Workshop Reflections

I recently had the opportunity to teach an all-day district wide professional development for primarily science teachers.  The feedback was great and I enjoyed the opportunity to share with my peers. A few thoughts on what I might want to change for next time.

I selected Hooks, Games & Technology: Techniques to draw them in as the title of my workshop.  I wanted to offer a variety of things that I had used or found for classroom use. I thought a variety of things would make it more likely that a teacher would find something that he/she could use in their classroom. However, I think I had too much stuff to present.  I should have finalized my content earlier and then just spent my prep time uploading my documents, building the models etc.  In my opinion, we rushed through some of the material to make sure we had time to try all the games, build the models and classroom games.

The past several summers I have done workshops on different topics (literacy, investigations etc) but have always had a co-presenter.  This workshop was shorter, so I was the only presenter.  I felt very comfortable presenting solo but I think having a colleague to work with would be good to share ideas with and to help give feedback on what teachers would find beneficial.

I also had a greater diversity of teachers than I had really planned for (elementary and other content areas).  I tried hard to adapt the games and activities so these could translate to their classrooms.  They all seemed to think it was a good use of their time but I might put more limitations on who can sign up next time. Though honestly, we probably all benefit from the cross-pollination of ideas.

I love being in the classroom with kids but presenting to teachers stretches a different part of your brain.