Leadership in
Educational Sales Management
Perrysburg Digital Academy
All-Day Kindergarten Brochure
Perrysburg, Ohio
Description
The Perrysburg Exempted Village School District, in partnership with Pearson Digital Learning and the non-profit Waterford Institute, created an All-Day Kindergarten program in 2003. This blended-learning initiative combined the rigor of a traditional kindergarten classroom with digital curricula in both reading and math through the research-based Waterford Early Learning Program. My role, as a Curriculum Account Executive with Pearson Digital Learning was to partner with school district leaders and forge a new digital implementation in support of their early learning initiative by providing sales, marketing, and professional development support. Initially, the all-day kindergarten program was offered at both Frank and Toth Elementary Schools in the district. Two seasoned teachers were tapped to lead the program who used the Waterford system daily to enhance their traditional classroom lessons and found that the experience of this approach led to dramatic improvements in student achievement.
Analysis
Perrysburg’s All-Day Kindergarten initiative was one of my first large-scale digital implementations in educational sales. Having served as a former classroom teacher and professional development consultant, I saw first-hand how important early intervention is for a community, which is why the opportunity to partner with Perrysburg Schools and create a new early education initiative around digital learning was both exciting and rewarding. Through my leadership in educational sales, I assisted the school district in developing a strong, results-driven digital learning program, which incorporated the use of the Waterford Early Learning Program. In November of 2004, the Waterford Institute awarded Toth Elementary School the distinction of a National Best Practice Site. Over the course of several years, the program expanded to include two other elementary schools in the district. One of the first all-day kindergarten teachers found that the approach motivated students and helped create independent learners, which were well prepared for first grade and beyond. To this day, the all-day kindergarten program in Perrysburg is still helping to lay a strong, rewarding foundation for their students.
Transformation
In order to advance education, we need to look towards the future and transform our current practices by providing rich learning pathways for kids. The opportunity to be involved in the development and execution of the Perrysburg Digital Academy’s All Day Kindergarten Program, helped to accomplish that task, by providing rich digital learning opportunities for students in both reading and math. Throughout the process, I enhanced my consultative educational selling skills and became an advocate for early learning intervention, which led to the creation of strong relationships with both district and school leaders. From an educational perspective, I also developed a deep pedagogical understanding of both reading and math curricula foundations, which I still put into practice today. Back in 2003, when the program began, educational technology was challenged by technological shortcomings, especially from an integration and deployment process; however, today, a distinct positive transformation has been the ability to access digital media anytime, anywhere, through cloud-based solutions. Along the way, I discovered through this experience that it is critical to provide enriching, and engaging early learning experiences to students, so that they can start off on the right track. Similarly, the school district held the same belief, as can be seen by the following quote, “The Perrysburg Digital Academy believes that the kindergarten experience is the foundation for lifetime literacy and intellectual development.”
