This is my second experience at NCCAT. While the format was slightly altered because this was hosted by KFP, the end result was still as wonderful as my first visit to NCCAT. I have come back from the week reinvigorated about teaching and the classroom. The biggest contributor to my enjoyment of the week came from sharing a week with passionate educators. I have been to numerous conferences and workshops before, but many of them have a mixed bag of educators who were “sent” to the conference and share their reluctance; or, an educator is present as an excuse to “get out of the classroom.” That was not this week. This week, it was a group of very fervent educators who love what they do and why they do. Their convictions were real, and they are a deeply dedicated group of professionals.

I have every intention of taking some of the things I have learned from my time at NCCAT back to the classroom with me. Specifically, I am looking to use the workshops I attended on Gamification in the classroom, and incorporating that not just in my class but in my KFP project with Cotton Inc. I have a rough sketch in my head of how this will work, but there is a solid idea that (if done correctly) will be foundational and critical to the enhancement of my product. I also look forward to taking back to my school this concept of #edcamp. My community of professionals where I serve would benefit immensely from this type of set up for PD, as well as for classroom enhancement. I could see it even translating into the classroom for group and project work, so long as the focus remains.

There were some workshops that we less enthralling and I struggled with. In particular, I struggled with one of the workshops regarding Modifying PBL for students with learning needs (I forget the name). The session ended up being just a run-down of basic modifications, which I think most of us in the room felt comfortable with and with doing. Instead, the PBL focus was missing, and I (as well as others) walked away not feeling any wiser toward PBL and students with learning needs. I will also state that all of the PD workshops we did, did not help me in the end to feel more confident about the big KFP project I am working toward. It would have been beneficial if we could have had former KFP professionals come in and talk/share their end product with us, and talk to us about how they accomplished their creations and what helped them succeed and what helped them to fail.