ASCD in Orlando-Time Well Spent

This has to be the best conference I have attended so far in my professional life. I went by myself but definitely see the benefit of bringing a team so that you can attend as much as possible because there are so many excellent sessions! This was how I spent the beginning of my spring break and as the title suggests I did view it as time well spent. I heard several prominent authors speak and felt recharged professionally. It was also nice to share perspectives with people in all roles in the education world as well as people from around the world. The only down side was that I did not win a personal response system. As a side note, I hope to start a student chapter of ASCD on campus.

After Best Practices Institute

So this past week I attended UVA's Best Practices Institute on Differentiated Instruction. A wonderful opportunity to continue to develop my own skills and maybe learn another way to teach DI to my students. One of the conclusions I always come to after attending one of these conferences, is good teaching is good teaching. Good teaching means knowing your students so that an instructor can create differentiated instruction that is meaningful to the students. Does our current established system really allow for that? Also the other conclusion I come to is that I really miss the K-12 world. I think I will give higher education one more year and then I may venture back to my happy place-middle school.