Annual Education Conference

Each year, my school district holds its annual Education Conference, which is a fancy name for in-service.  It's a good thing.  Because the district is composed of 15 village schools spread out over 80,000 square miles of frozen Alaskan tundra, we teachers don't have much of an opportunity to get together face-to-face and collaborate/share/solve problems/etc. We are all connected through the internet and video-conferences, but it's not always the same.  This once a year in-service is our chance to see what other teachers and schools are doing to tackle problems that may or may not be the same as ours.  It's a chance to re-set our perspectives and remind ourselves that we aren't alone in this thing called teaching. 

Now, in most places, a multiple day in-service wouldn't be much different from a normal school week.  The teachers would show up at the site of the in-service - generally the school - and leave at the end of the day.  Not so for us.  Remember, we're spread out over 80,000 square miles.  That's quite a commute.  So, we obviously can't go home at the end of each day.  All staff members are flown to one of the sites in the district, usually Unalakleet - it's one of the biggest schools, the district office is located there, they've hosted it for so long that they know what they're doing.  This year, though, different parts of the Unalakleet school are in various stages of renovation and unusable.  Two villages (Stebbins and St. Michael) near Unalakleet are decent-sized and within 15 miles of each other.  It was decided that half the staff would be sent to Stebbins and the other half would be sent to St. Michael for this year's conference.  Elim had the privilege of being sent to St. Michael. 

Think about the implications of this.  We are staying in the village for 4 days.  Due to the fact that there is nowhere else to go, we "get to" sleep on the floor of the school on (sometimes leaky) air mattresses.  We "get to" stand in long lines to eat cafeteria food (actually, the cooks did a decent job and we were provided with plenty of snacks so it wasn't too horrible).  We "get to" share the school bathrooms and showers with the other 150 people at the conference (usually 300 people, but remember, we were split this year). 

During the day (for two days) we have one workshop session that we attend.  We went from 9-4, with a half-hour of "Team Time" beforehand, which is time with just the people from our site.  The session I attended this year was about a new math program that the district is slowly implementing.  I figure I'm going to have to teach it eventually, so I might as well learn about it.  I'm now fairly confident in the first 2 steps of 5 Steps to a Balanced Math Program.  Because we had been briefed on the first two steps by our high school math teacher before the school year started, I was already tentatively implementing one of the steps in my classroom.  I now see what I was doing wrong and how I can fix it, and I have a new step to implement.

That left from 4 in the afternoon until 8:15 the next morning (when Team Time started) free for us teachers to create mischief.  That is the reason we had optional evening activities planned.  The first night, Tuesday, was the Museum Walk.  Each school put up a display/poster to show the good things that are happening at that site.  The second night, Wednesday, was good, old-fashioned fun.  The district brought out a band from Nome called Land Bridge Toll Booth Band and a square dance caller.  He taught square dances and contra dances for 3 hours.  It sounds kooky and weird, but it was so much fun!  On the third night, Thursday, the district brought over the Stebbins Dancers and Drummers - a native dancing and drumming group from Stebbins.  We ate pie and watched them for a couple of hours.  By that time, we were all getting a little worn-out.  It's tough to sustain energy for the full schedule during the day on less than 7 hours of restless sleep each night. 

Friday was a bit different, due to travel.  We attended 2 shorter hour-long sessions in the morning, followed by the closing keynote and lunch.  The shorter sessions I attended were about classroom management, which is my biggest weakness.  I was so energized and excited by what I learned!  My classroom management system hasn't been working the way I would like and I have been thinking about how I can change it, but hadn't really come up with anything that would solve the issues I'm having.  I have a new strategy to put into practice on Monday - I don't know exactly what it's going to look like yet and I don't know if it'll work, but it's worth a try.  It's based on the idea that teachers waste a lot of time waiting for kids to behave, so if the kids voluntarily behave, then we as teachers have a bit of time to give back to the kids in the form of free time (but it's not called that because "free time" has a bad connotation in school).  The best part is that this strategy was taught to us by a teacher-trainer from the district office so we can't get in trouble for giving our kids this "activity time."  All we have to do is make sure we're doing it right and refer critics back to Jim Nelson at the district office. 

Friday afternoon was travel time.  We actually got out of there at a decent time.  I think we were all having nightmares about what happened last year - we were the first school to fly in and the last school to fly out.  We were there from 8:30 Tuesday morning until 7:00 Friday night.  This year was a relief.  We weren't the first school in, but we weren't the last, so we had a choice of air mattresses and could get them filled to see if they were going to leak.  We were in the second wave of flights going out.  We loaded up the trucks at 1:45, drove to the airport, sat for 10 minutes waiting for the plane, loaded up the plane, and flew out.  We were home shortly after 3.  It was fantastic!  It felt good to have some downtime and sleep in my own bed!