Awesome week in Cullowhee, NC!
The entire week was a wonderful experience for me as an educator. However, Tuesday and Thursday were my favorite days because I was able to learn about a variety of teaching approaches, professional best practices, and ways to offer more diversified student learning opportunities in the academic environment. The “concurrent sessions” available to us to attend on Tuesday, and The Diving Board and EdCamp sessions on Thursday, provided open and fluid learning opportunities where we could collaborate about topics we wanted to know more about to improve our teaching and consider in our Kenan project.
I enjoyed the session on digital portfolios and I plan to implement this computer-based tool using Google with my second grade students. I would like to use digital portfolios to showcase student work and academic growth throughout the school year.
I also plan to implement some ideas from the session, “Teacher as GPS”. I did something similar this past school year when reviewing for the EOG’s in third grade, but I would like to provide consistent feedback with “I can” statements, visual graphs of where individual students are with academic standards and the progression of these standards, and provide assignments to help students reach their goals.
The Kenan Summer Professional Learning Institute was more diversified and integrative than other professional development I have attended. There was a range of learning opportunities that focused on relevant and evolving topics in our K-12 educational environment. The topics were presented by previous Kenan fellows/current NC teachers, with each individual making his/her session a collaborative experience. I felt this PD was beneficial in that we had some voice in our learning and what we wanted to strengthen as educators, while at the same time being able to really talk and share ideas with fellow teachers across the state. It was not just a group of teachers listening and learning from one presenter, but more like a group of knowledgeable and passionate teachers working together to improve our craft and make a bigger difference in the lives of students and education across the state of North Carolina. That’s pretty powerful!