Inspirations
The opening keynote delivered by Dr. Jill Biden set the tone for the weekend. During her remarks, she summed up it up better than I could what it means to be an educator when she said "Being a teacher is not what I do, it's who I am." Later, Dr. Biden was part of a great Q&A that included Boston Public Schools superintendent Dr. Tommy Chang and the Director of Professional Learning for Boston Teachers Union Paul Tritter. Their passion for teaching and learning was great, but so was hearing their passion for educators. Hearing the value they hold for teachers and hearing our voice was a great way to kick off the conference.
Relevance
Probably the best thing about Empower18 was the focus on the myriad roles we serve in as educators, and the wealth of sessions and resources that fit my role in the classroom. I attended several amazing sessions, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention two that I will take so much from. The first was session entitled #PowerfulTaskDesign, led by John Antonetti. The focus at my school is improving "student engagement," and his session helped me make sense of all the questions I had - while I have some more reading to do and need more time to completely wrap my head around everything, I left ready to tackle this at my school and share my learning with my colleagues.
I also attended a session led by Steven W. Anderson on effective technology use in the classroom. EdTech has always been an interest of mine (I'm actually applying a graduate certificate program as I write this), and this session reaffirmed that passion. His focus on designing effective lessons was incredibly helpful, and provided me with plenty to take back to my school and tackle the work ahead as we work on our 1:1 initiative.
Connecting with (and Growing!) my EduTribe
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| Just a great group of people! |
I saved the best for last here. I love reconnecting with my fellow ASCD Emerging Leaders, as I am always inspired by them, and humbled to be included in such a fantastic group. I especially have to mention my fellow 2016 ELs, and the awesome breakout session "Accelerating the Curve for Young School Leaders" led by Natalie Franzi, Kerry Gallagher, Kyle Hamstra and Amy MacCrindle - they are truly rockstars!
It was also great to be able to expand my tribe this weekend. I am thrilled that my student-teaching intern Leah (an amazing teacher in her own right already) was able to experience Empower18 along with some of her fellow teacher prep students from George Mason University.
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| Of course we took a goofy photo. All in the name of fun! |
It was great to support new teachers entering the profession and to have them be a part of such an inspiring weekend. I can't wait to see what's next for Leah as she moves into the classroom, where I know she'll rock it!
Already looking forward to #Empower19!
Postscript
As I was finishing this post, I saw this response from a student from an online submission. I can't think of a better way to cap off such a great experience and provide context for everything we do as educators, so I'll let my students have the last word here.
