6 Tips for a Successful Conference Experience: The Before and After

 

 

We all attend different conferences and professional development sessions as models of lifelong learners.  What makes a successful experience?  What is your approach while you’re there to extend your knowledge base?  How do you bring back the information and share it successfully?  Here are our tips to ensure it was a successful experience.

1)      Have Fun 

Surround yourself with good people. 

Learn to laugh at the current challenges that you all face.  Take moments to eat together, get a little sight-seeing in, and take time to care about the day-to-day lives of your coworkers.  It’s amazing how making time for each other strengthens your team bound.

2)      Work as a Team

One person can’t make every session because there are usually multiple topics during the same chunk of time.  Agree to go into different sessions and then debrief about what you learned. 

3)      Take Away New Learning from Each Session

Regardless of whether the presenter was entertaining or dry, there is at least one thing that you may not currently be incorporating.  The entire session may have been filled with wonderful new points, or you may feel like you knew everything the presenter shared.  The first is the easiest to walk away feeling like you have grown.  However, the latter might have made you feel like you could have done the presentation.  In that case, at least walk away with a sample of what they are incorporating in their classrooms.  Take that back to your staff and show them the example of what another classroom has done so that they can have a reference point.  There is always something that they are doing that could help improve what you are doing.

4)      Make a Plan

Begin to think about how you are going to share what you discovered.  Most likely it can all be done at once if any good is to come of it.  Begin thinking about what can be shared immediately.  Likewise, think of the stuff that maybe down the road.  Hit the ground running with the easy suggestions and encourage your go getters to implement within a short time frame.  Save the more intense development for when time allows for it.  Maybe that is at the beginning of a new grading cycle or after a long vacation. 

5)      Extend Your PLN

There are a lot of great people with incredible ideas at these conferences who are starving to learn more.  Introduce yourself face to face.  If that intimidates you, tag them in a tweet or shoot them an email.  What’s the worst that could happen, they don’t respond? 

6)      Be Proud of Your Accomplishments

Reflect on your new learning and your growth.  Also take time to pat yourself on the back and reassure yourself that you are heading in the right direction. 

 

A special thanks to all who attended our session today!  What’s your approach for getting the most out of your conferences?

Be the HEAD Coach in your Classroom!

Using the analogy of a Head Football Coach, I beg the question:  How much time do we spend on a week’s worth of lessons?  Having filled that role myself for several years, I thought it would be a fun analogy to do a basic breakdown of what a Head Football Coach and his Staff does in preparation for an upcoming game, and then in parentheses, apply classroom lesson terminology alongside it: 

Scout the Other Team: (Students' Interest Inventories, Boys vs. Girls learning styles)
Know their Strengths /Weaknesses: (Data, Question Item Analysis, Student Item Analysis)
Know their Tendencies/How they react to certain situations: (Lecture, Active Learning, Out of their seats, Peer Interaction).
What Plays will work best: (Learning Styles)
Have your Game Plan Ready: (Lesson Plans - purposeful - make a plan to WIN )
What to do on Special Teams: (Transitions to/from Lesson Subjects or Activities without a fumble)
Prepare your Team:  (Practice, Practice, Practice)
Pre-Game:  (Provide relaxing, purposeful environment.  Provide materials, supplies, equipment for your players to Win)
Organize Warm-Ups: ( Non-Instructional Routines, like getting Laptops, logging on, "Turning Screens" to the instructor, etc.)
Coin Toss: (The SET Activity)
Game Time: (Acting on your Plans, Using your Play sheets)

Offense: How to score points (Positive encouragement, authentic feedback, push to the Goal)

Defense: Prevent the opponent from scoring (Keep the negative things at bay, learn to make a positive out of a negative, keep them focused.)

Special Teams: Kick Off, Kick Off Return, Punt and Punt Return, Extra Point and Field Goal, Onside kick and Onside Kick Return Teams) Modifications for student learning, IEPs, Pacing, Re-Teaching a concept, Re-Testing)
Quarters: Change ends of the Field - wind conditions, the sun, etc. (Change up the Approach, allow student to take charge of their own learning.)
Time Outs:  Hear from the Players on the Field - (Feedback, Reinforcing Effort, individual Attention, Re-Focus, Re-Direct, Encourage)
Half Time: (Monitor and Adjust, Re-Teach from a different perspective, get information from the Players on what is happening, and then find a way to help them be successful)
Momentum:  (Shifts both For and Against you - take advantage of the "For"...stay with something a little longer than planned if you need.  Stop a bad activity before it takes you too far off course.)
Penalty Flag: Penalizes your forward progress. (Stop things that takes you backwards...away from your Goal.)
Out of Bounds: Play between the lines and boundaries.  (Something that's not in the Standards for your grade level or Subject, just because you like it...or have taught it for 20 years.  These get you off track...Off your game plan.)
Stop the Clock:  Slow it down... Keep the Players on the field a little longer, dictate the pace and speed of the learning.  Allow students the chance to be successful. Allow them more of a chance to score.)
Run out the Clock:  Let the clock run out so the game will end.  (Know when it’s been enough a time in your lesson that is Long to cover a subject, but Short enough to keep it interesting.)

WIN:  Score more than the opponent. (The really cool thing here is that when the students win, you win…Just like the Head Coach, and the Opponent is the non-engaged student or the teacher that fails to plan).