Scot Carlston of Berea, Jill Jonas of Lexington, Heather Lewis and Danielle Stidham of Richmond, and Kyle Norton of Eaton, Ohio, joined faculty members Dr. Dorie Combs and Dr. Rodney White in presenting “Taking the Lead: Providing Clinical Experiences for Pre-service Teachers in Diverse Schools.” The students shared what they learned from the Diverse School Contextual Analysis Project conducted as part of the Middle Grade Curriculum course.

For this project, each student spent a school day with a minority student from a diverse middle school. They then compared that school to another middle school of their choice.

During the conference presentation, each student shared what they learned about effective instruction for young adolescents and described how their attitudes and beliefs were affected by this experience.

Robert King of Stearns and Chase Weitkamp of Richmond joined students from Northern Kentucky University, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Louisville in “Teacher Preparation Panel-Middle Grades Education Teacher Certification in Kentucky: Pre-service Teachers’ Perspectives.”

Eight students enrolled in teacher preparation programs described the experiences that have most prepared them for teaching.

Chris Rueter of Union, Wayne Akers of Science Hill, Stephanie Barnett of Brodhead, Carl Schoensiegel of West Chester, Ohio and Kelsey Cravens of California also attended the conference and served as volunteer facilitators for presentations.

The Association for Middle Level Education’s annual conference included more than 600 sessions on more than 60 topics, including keynote addresses by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and actor and author Henry Winkler.

EKU’s students had the opportunity to gain 16 professional development hours from experts in the middle level education and young adolescent development.

The students’ participation in AMLE was sponsored by the EKU Collegiate Middle Level Association (CMLA), a grant from the Student Government Association and additional support from the Division of Student Affairs for non-traditional students and the Kentucky Middle School Association.

In addition to Combs and White, EKU CMLA faculty sponsor Dr. April Blakely, Dr. Ginni Fair and Dr. Faye Deters also made presentations at the conference.