PDS Welcome
Welcome back to the prospects of another great year in education! With all of the political
unrest both statewide and nationally, it is reassuring that the care and development of our
future remains in the caring hands and hearts of educators!
It is our hope that your summer time away was restful and rewarding. We are looking
forward to another great year with our KUPDS Alliance. So many of our graduating seniors
write and email us about their making the “right choice” in selecting PDS schools for their
growth and development in student teaching. In fact, many have selected PDS districts and
schools in which to take their first-time teaching job. Many of them are hired for the same
building they student taught. That says a great deal about your commitment and mentoring of
these new teachers.
In continuing conversations about the KUPDS program, several suggestions have come forth
that bare exploring further. We currently have four PDS Executive Council meetings
stretched over the academic calendar year. We have had discussions about how and when we
meet to be more convenient and meaningful for our members. One suggestion was that we
have a calendarwith all meeting dates in advance for planning. Another suggestion was to
continue with the Doodle polls for convenient time and date choices. Many of you prefer the
virtual meetings to make it easier to participate and a couple would rather in person. To
honor everyone’s preferences, we will have one in-person meeting each semester and one
virtual meeting each semester. We would also like to return to the Meet & Greet in October
to allow principals, teacher liaisons, student teachers, and university faculty to get together
and intermingle with each other for the spring PDS placement. This is more in the true spirit
of the PDS model of preservice and continuous improvement.
We are having two in-person executive council meetings this year in two of our PDS district
offices. We need to all work together to help plan an agenda and definitely include PDS
building liaisons, student interns, and KU faculty.
We have included a copy of the KUPDS calendar for the 2022-2023 academic year. We look
forward to another great year with our wonderful schools. Please let us know what we can do
for you.
Warm regards,