West Virginia Center for Professional Development Story Archives

Corrections Officers Participate in Grueling Training

As a prerequisite to working in the state’s prisons corrections officers have to spend time at the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety Professional Development Center. Cadets in the program go through several types of training there.

The Professional Development Center in Glenville in Gilmer County hosts the cadets during their training period. Among the training are things like agility obstacle courses and edged weapon defensive tactics training. Garrett Powell is a cadet at the facility.

“When I first came into the regional jail authority, the physical test was more along the lines of push-ups and sit-ups and how high you can jump,” Powell said. “The agility test really helped open it up to ensure that we are physically fit, as you saw there is jumping involved and being able to pick things up on the fly.”

The facility works to train those working in the regional jail system, juvenile services and divisions of corrections. Usually a few months after being hired and after undergoing initial training officers come to the facility and become cadets for 6 weeks.

Ron Casto is Deputy Director of Training for the West Virginia Division of Corrections.

“We work in a closed-door society, every day when we go to work the doors close behind us and the only people that get access to those facilities or the profession are the ones that we allow,” Casto said. “It’s not because we like it that way, it’s because it’s the nature of our job and the commitment we have to public service.”

He says trainers are put through rigorous training to make sure they’re ready for the job because it can be quite stressful.

“We deal with human beings, lots of times there is no black and white,” Casto said. “There is a lot of sacrifices that have to be made, we have posts that have to be covered 24 hours a day, it can be quite stressful. The average life expectancy of a correctional officer is somewhere between 56 to 57 years. “

Cadets range in age from those in their first employment to those restarting their careers.

W.Va. School Principals Learn How to Effectively Deal With a School Shooter

130 new school principals attended a training today in Charleston focused on effectively responding to an active shooter on school grounds.

In the aftermath of a number of school shootings throughout the country, the West Virginia Center for Professional Development hosted its two-day Principals’ Leadership Academy for new principals.

The academy brought in two officers to lead the discussion. Lieutenant Eric Johnson, the commander of the Metro Drug Unit and active shooter instructor for the Charleston Police Department was one of the instructors. He says if a person’s first thought is to hide when a shooter is at your school or business, they’re doing it wrong.

“We provide a simple acronym through this training,” Johnson said, “It’s ADD, and that stands for Avoid, Deny, and Defend. The first step is to avoid the shooting, avoid the killing, get away, escape. If that’s not possible then deny entry into an area where you can get yourself and others secured, and if you cannot deny that entry, or if that comes to an end, then you need to defend yourself. If you cower to a corner, or if you hide, the statistics have shown through all these events that have happened in the last fifteen years that the killing will continue.”

Johnson says it’s very important for principals to know how to use the Avoid, Deny, and Defend tactic at their schools because it takes first responders at least 3 to 15 minutes to arrive depending on a school’s location. He says principals will have to take charge and make decisions quickly to protect as many lives as possible in those minutes.

Tawny Stilianoudakis is the principal of Buffalo High School in Putnam County.

“You can’t sit there, as the lieutenant said, you can’t always sit there and think everything through, because lives could be lost,” Stilianoudakis said, “so you do have to have in your mind, played it out, and know exactly how you can react when those situations occur.”

Lieutenant Johnson says what will prepare schools the most is to ask when a shooting could happen, not if.

The Infusing Technology Conference Leads Teachers On a Road Toward the Future

Encouraging educators from across the state to take hold of new teaching and new learning opportunities is the focus of a three-day conference hosted by the West Virginia Center for Professional Development. It’s called Infusing Technology, and its overall theme is for educators to learn how to effectively teach in a digital age.

The Infusing Technology Conference welcomed approximately 100 educators from across West Virginia. The event will host more than 40 sessions during the three-day conference to help teachers bring technology into all aspects of their teaching. That includes classroom management, lesson planning, and project-based learning. Keeping students engaged during this technological boom and making the criteria personalized for them is the overall goal. Michelle Tharp, the Coordinator for Technology Integration at the West Virginia Center for Professional Development says teachers have to keep up with their students.

“So what we’ve seen is that our students aren’t engaged with worksheets anymore.” said Tharp, “They don’t want to be a part of a flat piece of paper. You know, instead of doing a book report on a piece of paper that only their teacher may see or maybe their parent may see, they can do, you know, a book report, and have it to be oral and have it to be videoed and then on YouTube, and the whole world could see. So it’s much more engaging, they want to engage in that digital, global world, and we have to be a part of that to inspire them.”

Michelle Tharp, the Coordinator for Technology Integration at West Virginia Center for Professional Development speaks on some of her favorite apps and programs.

This three-day training will focus specifically on a variety of iPad apps and resources that have been used effectively by other educators in their classrooms. Instruction will also introduce the web-based equivalent for those apps, so that teachers relying on computers rather than iPads may still use the resources. But iPads are heavily encouraged.

“For me with iPad, tablet technology, it’s accessibility. So when we talk about a mobile tablet technology, that student has access to all the resources that are available. I mean, that, to me is just amazing, and then, before our students come to us, as a young toddler, their whole entire learning process is through exploring their environment, and then we ask them, this is the only time you learn, and then they’re done, and so what we’re saying, no, we want you to continue that lifelong journey and be inspired to want to learn more, and by giving them that mobile technology, they can access whatever they want at home.”

Linda Mundy, a 5^th grade teacher at Cross Lanes Elementary School in Kanawha County will be entering her 41^st year teaching. She is very eager for the technological advance and push for iPads in classrooms. She notes that during this past year she had ten iPads in her classroom.

“It’s a time when we can be exposed to a lot of different apps and strategies,” Mundy said, “to hone or broaden our horizons, and ways to reach out and motivate our students, and a way to see the bigger picture in all of this, cause it is a digital world, and this is the way the children see things and a way to reach these children. Not a paper, pencil world anymore.”

Educators learn of ways to use their iPads effectively in the classroom at the Infusing Technology Conference in Charleston.

Kanawha County is said to be providing iPads for all middle and high school students during the upcoming year, and as a result, teachers and administrators are seeking more training to fully utilize these technologies.

This year’s Infusing Technology Conference will conclude on Thursday, June 26th.