School districts across Berrien County will be working with Berrien RESA in the coming year to help teachers improve their skills. RESA Superintendent Eric Hoppstock tells us meetings were held throughout the summer for RESA to learn what it could do for the districts. The superintendents from Berrien County districts all agreed it’s important for teachers to build their capacity in core subjects. RESA can help with that.
“It means coordinated professional development,” Hoppstock said. “It really helps us as a service agency to know if these are the common objectives, we can now go out and say here’s some of the professional development we can bring individuals.”
Hoppstock says in addition to math, science, reading, and writing, there’s a goal to help teachers make students feel like they belong.
“If a student feels like, ‘Hey, my teacher cares about me, and because they care about me, I’m gong to work hard for them.”
Hoppstock says it is unique that RESA would work with schools and teachers countywide in this way, but that’s what it will be doing in the year to come. He notes the local boards of education will still control curriculum. However, RESA will work with each to help teachers with professional development.
