What's green will grow...

I love meeting educators.  I love being inspired.  I love attending conferences.

So I was pretty excited to attend the Virginia ASCD conference last week.

I brought back numerous resources for my faculty and a fresh pack of inspiration for myself.  My learning can be summarized into four main takeaways:

What's green will grow, whats ripe will rot.
This quote by Dave Weber sums up my feelings about professional growth.  While we would hope that all educators would be committed to lifelong learning, sadly we know that is not the case.  We can all think of someone who finds fault and makes every excuse for not moving forward.  The negativity broadcast by these individuals spreads like a rotten banana in your fruit basket.

As a young administrator, sometimes I struggle with being perceived as too "green" to be a principal.  This quote reminded me that there is nothing wrong with being green.  As long as I remain committed to growth, I will stay relevant and effective in the education field.

There is power in connection

I know I am preaching to the choir on this one (but as Annette Breaux says, "who better to preach to?") but the power of a connected educator is astonishing.  

VASCD gave participants multiple ways to connect with each other and the content being presented.  The conference had an app as well as groups on Edmodo for each keynote and session presentation.  So even though I could only attend three breakout sessions, I was able to access the documents shared from each presenter by joining their Edmodo group.  

I was pleasantly surprised to follow the "official" conference hashtag as previous state conferences required that attendees create-our-own to connect and share.  Because of this hashtag I was able to add more Virginia educators to my PLN and look forward to learning from them in the future.

We underestimate our students

There was a phenomenal selection of breakout sessions to attend.  I chose sessions that applied directly to my vision for our school and I was not disappointed.

An elementary school was successfully implementing student-led conferences each spring and had increased parent participation over 50%!  A kindergarten classroom was giving students choice in seating, workspace, and task - and they were successfully managing their time at five years old.  

Students at another elementary school had been given choice in their environment and decided on paint colors, lobbied for the addition of a LEGO wall and a magnetic geoboard in the hallway.

Wow!  As I thought back to the 300 students at CES, I was just hoping no one had any serious discipline issues!

I was underestimating their ability.  My kindergarten students are just as capable as those in other parts of Virginia.  Where else am I underestimating my students?  

We've got to be brave!
The title of Rick Wormeli's keynote was "What We Could Do If We Were Brave Together."  He presented a multitude of things we could accomplish in education if we were brave enough to step out of our comfort zone and do what's best for kids.

Scary.

I'll take that challenge.

Our task as educators is too important to remain comfortable with the way we have always done things.  I'm super thankful for my week of growth and pray that I can be brave enough to make the tough decisions that are needed to move my school forward.