Conferences: Professional Growth or Time to Play?

The Reflective Writing Club  prompt this week is about Conferences. What is the role that they play in professional learning?
I am a conference junkie! I love going to conferences. I love to see what others are doing and I love to present at conferences.I also love getting to travel around the country and spend time in new places. I have been to New Orleans, Baltimore, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas, DC, and many more places. It is not only fun to go to the conferences, it is really fun to get to be a tourist and explore new places.
 I have a few favorite conferences that I try to get to yearly:

These two are about teaching:

Learning and the Brain
Every time I attend,  I am like a fan girl. I get to see and meet some of the best minds in education and the application of brain research. I usually buy too many books and create a session to share with colleagues when I return to my campus.


The League for Innovations
Another amazing conference. Specific to Community Colleges and I get to rub elbows with faculty and administrators from around the world (mostly U.S. and Canada). I have presented here about Flipping the Classroom using Libguides. 

These are geared for my discipline:

0-3
Another place where I feel like a fan girl. All of the best minds in my discipline are there and sharing what they know.

NAEYC PDI
In my discipline many of the conferences are geared to classroom staff who work with young children and the majority of workshops are conducted by my peers. This is the one that is different. There is a faculty track and I always come away with major new ideas to share with my department colleagues.

The nice thing about all of these is they are held at different times in the year. I have been very fortunate that my college has funds to send me to most of what I would like to do.
I always return refreshed and energized, ready to try new ideas and to share with my colleagues. I always create seminars and present to my colleagues, minimally in my department. More often, campus wide. Some of the ideas I have learned and implemented as a result of these conferences include:
-Flipping the Classroom ( we actually have a faculty inquiry group that meets monthly all of whom
"flip" the classroom).
-Gamification ( Last semester I "gamified" one of my fully face to face classes)
- Using ILabs from University of Washington modules to enhance delivery of course content
- Implementing a student study day on campus prior to finals week
And so much more.

I love conferences!!!

"How? I don't know, it's a mystery"

This week the Reflective Writing Club began with a prompt about "reflecting". Fun! I was brought back to a time in my life when I was very worried about my son. He had spent time at UC Riverside and did not want to finish his degree. He had moved home and just had no idea what he wanted to do with his life.
He was living with me and my husband, working and attending College of the Desert (because he had to go to school or pay rent, so school it was), but with no real aim or goal. He had been on a birthright trip to Israel  several years before and suddenly decided that he wanted to return to Israel to live. I was to say the least, worried. More to the point, I was a bit terrified! My only boy was heading off to a part of the world that was in constant turmoil. He had no friends there, no family and did not speak Hebrew. He had no marketable skills that would make it easy for him to get and keep a job, but he was determined. I was a wreck!
Here is what I would tell myself if I could go back in time:
Donna, get a grip.
You are forever telling your students how capable and strong they are. Why don't you believe that your own child is capable and strong?
Your son is intelligent. He knows how to work hard. He has been to Israel before so it is not fully unknown to him. He can always come home. While in Israel, Joe will find his passion. He will make new friends and will find his way in this world. He will call you more when he is away then he does when he is close to home.
He will return home and finally finish college ( although not university and not at all what you think he will do). He will figure his life out. He will call if he needs you, trust me.  He has an ease with learning languages and will either pick up Hebrew or not, but you can't fix that for him. Know that you have done your job and raised a good man. It is time to let him see what life holds for him. That is what parenthood is about. Holding them close until you have finished your job. It is hard to know when your job is finished. Sometimes you have to let go and hope things turn out well.
You will have moments of terror (bomb threats that have your son hunkered down and hiding and unable to call you). You will also have long stretches of time where you are just not worried at all. When he is that far away, you can't obsess about his daily life. You will also have the joy of seeing your son as a man who can navigate the world. It will all turn out fine. Breathe.
While writing this, I was reminded of a quote from one of my favorite movies, Shakespeare in Love.

 "The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. So what do we do? Nothing,  strangely enough, it all turns out well. How? I don't know, it's a mystery. "
And it did all turn out well. 

Here is my Joe today. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and cooking in Los Angeles at Red Bird and loving it! (He's the one in the hat, lol).

So, if you are in downtown LA and looking for an excellent dinner,  make a reservation at Red Bird and tell them Joey's mom sent you. Ask for Joey and tell him mom says hi and to call home!  

Joey, Mom and John

Success, Failure, Grades and Learning

As I am preparing for a new semester, I have been thinking deeply about my grading system. I have read all the research around grit and success. I have even taken the Grit Test and read my results. If you haven't heard of Angela Duckworth and her theory about Grit, I have linked her Ted Talk below this post.

My concern is that while I teach my students about this concept and I have exercises in my courses to help students understand and apply Grit, I don't think that my assignments and grading practices support students' ability to apply Grit.

For example, if a student completes an assignment on time and turns it in for a grade, we are done and on to the next assignment. If students approach me and request to redo an assignment, I will often say no and to focus on the next assignment. In courses where I scaffold large assignments, I don't often do the same for smaller assignments. Students are told to look forward. I provide extra credit opportunities. I provide extra points for going to the tutoring center to get help with writing. But, I don't think I encourage students to persist with a project and refine and make it better.

Students are not given a chance to fail, redo and then succeed. My grades follow the traditional A-F scale of necessity, but what if I sought to change it?

I attended a conference where the grading paradigm suggested was - 0-2 points. 0- failed to meet standards, 1- met standards, 2- exceeded standards. I am rethinking everything! What if I provided students the assignments and allowed them to turn in one week early with an opportunity to revise for an improved grade? I would have to have less assignments, and I would have to juggle my grading time.

Not sure about how this will work, or if this will work, but am willing to try.

Angela Duckworth Ted Talk

Here I am again....

So, been gone from blogging for a while. I have recently joined an online faculty support group that will help me to improve my social media usage. One of our first questions was, what will we change for the new semester. One faculty member posted that she would "Marie Kondo"  her classes. Sounded like a fabulous idea to me. I have been spending the last few days cleaning and organizing at home and will do the same in my office. Hadn't thought about doing the same for my classes in the winter. I usually wait until summer to make those changes.
One new thing I am going to do is to work more closely with our campus librarian for one of my hybrid classes. Students will be required to create webpages of specific topics and those pages will be published in one of the libguides for our ECE program. I am excited to see how this will work. The students will work in pairs and will use either Google sites or Wix to create their webpages.
Looking forward to a new semester and new challenges and fun!
Roll on Spring 2018.

The view from the Faculty Innovation Center