School's Already Started...for me at least

For the past two days, I've attended a huge conference our county puts on for its teachers. I'm so lucky to work in a county that supports professional development for our teachers and offers great ways to do it. For this conference, I had two things I wanted to focus on, classroom management and SPED. For the past four years, I've been able to work with our Special Education department, and am considering getting my masters in Special Education. I still want to be a classroom teacher, but I want to work with SPED students better--understand them better, work with their abilities more, help them to succeed, just be a better teacher for them.

Yesterday, day one of the conference, was spent learning some new management skills from New Management author, Rick Morris. I love this guy. He's quirky, and offers some great "why didn't I think of that" advise. This was the second or third time I've seen Rick talk, and I still went away with some new ideas. Things that I can put into place as soon as students walk through the doors next week.

I also participated in a workshop by Paula Kluth. She offered some great advice about dealing with our special needs students. She helped us to understand how to have more involvement from our special needs students.

Today, I attended another half day presentation by Dr. Barbara Blackburn--so so cute and funny and animated. I loved her presentation of motivating students and setting them up for success. I want my students to succeed. If I could give them all As in class, I would. I hate seeing them fail, because that means that I didn't do what THEY needed from me. She told a story today about her sister whose son didn't do so well in Reading as a kindergartener. She felt like a failure as a mother, because her son wasn't making As in spelling and was behind grade level in reading. (her sister is/was a teacher too). It so hit home with me. I try really hard to just be John David's mom and not a teacher when I walk through his school's doors. But, when he doesn't do well in something, I can't help but see that as it's my fault. I have failed him in some way with school. Have I not read to him enough, pushed studying enough, worked with him enough on his spelling words. I know that it's not my fault, but I still feel like in some way it is.

I also went to Lisa Elliott's session on using Technology in the class, not as something else to do, but to help with what we do. She had some amazing sites to highlight, and I can't wait to dig into them (a couple I've used before, but many I'd never heard of).

Highlights:
Google Lit Trips fieldtrips to visit the places in the books you read using google earth!!! Not a huge selection, but great idea!!

Animoto Makes you look like a cool video editor with just a few clicks.

Portaportal Links to all your favorites from anywhere. This is mine that I've used for about five years. It needs some housekeeping, but there are some neat sites there.

Live Binders On-line version of your binders. You can add links, documents, etc. I see this being used in writing class this year.

All in all, the sessions I attended were fab. DI always gets me ready for the year. I've still got a bunch of stuff to do before our open house Monday night, but I'm ready to dive back in and get to school.