Video: Desoto Administrators Visit Columbus Schools

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COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – It’s the largest school district in the state and today administrators spent the day touring Columbus schools.

For this group, It’s all about collaborating and learning from each other.

Five Chief Superintendents from the Desoto County School District stopped in several classrooms on Tuesday.

It began with a White House initiative called “Go Open” which encourages schools to use openly licensed educational materials, such as streaming videos and other tools.

Columbus Municipal School District was named a ” Go Open” ambassador, one of only six in the nation.

“So we’re going to get a lot of communication and other districts reaching out to us to see what practices that we’re doing that are cutting edge, 21st century practices. And so that sparked the conversation with Desoto County coming out and kind of learning from us, seeing what we’re doing,” said Dr. Philip Hickman, Superintendent of Columbus Municipal School District.

The group visited classrooms from elementary to high school to observe different learning strategies.

George Loper is one of the Chief Superintendents and he says opportunities like this help them see where they can improve their district.

“We feel like we’re a good district, sometimes a great district, but we always feel like there’s ways and new things that we can learn to do and certainly are moving toward technology all the time. And we just want to get better, and better and do things better and we always feel like we can learn from anybody,” said Loper.

Loper says he is influenced by what he saw, especially how the classrooms work in small, hands on centers.

“It was very impressive that they’re being met on their level, the kids were being able to work on their own and being able to do the things on their own and use those devices or use whatever resources they were given to dig and do and get the things out,” added Loper.

For Columbus and Desoto educators, they hope this will be a lasting collaboration, learning from each other in new ways.

“Education is done in isolation and it shouldn’t be. We have a responsibility across the state to educate all of our children. And so whatever practices that we can learn from other districts, that’s wonderful. And I’m glad that we’re actually on the end that actually have the best practices that people want to come and learn from,” added Dr. Hickman.

Desoto County School District has more than 30,000 thousand students and more than 40 schools.