary G. Hogsett Primary School Kindergarten Teacher Rosie Dean. They went through the kits as if they were students themselves.

“The labs were incredibly engaging, and I am so excited that each of our students will have the opportunity to learn through these hands-on experiences,” Wheeler said. 

She said a takeaway from the training is “the labs are student-led and designed to include a lot of productive struggle.” 

She’s excited to connect learning to real-world experiences, like how the manufacturing lab can connect to concepts like meeting a weekly production quota.  

“I love that the labs naturally create opportunities for students to problem-solve, think critically, and make connections to careers and everyday life,” she said. 

At the middle school level, Jessica Whittemore also participated in Paxton Patterson training. She’s the Technology Resource Teacher and Career Lab Teacher at John W. Bate Middle School. 

“We … had time to network with teachers who have been using Paxton-Patterson to learn some insider tips,” she said. “We also took a lot of time to learn the LMS [Learning Management System] and how to adapt the lessons to really make them our own to fit the needs of our students.”

She said one of the trainers mentioned bringing in community members to speak to the students about different careers throughout the year.

“That is something that I definitely want to do as well,” Whittemore said. “Our district is ‘Anchored in Community.’ Our community members are such a huge asset to our schools, and I definitely want to use that to our advantage. There are so many career opportunities right here in Danville, so I want to welcome guest speakers into the classroom to share with the students about their careers.”

Whittemore added that the kits will enrich how students learn how to exercise the Portrait of a Danville Learner competencies. 

“The hands-on learning is going to be so great for our kids,” she said. “Depending on which modules they are in, students might be repairing drywall, building and launching rockets, cooking real food, creating computer code, making a Public Service Announcement video, practicing sutures on fake skin, sawing wood to make a phone stand, and more.”

VR lab training

Danville High School will incorporate VR as part of Career Connected Learning. Students will be able to experience opportunities they might not otherwise be able to.

Health Science Teacher Teena Kissee was one of the teachers who completed the VR lab training. 

“We were able to log in and visit different VR simulations and reach outside the classroom to experience health careers, surgical suites, phlebotomy, and many other health careers,” Kissee said. 

She said she’s excited for bringing VR into her classroom because it will give students a taste of what careers in health care look like. 

“For example, in the surgery tech setting, the student must don and doff personal protective equipment before moving forward,” she said. “These are skills each health provider and each student in health science has been exposed to.” 

Educators who incorporate VR will be able to bring opportunities to their students that go beyond “traditional classroom walls,” Kissee said. 

“This will allow for virtual job shadowing experiences and career exploration, not to mention the capabilities of virtual dissections,” she said. 

 

Kentucky Coalition for English Learners training

Danville High School English Teacher Sarah Eisenback, who teaches English as a Second Language (ESL), participated in a Kentucky Coalition for English Learners summer training in Owensboro along with Toliver’s English Language Teacher Rachel Hasty.

Eisenback said it gave an overview on language acquisition, socioemotional support in the classroom, and strategies on how to think about perspective when it comes to multilingual learners. 

It helped her consider how to create lessons and tasks that best support EL students, including extra focus on vocabulary, modeling fluency, repetition in support of literacy growth, and comprehension checks. 

“Routine and consistent patterns in the classroom can make a huge difference for an EL student, providing extra support of predictability, familiarity and practice,” Eisenback said. “I also appreciated the discussions and encouragement behind project-based units, how to confront teacher efficacy and imposter syndrome, and how to include effective oracy activities in the classroom.”

Edmentum training

Edmentum is replacing Edgenuity in the Danville Independent School District for online curriculum. Anchor Academy teachers, Homebound Teacher Mona Smith, and several other educators completed training on Edmentum over the summer. 

Smith will use Edmentum on a daily basis, since she works with students who are unable to attend school in person due to a medical condition, often for an extended period of time. 

The trainer, a former teacher, led the participants as they logged in as students to navigate the platform. Smith said it was great to use the platform from this perspective, and to log in as the student’s teacher to view reports. 

“What impressed me the most about Edmentum is that teachers can omit units or move them to suit the needs of our district and individual students,” she said.

Anchor Academy Teacher Jeremy Vaught also completed the training. He said he’s most excited about all the different electives the platform gives students the option to take.

“They offer classes that will allow students to see if they want to pursue a career in that field,” he said. 

 

Photos of Brittany Terrell's class from the 2025-2026 school year as they completed math projects during the spring semester.

 

Secondary math training

John W. Bate Middle School Math Teacher Brittany Terrell participated in Bate’s second year of the Access to Algebra: Foundations for Teaching and Learning training. The educators completed several projects as though they were students.

“I thoroughly enjoyed the training and left feeling inspired to incorporate more of these types of projects into my own classroom,” Terrell said. 

A strong takeaway Terrell had from the training was the value placed on helping students make meaningful connections between math and the real world. 

“I am excited to continue incorporating more of these projects into my instruction,” Terrell said. “Last year, I implemented several projects from the training, including Unit Dog, where students created a dog from a cardstock net and calculated its surface area and volume. Students then worked collaboratively to scale their dog to create a ‘mama’ dog. The students were highly engaged and had a great deal of fun while applying several 7th grade geometry standards in a meaningful way.’

Terrell has already implemented a project from the summer training into her classroom, “Cereal Math.” It allowed students to review prerequisite skills before Terrell began her first 7th grade unit. 

“Students found and compared unit rates for different foods and used statistics to reason about the value of different products,” she said. “In addition to reviewing important mathematical skills, the activity helped build classroom community and gave students an opportunity to practice effective collaboration and group-work skills.”

Writing training

Some educators completed training from Write from the Beginning and Beyond that focused on response to text writing. Edna L. Toliver Intermediate School 5th Grade Teacher Emily Reece was one of the teachers who participated. 

“The training covered how teachers can use Thinking Maps to teach students to respond to text in writing,” she said. “We learned how to use Thinking Maps to respond to both literature and informational texts.”

She appreciated that the training showed how the maps can be used in all content areas. She also enjoyed the process of building the maps, talking from them, and then moving on to writing off of the map. 

“I think this training will be a game changer for our students,” Reece said. “Students are asked to write in all classes across all content areas. Response to text is a structure that students can use to tackle writing across all content areas.”

She said this will help students break down prompts, understand what’s being asked of them, prewrite and then complete formal written pieces. 

“For so long it has felt like when we ask our students to respond to text-dependent questions, they could respond beautifully orally, but they would fall apart when they had to put their thoughts into writing,” Reece said. “This is the tool they can use to help them take their thoughts and get them onto the paper.”