I attended the New England Association of Teachers of English (NEATE) Conference on Saturday, November 3rd, and it was by far the best professional development I have attended in a long time. I think what I liked so much about the conference was the fact that I was with people that were all part of the discipline I teach. Most of the other professional development sessions I have attended have been interdisciplinary and really more focused on teaching strategies and writing in the content areas. I know this will probably sound really geeky but I was so happy to be with my peeps!!!!
The focus of the conference was Common Core/Common Cause (of course, I guess) and the breakout sessions I went to were "Teaching Non-Fiction: Increasing Comprehension and Improving Writing", "Close Reading Procedures and the Common Core" and "Stasis Theory". The close reading session gave me some new ways to annotate text which was invaluable because the common core is so focused on informational text. It is one thing to read a novel or short story and analyze the themes, characters, etc. It is another to analyze the Article of the Week that I require in ways that keep the students' interest and mine. Also, as I think I have mentioned before, one of my goals this year has been to add argumentative discussion into my lessons. I have been debating more in my classroom and allowing more time for discussion, however, the session on "Stasis Theory" I went to gave me some tips on persuasive writing that I will definitely use in the third quarter when my students write their research papers. Lastly, and probably the most important, was what I received from the Non-Fiction session. The English department at my school has opted to write our own Common Core scope and sequence which has been scary for all of us. My district does not have the money to pay thousands of dollars for a consultant to come in and tell us what we need to teach or should be teaching, like many of the schools in Rhode Island (which I don't think any of us really want anyway). I was so happy to see that what we are doing is exactly what we need to do in order for our students to be ready for both College and Career, as well as the new PARCC standardized test. I was able to go to my department meeting this past Wednesday and talk about what I learned (and my colleagues that were also at the conference). We all felt so much better. I don't know if any school in RI really feels "good" about what they are doing because we have not seen any PARCC test examples yet, but we are at least on the same page as other schools.
So, I was very happy for the opportunity to attend the conference. Another good thing is that my principal paid the fee for the conference so that left me with money to spend on books!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment