Last week was spent in the mountains of Western North Carolina at NCCAT. This was my third visit to NCCAT. It was so comfortable to be in the conference center and the residence. I have always enjoyed my stay at NCCAT because I can focus on what I was working on. I’ve always made strong friendships at NCCAT too. I am still friends with my Nat’l Boards cohort from 4 years ago. I must give full credit to facebook for keeping us connected.

The highlight of my week was meeting other Fellows. I enjoyed all the ice breakers and sharing meals together. I especially enjoyed the camp fire and learning about each other. There were so many laughs that night. I love funny and witty people and it was fun to laugh out loud!

To strengthen the bond was the white water rafting trip. I was very uncertain about going on the river. But the women on our raft had similar ideas. We enjoyed the rapids, laughed with each other and learned a lot from Stephan. I loved learning about the abiotic factors that lead to a wonderful ecosystem on Claire’s Island. I will use this as a discussion when I teach plants and soil this year.

I was lucky that I carpooled with Stacey and Rhonda. We are all elementary school teachers. We already had a connection: We were at the Leesville Road Science Olympiad Tournament in April. Who knew that we’d be on this journey together a few months later. The car ride to and from NCCAT provided us many opportunities to get to know each other, share our ideas, think about collaborating on Kenan and school projects.  I know that our friendship will continue beyond the fellowship year. We all have so much in common that I can see us working together as elementary teachers on projects, curriculum, and just being friends.

It was a bit challenging on Tuesday to “work” on our project. I’m not sure what my final product will be or what it will be about. I am hoping to do something with failure and success. It’s hard for young children to see failure and mistakes as a critical part of learning. Especially for AG kids who find that they can quickly and easily get the “right” answer. At PlyGem, my mentor is all about innovation, failure and success. Also, about thinking differently. So those are some areas I’d like to model/emulate for my students.

The PD at NCCAT was excellent. I love to learn from other teachers. You can find similarities to challenges and problems and use their ideas to help solve them. I always enjoy learning from my peers because I feel that it is more realistic to implement.