KVEC Lends its Expertise to Provide Curriculum

horiZen Media’s Fletcher Long visited the HOLLER Broadcasting Studio on March 30. He and Dr. Kayatin produced a Pre-Employment Transition video on Self-Advocacy and Work-based Learning Experiences. The virtual educational session is one of many being offered to teachers to send to their students in the KVEC service region as part of KVEC’s Virtual Spring 2020 Transition Conference for students.

This is a highlight to the story that was written by Fletcher Long

KVEC Lends its Expertise to Provide Curriculum and Resources Enriching Area Students’ NTI

By Fletcher Long, Editor

Don’t know how many area people, outside the field of education, realize what an integral part of our area the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative (KVEC) has been and continues to be through the executive directorship of Dr. Jeff Hawkins. KVEC is one of eight educational cooperatives in Kentucky consisting of 23-member school districts serving over 50,000 students and more than 5,000 faculty and staff in 150 plus schools.

KVEC has built strategic partnerships with organizations throughout the US which contributes to maximizing effort and extending impact regarding the quality of education and tools available to both students and educators. Some of these partners include the US Department of Education’s “Race to the Top,” Investing in Innovation (i3), The Gates Foundation, as well as multiple colleges and area universities together with The Rural Policy Research Institute, the RAND Corporation (as an external evaluator), Digital Promise, the Center for Improving School Culture, and the Center for Rural Strategies. 

KVEC seeks to build on the “human capitol” of educators, learners, and community members working together to solve our region’s existing challenges. KVEC is currently using its “state of the art” studio, the HOLLER, to produce quality educational resources to be streamed to area students as part of KVEC’s mission to produce dynamic educational supports and resources.

These video presentations, which are being offered to schools and educational video streaming conferences alike, are just a sample of the learning tools KVEC regularly offers. KVEC hopes these enhanced video offerings will augment and support both member school systems and faculty seeking exciting and innovative curriculum for its Non-Traditional Instruction (NTI). This instruction, which is presently being used by area schools, permits our kids to continue learning even while our school systems are being affected by the present national state of emergency.

We caught up with Dr. Will Kayatin, who lives right here in Jackson, and serves KVEC as an Educational Consultant, Transition and Higher Ed. He and his colleagues at KVEC—including the talented digital engineers in KVEC’s HOLLER broadcasting studio—have been working to produce, shoot, and plan the dissemination of these instructional video offerings. Dr. Kayatin, for example, just finished producing and helping film a video which featured this newspaper’s editor, Fletcher Long.

Dr. Kayatin told the Times-Voice, “I had planned a blended delivery model for KVEC’s student transition programs moving into next year. Covid-19 hastened the work. So, I have moved the spring transition conferences to a virtual experience. Fletcher’s video will be one of the offerings available for the spring transition conference’s virtual experience.” Dr. Kayatin expressed “…special thanks for the help and support from his KVEC colleagues and the very talented engineers in the HOLLER Professional Broadcasting Studio.”

The Times-Voice would like to thank the transcendent leadership of Dr. Jeff Hawkins (KVEC’s CEO), as well as Dr. Will Kayatin and all of KVEC and the HOLLER’s engineers for the opportunity, provided us to share with local students and faculty our life skills, self-advocacy, and vocational rehabilitation which has constituted a unique life journey and (hopefully) powerful story. Without KVEC and the HOLLER who knows when these stories and lessons would be made available to enrich the educational experiences for students in our area.