Once Upon a Time... AUTHOR: DR. GORDON TAYLOR Region 10 ESC Executive Director
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NCE upon a time I knew what “normal” was. Eighteen months of pandemic means I don’t know what “normal” means in day-to-day professional and personal life. I’ve heard of “the NEW normal” and “the altered normal” but I believe that it will be years before we can establish and understand what is normal. So, while “normal” may not exist, we still have expectations, and at Region 10 our expectations are high. We continue to do our ordinary work of helping students and educators. Here are a few examples of how our ordinary work became extraordinary last year:
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Region 10 was the largest provider of Texas Instructional Leadership (TIL) in the state. Currently, we are serving 105 campuses in 15 districts.
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TEA outsourced the management of the federal Education Assistance to Non-public Schools (EANS), $152M of grants, to Region 10 because of our experience working with private non-profit schools.
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Last school year, Region 10, through a wide array of opportunities in-person, remote and hybrid, and through our online My Professional Learning portal, provided high-quality professional development and continuing education to 456,482 individuals and 846,176 contact hours of training.
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Region 10 weathered the past two years and is in a solid financial position. We anticipate paying off the 10 year loan for the building renovations this December, eight years early.
Here are a few projects that we hope will meet the needs of our schools this current year in extraordinary ways:
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To create a new hybrid version of teacher certification we are working with Texas A&M – Commerce to convince SBEC and Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to speed the process of producing certified teachers and graduates quicker and with lower costs.
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Region 10 has created Team of 8 Board Training sessions and related administrator training that focus on leading during turbulent times. Helping remind board members that their true focus should always be the students, while helping them deal with the confrontational public.
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The Region 10 Communications team has initiated a program for conducting communications audits that help districts study and understand their internal and public communications and information practices.
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The Data Solutions team is developing new Technology Enhanced Items in TEKSBank to help schools in the transition to non-multiplechoice assessment as required in HB3906; and has developed Accelerated Instruction tools to support HB4545 with Eduphoria and Edugence.
Region 10 has never wanted to be “normal,” so we are going to focus on our ordinary work and make sure we produce extraordinary results with our schools.
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