Ector County ISD’s Advanced Academics department is hosting a Super Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Nov. 2 at various locations at Odessa High School.
The third annual event will be in the Performing Arts Center, the school auditorium and other spots. Lunch will be in the cafeteria, Director of Advanced Academics Kristen Vesely said.
Pete Hinojosa will be the guest speaker.
Hinojosa is president and founder of Omega Quest and Quest Leadership Dynamics. He is a former high school and middle school teacher and published author.
Stephanie Wright, elementary coordinator in Advanced Academics, said they have heard Hinojosa speak at several different state gifted and talented events.
Diamondback provided the funding for Hinojosa to come to the event and Sewell Ford provided funding for the lunch.
Wright said there are other sponsors as well.
“He’s doing three different keynotes. He’ll do one that’s geared to teachers … Then he’ll have one that’s geared to parents and community and then he’ll have one that’s for” families, Wright said.
“He talks a lot about relationships with people, how to get along with people that have different personalities than you,” she added.
Although he is in business, Wright said his message still works for education.
“I think because he taught for so long before he went into the business world … he has a soft spot for teachers and educators,” she added.
Vesely said one of the things Hinojosa will also talk about is building bridges between teachers and gifted students.
Last year a little more than 300 people turned out and they are expecting a little more this year.
When the idea of Super Saturday came up, there was nothing west of Abilene for gifted and talented professional development outside of one or two.
“We really are wanting to build this up to be a community, not just an Ector County-Odessa community, but to a gifted community. We do have people who have registered from Greenwood. We have people who have registered from other school districts. We are training teachers, but not just ECISD teachers. We are training area teachers,” Vesely said.
Wright said that they have gotten interest from Pecos and talked to people in El Paso.
“I don’t know that any of them are going to come that have registered yet, but we’re excited. Like Dr. Vesely said El Paso is a lot further from Abilene than we are, and so they were excited to have something closer that they could come to,” Wright said.
Vesely said they are bringing in quality speakers to the conference who have good information. They are working with the Texas Association of Gifted and Talented to help get the word out, but also make connections to help bring some of their people in.
They are getting there slowly, but in five years, Vesely said, they hope to be much bigger.
“We’re so thankful that we have the sponsors that we have, because this was one of the events that we had to look long and hard at as to whether or not we were going to be able to put it on with our budget. If Diamondback and Sewell hadn’t stepped up and said we’ll fund it. Basically, they are funding the event between the two things that they’ve done. Paying for the keynote to come in was a huge chunk, and then paying for everybody to have food, because if people leave in the middle of a conference, they don’t come back,” Vesely said.
Others have stepped in and provided door prizes and other items.
“Our community is really what’s helping us have this conference,” Vesely said.
The goal of this conference is to offer as many opportunities for Spanish speaking families as English speaking families. They usually have a bilingual keynote, but in this case, the bilingual department will help with translation, she said.
Even if people speak languages other than Spanish, the bilingual department should be able to help as well.
“Every session and everything that the parents and the community will engage in will have a Spanish component,” Vesely said.
Secondary Coordinator Heath Anderson said the elementary teachers will have hands-on classes and the secondary will be more informational. Teachers will be able to gather information on dual credit, college and workforce.
Wright said there are five different courses that elementary teachers can choose from taught by ECISD gifted and talented teachers. Through the day, they go to three of those choice classes.
Participating gifted and talented students can attend STEM activities.
For secondary, the push is still for gifted and talented students, but they won’t turn anybody away as there will be colleges, military recruiters and Permian Basin Workforce Commission representatives on hand, Vesely said.
The goal was to have an activity that would engage the students so it would draw parents in.
“We want to help support our families, in supporting our gifted students. There’s just not a lot of resources for families, so we’re trying to build those community bridges. With that, our teachers obviously need the PD (professional development) and the help. The state requires certain number of hours of training. This gives them an opportunity to get all of the training required in a single day,” Vesely said.
They also invite counselors and administrators to attend.
“That college-secondary strand … was a dream, and (Heath Anderson) did a great job getting it off the ground last year and getting people to come and talk to our kids,” Vesely said.
Advanced Academics has Saturday professional development called Saturday Summits, but Super Saturday was going to be more than that, so they came up with Super Saturday and it stuck.
