TransformED 2026

TransformED 2026

You will be able to validate your attendance (Check-In to sessions) using your personal schedule.

8:30am EDT

Dollars & Decisions; Personal Finance Reimagined: Less Lecture, More Action

Monday October 19, 2026 8:30am - 9:45am EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

Come prepared to play! Play the games you'll use to teach investing, savings, credit, and more! Take away free, ready-to-use resources that align with the Michigan Standards of Financial Education. Though this lesson is geared toward high school, elementary and middle school resources will also be available and you're guaranteed to have fun all around!

Speakers

Janelle Merritt

Director of Community Partnerships, TRUE Community Credit Union

Monday October 19, 2026 8:30am - 9:45am EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Elementary School Teachers, Middle School Teachers, High School Teachers, Math Teachers

Company All Levels
Audience Classroom Teacher

8:30am EDT

Fact vs. Fiction: Mastering Your Stories

Monday October 19, 2026 8:30am - 9:45am EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

What internal story are you bringing to your toughest conversations? When stakes are high our brains naturally jump to conclusions. Join this workshop to master your internal narrative. You will walk away with practical tools to dismantle unhelpful assumptions, regain emotional control and enter high stakes discussions ready to achieve real results.

Speakers

Kelsea Roe

Continuous Improvement Education Consultant, JCISD

Monday October 19, 2026 8:30am - 9:45am EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, General Instruction (all/any grade levels), Administrators/Leadership

Company All Levels
Audience Classroom Teacher, Administrator/Leadership

8:30am EDT

Google Slides: Tips, Tricks, & Time Savers

Monday October 19, 2026 8:30am - 9:45am EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

Google Slides can be more than a presentation tool—it can be a time-saving system for creating, organizing, and reusing instructional materials. In this hands-on session, teachers will explore Google Slides basics along with practical tips and tricks for creating polished, transferable slide decks that are easy to update, duplicate, and use year after year.

Speakers

Darcy Heselschwerdt

Early Literacy Coach, JCISD

Monday October 19, 2026 8:30am - 9:45am EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, General Instruction (all/any grade levels)

Company All Levels
Audience Classroom Teacher

8:30am EDT

How to implement academic interventions and progress monitoring to support student growth: a workshop for elementary educators

Monday October 19, 2026 8:30am - 9:45am EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

This session will discuss how to identify and implement academic interventions and progress monitoring tools at Tiers 1, 2, and 3 at the elementary level. The majority of the session will focus on practice case studies where attendees will learn and practice how to identify the appropriate tier for intervention, the appropriate skill to target during intervention, how to identify an intervention, how to identify an appropriate progress monitoring tool, and decision-making on student progress.

Speakers

Courtney Chamberlain

Psychologist, JCISD

Dana Garcia

Psychologist, JCISD

Monday October 19, 2026 8:30am - 9:45am EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Elementary School Teachers, Administrators/Leadership, Special Educators

Company Elementary
Audience Classroom Teacher, Administrator/Leadership, Special Education

8:30am EDT

K-2 Classroom Management and Transition Strategies

Monday October 19, 2026 8:30am - 9:45am EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

This course teaches educators how to establish proactive routines, maintain positive student behavior and implement seamless, stress free transitions. This course will help with maximizing instructional time and supporting the social-emotional needs of young learners.

Speakers

Chelsea Siedzik

East Jackson Elementary Teacher, East Jackson

Monday October 19, 2026 8:30am - 9:45am EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Elementary School Teachers

9:55am EDT

"You want me to 'read' what?" Using primary and secondary sources in your classroom.

Monday October 19, 2026 9:55am - 11:10am EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

Engaging students with and thru sources--primary, secondary, fiction, non-fiction--is vital for conversation, content acquisition, and general cultural literacy. But how can we do this? We will discuss and leave with several quick "use tomorrow" strategies for getting students to interact with source material--and with each other.

Speakers

Erika Sponsler

Teacher, Western High School

Monday October 19, 2026 9:55am - 11:10am EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Elementary School Teachers, Middle School Teachers, High School Teachers, General Instruction (all/any grade levels), ELA Teachers, Social Studies Teachers

Company All Levels
Audience Classroom Teacher

9:55am EDT

A Physical Educator's PLEA: Incorporate MOVEMENT in your classrooms!

Monday October 19, 2026 9:55am - 11:10am EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

As Physical Educators for over two decades, we have been challenged to incorporate reading, writing and math into our curriculums. We happily did this, but let's flip it upside down! Today, more than ever, your students need you to incorporate movement in your classrooms. We will explain the WHY, WHAT and HOW, including some "take-away-NOW" activities you can use to get your students moving in your classrooms.

Speakers

Alison Resor

Teacher, Jackson Public Schools

Janet Devine

Jackson Public Schools

Monday October 19, 2026 9:55am - 11:10am EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Middle School Teachers, High School Teachers

Company Secondary
Audience Classroom Teacher

9:55am EDT

K-2 Classroom Management and Transition Strategies

Monday October 19, 2026 9:55am - 11:10am EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

This course teaches educators how to establish proactive routines, maintain positive student behavior and implement seamless, stress free transitions. This course will help with maximizing instructional time and supporting the social-emotional needs of young learners.

Speakers

Chelsea Siedzik

East Jackson Elementary Teacher, East Jackson

Monday October 19, 2026 9:55am - 11:10am EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Elementary School Teachers

Company Elementary
Audience Classroom Teacher

9:55am EDT

Using AI to Design Better Tests in Less Time

Monday October 19, 2026 9:55am - 11:10am EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

Good assessments are essential to good teaching. Can AI help to bridge the gap between high-level test design and high-quality question writing--all while saving teachers time? Yes! In this session you'll learn to use AI to instantly "blueprint" assessments aligned with your specific standards, ensuring that what you teach is exactly what you measure. You'll also master AI prompting techniques to generate valid, reliable test items—from multiple-choice to essays—while using AI tools to slash grading time and provide personalized student feedback. This is the ultimate shortcut for educators who want to use their testing data to help students without spending hours on manual test construction.

Speakers

Don Beck

Implementation Facilitator, Calhoun ISD

Kim Nichols

Student Services Consultant, Calhoun ISD

Monday October 19, 2026 9:55am - 11:10am EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, General Instruction (all/any grade levels)

Company All Levels
Audience Classroom Teacher

9:55am EDT

Using Place as Text & Teacher: Entry Points to Place-Based Education

Monday October 19, 2026 9:55am - 12:35pm EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

One of the fundamentals of a place-based teaching strategy is connecting your curriculum to your local place. But what do we mean by 'place'? Our places include the physical, historical, and social fabric of our communities. Authentic and student-driven investigations of place can reveal connections to history, culture, socioeconomic and civic systems, ecology, literature, chemistry, and so much more. In this session we will explore entry points to using the many facets of your place as a bridge to meaningful and compelling learning. We'll share tools for beginning to lift learning opportunities from your landscape and strategies to sustainably and collaboratively grow your own skills and capacity to be a masterful place-based educator.

Speakers

Anna Balzer

Director, Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition

Anna Balzer (she/her) is the Director of the Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition (SEMIS), a network of educators, students, and community members that facilitates school-community partnerships to develop students as citizen-stewards of healthy ecological-social systems. In this... Read More →

Lisa Voelker

Programming Director, Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition

Monday October 19, 2026 9:55am - 12:35pm EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, General Instruction (all/any grade levels)

Company All Levels
Audience Classroom Teacher

11:20am EDT

Build the System, Not the Initiative A District Infrastructure That Sustains Any Priority

Monday October 19, 2026 11:20am - 12:35pm EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

Every district has a graveyard of good ideas, initiatives that launched with energy, drifted, and quietly disappeared when the person driving them moved on. The problem is rarely the initiative. It's the absence of a durable structure to carry it.

This session gives district leaders a practical, initiative-agnostic implementation system: one set of teams, routines, coaching structures, and data practices that any priority can plug into- literacy, attendance, grading reform, AI policy, or whatever comes next. Grounded in implementation science from the National Implementation Research Network and the coherence work of Fullan and Quinn.
Participants will leave with the six essential components of an implementation infrastructure, the NIRN Hexagon as a selection gate for deciding what's worth adopting in the first place, a meeting-level operating structure that survives staff turnover, and a self-diagnostic for locating the gaps in their own district.

Participants will be able to:

Distinguish the what of an initiative from the how of implementation, and explain why sustainability lives in the latter
Identify the six components of a district implementation infrastructure and assess their district's current state
Apply a structured selection process to evaluate new programs for need, fit, and capacity before adoption
Name concrete first moves to strengthen implementation infrastructure without a reorganization

Speakers

Cari Bushinski

Director of Professional Development, Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators

Monday October 19, 2026 11:20am - 12:35pm EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Administrators/Leadership

Company All Levels
Audience Administrator/Leadership

11:20am EDT

Dollars & Decisions: Personal Finance Reimagined: Less Lecture, More Action

Monday October 19, 2026 11:20am - 12:35pm EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

Come prepared to play! Play the games you'll use to teach investing, savings, credit, and more! Take away free, ready-to-use resources that align with the Michigan Standards of Financial Education. Though this lesson is geared toward high school, elementary and middle school resources will also be available and you're guaranteed to have fun all around!

Speakers

Janelle Merritt

Director of Community Partnerships, TRUE Community Credit Union

Monday October 19, 2026 11:20am - 12:35pm EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Elementary School Teachers, Middle School Teachers, High School Teachers, Math Teachers

Company All Levels
Audience Classroom Teacher

11:20am EDT

Using Micro Data for In-Class Tier I Differentiation

Monday October 19, 2026 11:20am - 12:35pm EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

As part of our MTSS structures in Michigan, our schools regularly look at macro-data to make systems level decisions. Much of the movement for individual students comes from looking closely at micro data (data collected daily/weekly in very small, specific chunks) to make immediate instructional students for students. This micro data is most helpful in ensuring that all students have access to the supports they need to access Tier I content and be successful. This session will teach a simple strategy to educators at any level for turning micro data into an actionable classroom routine. Participants should bring a completed classroom set of either exit tickets, mastery checks, or short quizzes to practice the strategy in action and will leave the session with a differentiation small group plan to implement in their classroom that week.

Speakers

Stephanie Kristovic

Director of Instruction, Northwest Community Schools

Monday October 19, 2026 11:20am - 12:35pm EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Elementary School Teachers, Middle School Teachers, High School Teachers, General Instruction (all/any grade levels)

Company All Levels
Audience Classroom Teacher

1:45pm EDT

"You want me to 'read' what?" Using primary and secondary sources in your classroom.

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Engaging students with and thru sources--primary, secondary, fiction, non-fiction--is vital for conversation, content acquisition, and general cultural literacy. But how can we do this? We will discuss and leave with several quick "use tomorrow" strategies for getting students to interact with source material--and with each other.

Speakers

Erika Sponsler

Teacher, Western High School

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Elementary School Teachers, Middle School Teachers, High School Teachers, General Instruction (all/any grade levels), ELA Teachers, Social Studies Teachers

Company All Levels
Audience Classroom Teacher

1:45pm EDT

Build the System, Not the Initiative A District Infrastructure That Sustains Any Priority

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Every district has a graveyard of good ideas, initiatives that launched with energy, drifted, and quietly disappeared when the person driving them moved on. The problem is rarely the initiative. It's the absence of a durable structure to carry it.

This session gives district leaders a practical, initiative-agnostic implementation system: one set of teams, routines, coaching structures, and data practices that any priority can plug into- literacy, attendance, grading reform, AI policy, or whatever comes next. Grounded in implementation science from the National Implementation Research Network and the coherence work of Fullan and Quinn.
Participants will leave with the six essential components of an implementation infrastructure, the NIRN Hexagon as a selection gate for deciding what's worth adopting in the first place, a meeting-level operating structure that survives staff turnover, and a self-diagnostic for locating the gaps in their own district.

Participants will be able to:

Distinguish the what of an initiative from the how of implementation, and explain why sustainability lives in the latter
Identify the six components of a district implementation infrastructure and assess their district's current state
Apply a structured selection process to evaluate new programs for need, fit, and capacity before adoption
Name concrete first moves to strengthen implementation infrastructure without a reorganization

Speakers

Cari Bushinski

Director of Professional Development, Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Administrators/Leadership

Company All Levels
Audience Administrator/Leadership

1:45pm EDT

Holocaust Education: Best Practices to Meet Michigan's Mandate

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

As living memory of the events of the Holocaust passes with those who lived it, it is more important than ever that teachers have the breadth of knowledge and skills to teach the events of this history, and to engage students in literature related to it. Michigan has a mandate of at least 6 hours of Holocaust and genocide instruction in grades 8-12, but many districts are not meeting that mark. This session will help teachers learn the tools available and the best practices in Holocaust education today from an educator who was part of the inaugural Auschwitz-Birkenau Legacy Fellowship, who has traveled to Germany and Poland to engage in Holocaust study, and has taught a Holocaust history elective since 2022.

Speakers

Abby Tanner

Northwest High School Teacher, Northwest Community Schools

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Middle School Teachers, High School Teachers, ELA Teachers, Social Studies Teachers

Company Secondary
Audience Classroom Teacher

1:45pm EDT

K-2 Classroom Management and Transition Strategies

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

This course teaches educators how to establish proactive routines, maintain positive student behavior and implement seamless, stress free transitions. This course will help with maximizing instructional time and supporting the social-emotional needs of young learners.

Speakers

Chelsea Siedzik

East Jackson Elementary Teacher, East Jackson

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Elementary School Teachers

Company Elementary
Audience Classroom Teacher

1:45pm EDT

Making Social Studies Engaging with Student Choice and Projects

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

Transform Engagement Across Every Social Studies Classroom
From 6th-grade Geography to High School Economics, discover a flexible framework that empowers students to choose how they demonstrate their content knowledge and skills—whether through dynamic, hands-on projects or traditional coursework.

Speakers

Max Clark

Continuous Improvement Education Consultant, JCISD

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Middle School, High School Teachers

Company High School
Audience Classroom Teacher

1:45pm EDT

The PBL Shift: Designing Learning that Solves Real Problems

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

Experience a fast, hands-on Project‑Based Learning (PBL) simulation that demystifies PBL and gives you practical, classroom‑ready ways to bring meaningful projects into your curriculum. PBL is widely recognized for its ability to deepen understanding and boost student engagement. However, many teachers hesitate to use it because it can feel difficult to implement. In this interactive session, participants will experience a fast‑paced mini PBL unit and unpack the key elements that make project‑based learning both powerful and manageable. Participants will leave with a clear sense of what true PBL looks like, along with practical ideas for integrating meaningful projects into their curriculum.

Speakers

William Montgomery

Math/Science & STEM Lead Education Consultant, JCISD

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Middle School Teachers, High School Teachers, ELA Teachers, Math Teachers, Science Teachers, Social Studies Teachers, Art Teachers, Music Teachers, Physical Education Teachers, Administrators/Leadership, Special Educators

Company Secondary
Audience Classroom Teacher, Administrator/Leadership, Special Education

1:45pm EDT

Using Micro Data for In-Class Tier I Differentiation

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT

Middle School at Parkside

Limited Capacity seats available

As part of our MTSS structures in Michigan, our schools regularly look at macro-data to make systems level decisions. Much of the movement for individual students comes from looking closely at micro data (data collected daily/weekly in very small, specific chunks) to make immediate instructional students for students. This micro data is most helpful in ensuring that all students have access to the supports they need to access Tier I content and be successful. This session will teach a simple strategy to educators at any level for turning micro data into an actionable classroom routine. Participants should bring a completed classroom set of either exit tickets, mastery checks, or short quizzes to practice the strategy in action and will leave the session with a differentiation small group plan to implement in their classroom that week.

Speakers

Stephanie Kristovic

Director of Instruction, Northwest Community Schools

Monday October 19, 2026 1:45pm - 3:00pm EDT
Middle School at Parkside 2400 4th St Jackson, MI 49203

Best Practice/Instructional Strategies, Elementary School Teachers, Middle School Teachers, High School Teachers, General Instruction (all/any grade levels)

Company All Levels
Audience Classroom Teacher