As I sit here at the Seattle airport waiting to board my flight back to MSP, I’m deep in thought about the past three days. I had the privilege and honor of attending and speaking at the NCTM regional conference here in Seattle.
I am thinking about a buffet of items: the sense of relief
knowing that I no longer must prepare for my presentation, the validation and
motivation I feel sparked by the sessions I attended, and what my classroom is
going to look like tomorrow when I go back to school and prepare for class.
I also can’t help to think about the sense of déjà vu I’m
feeling right now. As I gathered my thoughts to compose this blog post, I
happened to read my post from November 2018 in which I reflected on the first time I spoke at an NCTM regional
conference. In that post, I was proud of
meeting a professional goal of presenting at an NCTM conference. The referenced
déjà vu occurred when I clicked over to my website and noticed that I had met
my goal of speaking again at an NCTM conference.
I wish I could blog about all of the items swirling through my mind, but unfortunately I don’t have time for that. The main purpose of this post is reflect on one specific session I attended, titled “Leading from Within – Improving the Instructional System While Remaining in the Classroom.”
The session began with Thomas and Brent asking us (session attendees) to think about which of our colleagues had the biggest impact on us professionally. They followed up with asking us to think about what roles those individuals were in when they impacted our lives. Their hope was for us to understand that we can positively impact those around us, as well as the greater system of education, without leaving the classroom.
Thomas spent a few minutes talking about a diagram that he found in the book called "Instructional Rounds in Education". The diagram summarizes "the instructional core" and focuses on the relationship between teachers, students, and the content. Thinking deeply about systems and changing the complex system of education took me back to the SDMath/Sci leadership trainings I attended.
Thomas and Brent then spoke at length about the "four act drama" for effective teacher leaders. It was sort of a checklist of things that really motivated me.
- Fearlessly commit to best practice.
- Operate with a leadership mindset.
- Build collective teacher efficacy
- Embrace courageous lifelong learning
- Peter Liljedahl's "Building Thinking Classrooms" is quickly becoming a must-do in mathematics education. Not surprisingly, there are still many who are not yet aware of the research or who are not implementing the BTC strategies. I am happy with how we are implementing it in advanced algebra 2 this year. But I still need to become better at the fine details of implementation.
- As I have seen with other past NCTM regional conferences, there were many time slots that had multiple sessions I wanted to attend and was forced to choose. If only I had Hermione's time turner, I could attend more than one concurrent session.
- A number of sessions I attended had excellent presenters, whereas a few had presenters that were sub-par. Six years ago, Robert Kaplinsky blogged about things he's learned from being a presenter. The post detailed some of the nitty-gritty details of creating a quality presentation. A lot of what he says holds up, but there almost needs to be an updated post about this due to improvements in technology.
- This comes with no surprise, but there is also a high level of skill in creating and delivering a high quality presentation in conference settings like this. One of the best tips I can provide is to borrow presentation moves from other presenters who you view as high-quality. I was fortunate to listen to Graham Fletcher at the SD STEM ED conference just over a week ago, and he absolutely crushed both presentations I attended. I borrowed three or four presentation moves directly from him.
- Speaking of my presentation, I was happy with how it went and that is mostly due to how happy I was with my preparation. My session was in a very large ballroom (capacity ~400). Honestly, I was fairly nervous heading into it, mainly because of the size of the room. I didn't know what to expect for attendance. The attendance turned out to be somewhere between 50 and 60 people, which wasn't so overwhelming. I received positive feedback from a few participants who stuck around after the presentation ask questions.
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