So, I’ve been thinking about professional development. My partner in tech coaching crime, @TeacherDebra, and I have been on the look out for some new opportunities. (I wrote about our desire to “Escape our Bubble”.)
Well, I did it. I attended the Project Zero: Learning Together, Leading Together conference in Washington, DC last weekend. It made for a jam-packed weekend since the conference started bright and early on Friday and went through Sunday mid day. I will write about some of the specific sessions later in the month.
The two key things for me were going with colleagues (some different colleagues than I have attended workshops with before) and going to a conference that had a different focus and therefore different attendees (I don’t think I saw anyone of my ‘usual suspects’ from conferences.)
Attending conferences with conferences as a team is totally worth the multiple registration costs, in my opinion. (see here) All those new ideas at conferences are great, but it’s helpful to have a home team person to help filter the ideas. Amy Poehler has written about the way women can make each other feel bad about motherhood stuff, and her advice is this: “Good for her! Not for me. That is the motto women should constantly repeat over and over again.” I think this is a great mantra in so many areas of life. It’s great to hear about some amazing thing another school is doing, but it may not be right for my school. However, with the help of my trusty colleagues, I can think about how just about every session or workshop can offer up some nugget of wisdom. In fact one of the last speakers, Project Zero researcher Tina Blythe, mentioned just this idea when she suggested that we each needed to find our own “drift wood” to take home from the conference. Tina Blythe encouraged us to take this drift wood home, combine it with the other ideas at our own schools, and make something new. My traveling colleagues and I are planning a debriefing session or two over snacks–another thing I love.
I also loved having an entirely new group of people and ideas to think about. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing my regular PLN people at conferences and catching up with them in real life. But, it was exciting to find all sorts of new people to learn from. Of course, as an introvert, I didn’t meet a lot of them, but I made a few connections, and I’ve been adding people to my twitter lists. So, I’ll be getting to know them slowly and virtually. Plus, finding this other community is awesome. The group was much more international than a lot of the events I attend and, given the topics, that fact added so much to the experience for me. Between the global piece and the thinking routines piece, there was so much to take away. Luck for me my Evernote notebook can accommodate a lot of drift wood.
On the ride home, I talked with one colleague. We were energized by our experience, even though it was a full weekend, and we were headed to school the next day for a day long professional development day on another topic. We were wondering why everyone doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity to do this kind of thing. Our school is very generous in funding professional development both during the school year and in the summer.
I am excited to become a part of this new-to-me community, to debrief over snacks, and to make good use of my drift wood.
Thoughts from School 