Region 9 Education Center holds conference, expands educational opportunities for students

WICHITA COUNTY, Texas (KAUZ) - On Wednesday, June 3, the Region 9 Education Center hosted its Collaboration for Growth conference, embracing educators from all over North Texas.

Christy Johnson with Region 9 shared that this conference is all about students and collaboration. Experts from special education, bilingual ESL, GT, and other areas joined forces to inspire and equip educators. Their goal: to bring fresh expertise and real-world experience back into classrooms for the benefit of every student.

The Collaboration for Growth conference is not just an event; it is a vibrant demonstration of educators’ dedication to their students, rooted in genuine care and support.

“Building student engagement through activities that allow students to have their own voice to have their own choice of things that build on their strengths and fill in those gaps for those weaknesses, so it might be a technology tool, but it might not. In these days, sometimes our kids just might need to be engaged with each other and connect with each other,” Johnson said.

Keynote speaker Dr. Reggie Wright Jr. said that his personal experience of supporting his son kept him going, and now he encourages teachers to make a similar difference in their students’ lives.

“The challenges the adversity, the discomfort- champions show up the one thing the one thing that helped me was I, it’s that I showed up,” Wright said.

Johnson said that at the conference, educators learned from technology on how to build student engagement, allowing them to see various ways to impact their students’ education.

“It’s really about fitting those needs so that they can do all the things that they want to do, it’s preparing kids for whatever is to come, not necessarily what they are doing right now. A lot of that is that critical thinking skills, applying knowledge, and learning how those things might look in the future,” Johnson said.

She emphasized that through the vendor fair, teachers were able to see the new resources and software materials they can use in the classroom. Johnson said support from Region 9 is always there for teachers to get prepared.

“We have kind of a sports thing going on, and so it’s kind of this idea that we’re not in this alone, this is a team effort. We’re building that playbook and as those tools that we’re putting in the toolbox for our teachers,” Johnson said.

If you want to become a teacher, Region 9 will have vendors and partners on site tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.