Some Takeaways From #edcampsummitSD

I was lucky enough to attend my first Edcamp Leadership Summit this past weekend down in San Diego. It was a great weekend - get a bunch of edcamp peeps together and of course we'll have fun! Plus, sun and weather in the 60s and 70s was a welcome break from high 30s and rain in the Vancouver area :)

I learned a lot this weekend. In no particular order:
Meeting Eric Cross - an amazing science teacher in San Diego - and hearing him talk about how he structured the units in his middle school science class made me want to be a student in his class. It also made me want to talk to a bunch of different teachers about unit design cross-curricularly. We've got a lot we could learn from each other.

From a session on school climate

Hearing Jen Roberts talk about how her work teaching preservice teachers pushes her pedagogy was interesting. Jen talked about how working with these teachers keeps her trying new things she steals from them in her own class was a benefit that I hadn't thought about.
In a session about how to get a more diverse set of educational stakeholders at edcamps, Dena Glynn had some cool ideas about having student presentations during edcamps. In addition to showing off the host school and district it would bring more parents in as well - to see their kids present. Hopefully this would allow those parents to stay and participate in the edcamp. Really good idea, and we need more parent voices at edcamps!
I only overlapped briefly as a moderator of #caedchat with Kriscia Cabral and I had never gotten a chance to meet her. Her positivity and excitement throughout the weekend were amazing, and a great reminder that if you're excited about what you're doing that enthusiasm rubs off on the people around you.
Improv in the classroom? Need to start doing some learning here. Anthony Veneziale led a two hour improv session for attendees that was excellent: high energy, fun, and backed by the brain science showing the importance of improv. Anthony recommended Impro by Keith Johnstone as a good read with crossovers to improv in the classroom. Definitely adding that to my To Read list on Goodreads!
Scott Bedley shared how he is using sound prompts to get his class writing. Not photo prompts, which I had heard about, but sound clips he records while out living his life. These sound prompts force his elementary student to imagine then describe the scene that sound conjures for them. Super rad!