District 219 Welcomes New Director Of Instructional Innovation And Professional Learning

Press release from Niles Township High Schools District 219:

August 19, 2020

Kim Rivas will join Niles Township High School District 219 in the new position of Director of Instructional Innovation and Professional Learning, after the D219 Board of Education approved the appointment at its August 18 special meeting. In that role, as part of the Curriculum & Instruction team, Rivas will provide leadership and coordination in the use of instructional innovation and technology at the district, provide curricular consultation on equity-focused pedagogies, supervise the schools’ professional development centers (PDCs) and promote instructional coaching.

“As a district, we have been talking about how to more effectively integrate innovative pedagogies and digital learning into our curriculum, while also focusing on culturally relevant teaching,” said Dr. Sandra Arreguín, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum & Instruction. “This pandemic is forcing us to act more quickly on how we do this. I am confident that our teachers and support staff members have the knowledge and the heart and the will to respond to this challenge for the benefit of our students. Having Kim Rivas join us in this new role at this uncertain but critical time will help us meet this challenge and help us move forward as a student-centered organization.”

Rivas comes to D219 from University of Illinois at Chicago, where she has served as Post-Secondary Instructional Designer and Learning Strategist since 2015. She served on UIC’s Educational Technologies committee as the co-chair and met monthly with campus leaders and instructional designers to discuss issues of equity and access. Rivas led initiatives to develop e-learning modules for faculty with an emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Rivas worked at Columbia College in Chicago for two years as K-12 Digital Learning Strategist and Research and Evaluation Manager. In this role, she was able to experiment with a variety of online communities and found these spaces to be essential for teacher development, particularly with digital media integration.

Rivas previously worked for eight years as Qualitative and Design-Based Researcher, also at UIC. For five of those years she was also a Teaching Assistant at the university, where she designed and implemented a blended course using online platforms as well as professional learning community structure within face-to-face classroom settings.

Rivas started her career in education as a Social Studies teacher; her first full-year teaching job was at Amundsen High School in Chicago, but she actually started before that as a Global Studies teacher in Summer School at Niles North High School. She is a proud graduate of Niles West High School.

Rivas completed PhD coursework in Learning Sciences at UIC. She earned a Master in Education, Secondary Education, from DePaul University and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from UIC.

This press release was produced by Niles Township High Schools District 219. The views expressed here are the author’s own.