Day 124 & 125 : Conference time

Professional development and new ideas are things I need to keep me in a creative, growing space for the practice of my profession.  This annual conference(Educating for Careers) takes place in Sacramento and is based around bettering school Academies- which in California are SLC's(small learning communities) funded by the state. We have 7 at my school, wall to wall.  Most schools have 1-3, and then the rest of their school. The goals for these academies are to keep students in a smaller group with familiar teachers and students for a better sense of belonging, to have students learn about content material that is tailored more towards a career pathway sector, which ideally, would make all of their classes relevant to want they want to learn about and become in the future.  Easier said than done.  We work very hard at my school, but there is so much more which can be done.  Thus, this academy conference every year.
This year I also presented about the Community Action Project at my school and all of my ideas and resources about the power of any 20time project- especially if we as academies are to help students gain real world skills and be career and college ready.  It went well and many folks had never heard of 20time projects before or Kevin Brookhouser's book, 20 time project.

A-ha: Teachers want to be inspired by other teachers, and we need to be.

Reminder: Always check every link in my presentations on someone else's computer before I present.  My feedback link was not accessible.  That was good feedback.