Oh, NCCAT. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

First of all, the food is fabulous. Second, to be treated as a professional is a rare and greatly appreciated gift. Third, to attend professional development that is well-organized, relevant, and begins on time, is practically unheard of.

The greatest effect the PA Institute at NCCAT will have on my classroom is through the use and incorporation of technology and web-based resources I did not realize existed. I have used Prezi, Socrative, Kahoot! and a handful of other websites in my time as a teacher to enrich instruction, but I was completely unaware of the multitude of free resources available to me and my students beyond those. Paul Cancellieri’s sessions were particularly helpful in providing me online resources and tools. Trello for project-planning, Evernote for note-taking, Socrative or Answer Garden for daily warm-ups, and Remind for class reminders are the handful of tools I want to implement right away. Others including Class Craft, Mastery Connect, Zaption, and Actively Learn are on my list to revisit and learn more about to work into my classroom in future years.

Unlike some PD conferences, every session I attended held at least some relevance and was engaging. (That probably relates to us being able to determine what PD we want and need AND to the offering of skills-specific PD in four different skills categories during each time-slot. Bravo on that planning!) However, since you asked, my least favorite session was “Inclusive STEAM Instruction.” There was SO much content to cover in this session, that I felt like we barely scratched the surface of anything meaningful. Additionally, the topic was the least relevant for me of the different sessions I attended. A lot of what Mrs. Brickhouse covered related to students who would not be enrolled in a traditional English I class at my particular school. That said, she made me aware of many issues and many solutions to issues I had never even considered.

When your least-favorite session is one from which you still come out with a page full of notes and a brain full of potential resources, I’d say you’ve had a pretty excellent PD experience!