Skip to main content

TCEA Highlights

After four solid days of sessions, keynotes and talks with vendors I am preparing to say farewell to my first TCEA conference.  I have expanded my PLN both in Google+ and on Twitter by finding new people to follow and have also picked up a few new followers along the way.

For the next few weeks I will go over many of the ideas that I gathered at the conference and begin sharing them here, in district workshops, and on Twitter.  I thought for this post I would include the highlights from today.

If you missed the keynote with Chef Jeff, you really missed out.  Many of you teach in schools that have the same socioeconomic makeup that mine does, more than 75% on free/reduced lunches.  You know the struggles that students have in a school of high poverty.  Make sure you remember some of his key points.

  • Know your students-what motivates them, what they are good at.
  • Let them know you care
  • Above all, show them how what you are doing in class can get them to their dream.
The other major session I attended this morning was led by Dr. Howie DiBlasi (@hdiblasi).  He shared in 1.5 hours what could have easily been a half day workshop.  He also gave a great handout that it would be worth your time to check out.   Look over the Top Google Tools That Educators Must Have handout he shared with us.  There is so much information in this handout that you could pick a few items to look through each week and still not have them explored before the end of the school year.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

4 Tools for Creating Instruction Video

Many educators are plunging into creating digital resources as part of their districts plan to continue instruction while school facilities are closed for the remainder of the school year.  If you have not explored this before now, there are several options available to you in a variety of prices and skillset. The tools we suggest will be free or inexpensive and only focus on creating videos that you can share with students later.  There are options for live video conferencing and some of these tools are designed for that, but we are only focusing on video recording.  This type of learning model would best be classified as asynchronous because you are allowing students to work at different times.  This may be the best option since some of your students may have siblings and limited use of technology at their house. Before we get started, please check with your district to see if there are any restrictions on which tools you may use.  There is a possibility that ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beginning again

I have been silent on my blog for a while.  Partly because I have started a "new" challenge that took some time to settle into.   I have been an educator for over 20 years.   I have been a classroom teacher, building administrator & district administrator.   Our family recently felt called to a new location which gave me the opportunity to work for an education non-profit for a year. Then the call back to the field came.  I couldn't resist.  Those of you that are called into education know that the calling never really leaves you.  I knew I needed to be back in a position that allowed me to have a more direct impact on students.  I loved the work I was doing, but I was in a position that didn't give me any interaction with students and I needed to get back to that on some level.  If you haven't been in that position, it is hard to put into words exactly what this calling means.   Granted I was still able to influe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Do you need a Philosophy of Education?

When we first start out in education we often think that we know what we're doing. We think that we don't need any help and that everything that we need to know we learned in our education classes. It only takes about three days into the job to realize that our college education did not fully prepare us for every single student that we're going to face. It didn't truly prepare us for how we really should deliver a lesson when we have students on five different levels along with multiple types of disruptions. It didn't prepare us to handle all the routines, all the the daily tasks, all the decisions that we have to make.  This isn't intended to disparage any university program, but just an acknowledgement that there is now way for them to fully prepare you for every student and situation you will face.  Experience is the only true way to learn how to handle all of these different types of situations.  So how do we make up for that information gap? That is a chall...
1 comment
Read more