Oh it feels  good to be home and to have slept in my bed last night.  I have heard that the week at NCCAT is awesome, but I really didn’t think it would be as great as it was!  I am already breaking the rules because I can’t pick just one highlight from this week, sorry!!

I would say the best part of the week was meeting all the wonderful Kenan teachers.  Everyone was so nice and I was able to learn so much from each person I talked to.  I feel like I have created so many new and wonderful friendships from this week.  I feel that it is important to surround myself with positive and strong teachers and this experience is definitely doing that for me!

I really liked all the breakout sessions we had.  I was able to pick the topics that interested me the most and I feel like I have a lot of useful tools and technology I can bring back to the classroom.  I specifically like that I learned about Augmented Reality.  This is such a cool tool to use in the classroom and I know my students will love lessons that incorporate this app.  I also think all the tools that Eric Rowles talked about in his seminar will be perfect in my classroom (like remind 101, wingclips, and djearworm).

Finally, I thought that the white water rafting trip was AMAZING!!!!  I was very fortunate to get a boat with great people and a fun guide.  I couldn’t have asked for a better day (even though my body was a little sore the next day) 😉

I have attached a photo from the first day that I took of the Students Discover team.  We beat the record for the marble race…and we were pretty stoked about it!!

I really hope to gain a lot of amazing connections to teachers and the staff here, which I feel like I already have and it is only the second day.  I think that this experience will help me become better at creating meaningful lesson plans and to be able to take my personal experiences and create lessons from them.  From today alone, I have been exposed to so many great technology tools that I can bring back to my classroom and use in my lessons.  I hope that I will take away more useful teaching tools throughout this experience.  Finally, I can’t wait to start working with my mentor.  I feel like this experience alone will be career changing.  The information that I will gain from this will completely impact my career.  I do not know a lot about prehistoric forensics, so I am excited to be able to bring this experience and what I have learned, back to my students!!

So it is the Friday before NCCAT and I am BEYOND excited for this experience to start.  Since I am part of the Students Discover we worked from home this week.  I learned a lot from my reading on how to classify shark teeth and I cannot wait to put it to work.  I am so honored to be working with such amazing and talented teachers this year through Kenan and can’t wait to bring what I have learned back to the classroom.   I am so excited to meet everyone next week, we will have so much fun!!!