OnlineReflection#4- KATE Conference

I thought that Clare Vanderpool’s presentation was the most inspiring just for the fact that it seemed like Moon Over Manifest was her absolute destiny in her life. It was inspiring for the fact that she knew what she wanted to do with her life at such a young age and then put in the effort and had the patience to see it through. Even though I am not a mom I am a parent and could identify with her struggle to find “her time” to work or write especially when her kids were young. I can’t imagine how tough if must have been to piece together a book for ten years; I would have given up for sure. After she was done speaking I felt so happy for her having reached her life goal and attaining so much success and recognition for her life’s work, I can’t imagine what that must feel like after so much work went into that book. In addition, I think her keynote speech was really inspiring to all of us that are on the cusp of being teachers and I took away the message of don’t give up and above all else have patience and success will find you.

The breakout session I liked the most was the Survival 101: How to survive a new school. This session gave suggestions for first year teachers and teachers in a new building, district, etc. The ladies that gave the presentation were really honest about what we should expect from other teachers when we arrive fresh and new and full of ideas. I really appreciated the fact that they shared such candid information with us because I feel we get the sugar coated version of teaching and not the nitty gritty truth. In addition to ideas on how to survive the staff and co-workers they also gave a ton of suggestions on how to organize your classroom as well as worksheets and grading systems. For example how to color code your worksheets for each unit, each class, keeping all things neatly organized and readily available for you to grab off your desk and not waste time looking for handouts. Everyone at the conference was so willing to share anything that could be helpful to us, “just send me an email” they would tell us and they would give up anything they had that we thought we could use, it was great. I am definitely going to try and implement the color coding organization system to my classroom. I think it is such an easy way keep me organized and it will save me and my students time handing in/out papers and being able to grade quickly for each class.

I talked briefly to a couple of the presenters of the sessions I attended and I also touched base with my old English teacher from my high school. I think that talking with the presenters helped me by putting my name to my face, even if briefly, when I email them they may have a better shot of placing me at their presentation and feel more comfortable sharing their teaching tools with me. On talking with my old English teacher it may be a way of networking beyond him, he may go back and talk with people at the district and mention he saw me and it could lead to principals or others asking more questions about me and hopefully lead to a possible interview.

Honestly I don’t know what I did not get a chance to see but I was really happy with the sessions I chose to go to. A suggestion I might give to one of the presenters would be to not do writing sessions with the group their presenting to. I thought it took up to much time and took away from them giving us helpful information or strategies. I would want them to just have it on a power point presentation ready to go and be able to walk us through the changes they would want to see in their student’s writing.