Last week I took a class on improving oral fluency as part of my read endorsement. They were the nicest three days of the summer and I was stuck in a closed room with the AC running constantly. On top of that, I just looked at this as my jumping through another hoop to get another piece of paper.
Blah.
However, it was somewhat of a shock that I enjoyed this class. Why? We had no name tags so we had to learn the names of our classmates, we had in depth conversations about how we evaluate communication skills, we interacted with each other, and the best part, we laughed. A lot.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had a class where I feel like I could go and talk with any of the teachers later on about education. Usually, class is coming in, writing my name on a name tag, and not doing much talking beyond that. I just felt as though we were truly communicating with each other not at each other.
How does this transfer to the classroom? How do you have your students communicate? Do they talk with each other or at each other? How do they question each other? How do you question them? Is it a dialog or a discussion? Just great questions that we had posed to us during those days.
AND, in 7 hours of driving during those three days, I had a chance to catch up on some education podcasts. Two podcasts that I’ve recently started listening to are Techlandia (@Techlandia) which is a true ed-tech podcast. They have have a guest and will talk about different apps, Twitter users they like, and just have a great time doing it! The other one is called EduAllStars (@EduAllStarsHQ), a podcast dealing more with the power people of education right now. Both have served to help get me excited for the upcoming school year and how I can help my students continue to find their voice and the passion.
So, not a bad few days by any stretch! 🙂
The Life of a Conflicted Teacher 
July 16, 2013 at 11:45 am
I recently attended a professional development on questioning strategies. It was very interesting as well. At first I was like you… Blah. What are they going to tell me that I don’t already know? But, I did learn something, well some things. Not necessarily the focus of the training, “Critical Thinking and Questioning,” rather I learned different techniques to have the students answer the questions such as variations of 4 square, group work using timers, and a technique where students are put into groups of four and given a set of question cards. The first student holds the cards, the second chooses a card and reads it to the group, the third answers the question, and the last person agrees or disagrees with the answer. They then rotate until each group member has had a chance to do all “jobs.” I just though I would share.
July 17, 2013 at 8:54 am
I’ve heard of that done before, but it’s like many things, it’s gets pushed back into the dark forgotten corners of my mind! Thanks for bringing it back out into the light again! As with you, I wasn’t expecting much, but I’m so very glad that I did go. The learning just seemed more authentic and that’s always something I can take back into my classroom to work on! 🙂
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