Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Promising Practices

I rolled out of bed and got to the conference around 8:15 with two of my buddies who I drove there with. It was a saturday morning at RIC which I was not looking forward to at all. We all had the same first choice for both sessions. So we got there and checked in and of course my two friends were in the same letters for both conferences and I was the lone man out, just my luck. So I was around talking to friends who I saw there trying to figure out if i knew anybody who were in my sessions. I found one girl that I knew in the second session and to my knowledge before I left for the first one I didn't know anyone that would be attending the same one.
The first session I attended was Cultural Difference vs. Science fact and it was taught by Rudolf Kraus. I found this very interesting and he kept us involved. The first thing we had to do was write three words in which Science is to us. Then we went over it just to see what certain persons ideas were. Next we had to draw a scientist how we thought they would look. A few certain people had drawn themselves but other than those people there was not one girl. Also, not one person had colored their scientist in so every single one of the scientists were white. The teacher pointed those two characteristics out which reminded me solely of our class. We are always talking about the codes of power and S.C.W.A.A.M.P. and that is what came to my mind right away. We also talked about the sociocultural factors on what and who decides on who can be scientists, and we went over certain things that were quite intriguing.
The second session I attended was Problem Solving in the Classroom and this one was taught by a Ms. Johnson. Although she mostly just gave an introduction and her thoughts and then she had three speakers there to give actual examples from their classroom. The main point I took out of all the teachers speaches was to keep up with the students interests. You must know what they like and what the popular culture likes know to keep them engaged in class and to be on task. Also, if you keep the kids engaged it drops the absentee rate and the kids can be there on a daily basis to keep up with the material you are teaching. This helped me out a lot for the future when I'm going to have my own classroom. They tought me a lot of pivotal assets that every teacher would love to have, and every teacher might even need throughout their teaching career.
Now Tricia Rose, and obviously she was amazing. I'm sure she hears that everywhere she goes from the majority of the audience. She was up there talking like nothing was happening, and talking to us like she knew every person indivudually. She was joking around and having a fun time, and although I loved her speech and everything she tought us, there was another thing that I took from her. She was just smiling,laughing and having fun up there, and to succeed that's what you need to be able to do. She perfected that skill and it has made her a tremendous public speaker. Now I have no problem going in front of people and talking, and I actually kind of enjoy it. It is somewhat like all eyes on me and everybody listening, and I like to know people quiet down just to hear what I have to say. It makes you feel that much more important as a person. Although I feel I am good at it she showed me how much better I could be, and how much more I could enjoy it.
At the beginning of the day and the night before I was dreading going to the conference. Like I said before 8 a.m. on a saturday at RIC for a conference isn't exactly my choice of fun. Although, when it ended I was actually like wow that wasn't even close to as bad as I thought it was going to be. I actually enjoyed the conference and engaged in many different conversations and activities throughout the day. In the future as a teacher I'm sure I will have to attend many more of these, and I just hope they will be as fun. I just hope that the key note speaker is someone like Tricia Rose or as good as her, because I feel like she tied everything together and made the experience that much better. All in all it was a good day and I took a lot from it, and I'm glad Dr. Bogad asked us to attend.

1 comment:

  1. I;m so glad you had a good day. I like the connection you made to SCWAAMP, though I wish you had talked about other connections to our course texts, and included some links to other sources as well (per the assignment). Hope you will attend the conference again next year!

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