Last week I drove up to the mountains to attend our first Kenan Fellows professional development at NCCAT. In case I wasn’t perfectly clear in my last post, I learned SO MUCH! I have been to many professional development conferences, seminars, online courses, etc. in my time as a teacher, several have been great, many more have felt monotonous and assumed no prior knowledge. I often found myself in PD asking “is there a 200 level of this class?”.

My first taste of PD that did indeed have “200 level” information and assumed that I was a leader in my field was the National Science Teacher’s Association National Conference in Chicago, IL this past March. At NSTA I heard Bill Nye and Neil Shubin speak, I learned about state-of-the-art research in different science fields and got to hear from some of the most revolutionary science teachers in the country. It was an outstanding experience…NCCAT was better, and avoided my biggest PD pet peeve…

“Automating” education as I have come to refer to it is the idea that we can somehow replace the teacher with technology or a book. This is something you hear so frequently at professional development, “It’s all done for you! You just have to put it in front of the kids!”, in my opinion this is NOT developing my profession but impeding progress. One especially peevish instance of this is where people inform me that there are tons of instructional videos online already so I don’t actually have to film for my flipped classroom. (No offense to these videos, but if I want my kids learning, I should be teaching)

The sessions at NCCAT never once assumed teaching was easy or that it could be automated. Instead we heard from passionate educators, who are still in a classroom or school and are changing how we view education for the better. Even my “worst” session was only the worst because it highlighted technology tools I was already familiar and comfortable with. One session in particular changed the way that I will forever view STEM; and all in just one sentence. Our presenter made the point that STEM shouldn’t stand for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics but it should instead stand for Strategies That Engage Minds. This one small but fundamental change in the way we view STEM has a huge potential to turn STEM from a buzz word used in Science, Math, and CTE classes to a new system and method of teaching. Imagine if as teachers our first priority was always engaging the minds of our students. What problems could our students solve if we always created opportunities for them to really think? (also check out our awesome team pipe cleaner tower from this session)

Also, MAJOR shout-out to EdCamp! If you have never participated in an EdCamp before, try one now. I couldn’t believe how much I learned when we were discussing what we wanted to learn about with other teachers. Learning from each other was so empowering. (for more edcamp info check out this link: http://edcamp.org)

After NCCAT I’m seriously looking forward to working with the rest of my cohort at the next PD in July, only 19 more days.