How It All Started...

Soon educators from around the world will be entering our Zoom rooms to share their experiences, challenges and successes related to educating during the pandemic and beyond. As the days are drawing closer to our second International Pandemic Pedagogy Conference, we have been reflecting on just how we arrived at this place.

It was just about six months ago that the KDP Sigma Tau Chapter made plans to connect with the Sister Chapter in Italy and their partners from Costa Rica and Greece for an informal conversation about education during the time of the pandemic. Our conversations were energizing and enlightening and inspired us to broaden our reach to hear from others whose stories needed to be told.

The idea for our first, half-day conference "Pandemic Pedagogy: Lessons of Transformation and Resilience" emerged organically from our conversations and in April of 2021, our conference became a reality as educators connected with one another, commiserated and learned from each other in a dynamic, energizing environment. Program evaluations and from personal responses, we agreed it was necessary to keep the conversation going. On that day, we began planning our second Pandemic Pedagogy conference but we never dreamed it would be here so soon.

Kappa Delta Pi, the International Honor Society in Education, advances quality education by inspiring teachers to prepare all learners for future challenges.

The Sigma Tau 451 chapter was installed in 1992 by Dr. Lucy DiPaola, the late Chair of the Division of Education and the KDP Executive Director, Michael Wolf.

Among 900 KDP chapters only 25 are awarded the Achieving Chapter Excellence Award. The MSMC Sigma Tau chapter is one of those 25. The chapter has received the award every biennium since 2011.

Dr. Ludmila Smirnova and Dr.Sonya Abbye Taylor, Professors of Education at Mount Saint Mary College work with extraordinary teacher candidate leaders in pursuit of chapter initiatives.