Look at all the different Tweachers that came!!
Before going I was beginning to feel the old 'meh' attitude and I forget that after Twitter chats and conferences I'm back on an awesome buzz again. Even just going through the introductions left me feeling home again. PLD like this truly does make a community. Teachers being learners and learning from each other creates a community of people who are willing to learn, re-learn and learn again.
Developing that co-constructed and individualised learning is seriously the best part of an un-conference as you are able to choose what you want to learn more about. After the Smackdown, where everyone who wants to shares something via a shared Google Slide for a minute or so, we were given Post It notes to write down something that we were interested in learning more about. I wrote down MakerSpaces with @MissesArtech (Kimberly) and was incredibly stoked when a new colleague and friend tweeted that the only thing she wrote down on her Post It was that she wanted to talk to me about engaging secondary students. The conversation is below:
It was incredibly humbling that my new friend, an assistant principal at a Junior High School, wanted to talk to me about engaging dis-engaged Maori girls. It was an incredibly cool feeling and more so because that's what she'd written on her Post It note. So so cool.
We had an awesome chat straight after and it was again humbling when she asked if I could come work at her school and how great a team we would be in team teaching! I showed her my growth mindset blog post and videos as well as told her how I do the empowerment activity with my students to enable them to change their thinking about themselves and their ability in their subjects.
Going late to the MakerSpaces talk was still good because I saw just how awesome the stuff Kim has been doing with her classes!! Honestly, I wish we could do that kind of stuff here at school or better yet were exposed to more of it when I was at school myself. I think it's possible too... just need to co-construct curriculum subjects in order to have cross-curricular assessment projects.
Her soft circuit unit looks cool too!!!
It was seriously just a great day and I'm so stoked that the right people came. We always say that the people who come, come for the right reasons and are there because they really want to be there. It's the best opportunity and fabulous professional learning as a community and to individualise our own learning.
Below is the Storify of our day - created by @1MvdS (Marnel):
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