Do These Three Things to Benefit from Attending Professional Conferences

 

In a time of tight school budgets, too often opportunities for teachers to attend conferences fall by the wayside. With continued research about the benefits of professional learning being embedded into our jobs, I think it’s important we also remember the benefits of attending professional conferences.  As professionals in our field, it’s up to us to benefit from our limited opportunities to attend professional conferences. 

Listen.  Attending professional conferences can be a professionally rewarding experience because we get to hear and participate in sessions as well as hallway or lunch table conversations.  Listening to presentations informs us of what other educators are doing beyond our own school/district/state walls.  In turn, this can inspire our own research, reflection, and refinement.  Just as we know “shutting our doors and teaching” leaves us feeling isolated, at conferences we should make it a point to talk and listen with others.

Learn.  We learn from talking with others about our work because we can see what confuses people, articulate what’s working or not working in our own practice and acquire new ideas to try in our own schools and districts.  When the sessions we attend at professional conferences set clear learning objectives, we can evaluate our own attainment of those learning goals as we participate in the session.  Just as we want students to self-assess themselves in our classrooms, so should we assess ourselves when we attend professional conferences.

Network.  Seeing people in our field excited about their work is a benefit.  By networking and socializing with others, it’s amazing how many opportunities to collaborate with others come our way.  In an increasingly globally connected society, we expect our students to learn and collaborate with others within and beyond our school walls.  As professionals, so should we collaborate with others at professional conferences before we attend, while we’re there and afterwards as well.  Building new and effective relationships with other professionals increases our ability to continue providing learning opportunities for our students.

When we listen, learn, and network, we return home from professional conferences feeling refreshed, invigorated, and ready to move learning forward in our local communities.  This is exactly the way I feel right now upon my return from the Kentucky Council of Teachers of English Annual Conference.

Stop Squashing Creativity in Education

More and more when I travel, I hear teachers share stories of scripted curriculum programs they are expected to follow in their schools.  Often schools and districts are so concerned with high-stakes standardized tests, they seek uniform means for providing instruction to students.  Many schools and districts do this because they don’t trust teachers to be professionals.  Other schools do this because they think it’s a quick fix answer to their low test scores.  Does a standardized approach to education provide students what they need to be successful in the 21^st century and beyond?  Is a standardized approach to instruction what we really want?  No!  We don’t.  Evidence of this not being what we want was unmistakable at the Kentucky Council of Teachers of English/Language Arts (KCTE/LA) annual conference, which concluded only hours ago.  This year’s conference theme was Literacy Matters:  The Common Core and Beyond. 

Professional conferences like this provide occasion for educators to refuel and network so they can return to schools energized and ready to provide students creative and critical opportunities to learn, and so they can be more connected to other educators.  Personally, I am on a creative high after hearing Sara Kajder discuss digital literacies and after hearing Kentucky’s poet laureate, Maureen Morehead, read her poetry.   Not only did I hear these well-established authors, I also heard Kentucky teachers talk about best practices in their classrooms.  The showcased sessions were not teachers sharing the page number they were covering in a scripted program.  Exciting session titles included “What’s the Big Idea?  The Real Purpose of Literature in Society and the Classroom,” and “The Power of Narrative in Writing and Teaching.”

I had the joy of reconnecting with a teacher I first met a couple of years ago; this teacher shares the passion I have for promoting creativity in education.   This all has me thinking about what we can do to stop squashing creativity in education.  With creative and thoughtful planning of time and resources, there’s no reason why schools couldn’t and shouldn’t do these five things. 

1. Let students study and explore topics that interest them
2. Let students use their own technology devices to enhance their learning
3. Let students make mistakes
4. Allow more time for the arts, physical education, and recess
5. Allow more time for creating,  performing, dreaming, and thinking

In future posts, I will explore these ideas more fully and offer suggestions for how schools can pragmatically approach ways to stop squashing creativity.  If you have your own ideas, please share them here so we can all learn from one another.

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