Trout Creek teacher is featured at Blackfoot meeting

With a “passion for technology and for thinking outside here and now into the future,” as Daisy Carlsmith of Trout Creek puts it, she and a team of collaborating educators in western Montana have developed a highly successful non-profit to facilitate professional development on a host of topics for educators.

Western Montana Professional Learning Collaborative (WMPLC), with Carlsmith as executive director since 2014, was selected to have a booth and make a presentation as a Featured Partner at the Blackfoot Telecommunications annual meeting last Saturday in Missoula. Blackfoot has been a major contributor to the organization and its focus of creating high quality, creative professional development opportunities for educators throughout western Montana and beyond. They also help schools coordinate group discounts on tech licenses, teaching materials, and many other educational products and services.

WMPLC partners with educational mentors and coaches such as Jeff Crew and Dean Phillips, owners of Beyond the Chalk, and other presenters to help teachers innovate and rejuvenate their teaching and re-inspire themselves. In an entertaining speech featuring a bicycle with the steering geared backwards to demonstrate how hard it can be to do something a new way, Crews and Phillips delivered a “thank you” to Blackfoot for the many years of support for teachers and schools, including providing up to 100 scholarships for teachers to attend WMPLC’s annual August Institute each year.

The August Institute, held for three days annually at Missoula College, might be considered WMPLC’s flagship event, offering college credit through University of Montana for intensive continuing education workshops featuring themes such as technology, mindfulness, outdoor science, Indian Education for All, Gifted and Talented, and STEAM (Science/Technology/Engineering/Arts/Math). This year will focus on technology integration into core content areas. Other workshops are offered throughout the year, and though western Montana is WMPLC’s home turf, the workshops are often attended by people throughout the state.

“I love this job because we can make happen whatever people want,” says Carlsmith. “By request, we’ve even covered homelessness, crisis de-escalation, anti-bullying, suicide prevention. If a teacher requests something, we immediately react finding the best people on the topic, funding, a location and a date. We do an evaluation after every workshop and use suggestions to fine tune for the next one.”With four degrees and career experience in education, real estate, medical and pharmaceutical communications, business management, and even horse and rider training, Carlsmith brings compassion plus a seemingly endless skill set to WMPLC. While serving at Trout Creek School from 2004-2016 as a classroom teacher, Technology teacher, and as principal, she fully embraced technology integration in the classroom. Among many honors se received, Carlsmith was awarded Montana’s Mentor of the Year at the 2007 F.I.R.S.T. Lego League robotics competition and took her team to the international championship competition.

While managing a multi-year, multi-school $100,000 grant, Carlsmith transformed the district into a Google Apps for Education school which implemented a 1:1 wireless device/student ratio, SMART Boards in every classroom, and an eBook library. She also encouraged distance learning to promote content acceleration in math and foreign languages, including meeting people in foreign countries “face-to-face” over the internet. Throughout the process, Trout Creek School partnered with Blackfoot Telecommunications to provide the wireless services necessary to implement technology integration in the classroom.

This year’s August Institute is August 7-9. More information is available at wmplc.org.