The teachers and myself took two days to learn. As a teacher, some may think we know it all. Some may think why would you need to learn more? The way I look at being a teacher or better yet, an educator, is we are never done learning. What is a better way to show our students how important learning is than by showing them that we too as teachers are life-long learners.
This conference was the MANS conference, which only comes every 3 years. This year was also celebrating their 40th year. I heard one teacher state, this was the best MANS conference in their forty year history. But, what is MANS? MANS stands for Michigan Association of Non-Public Schools. MANS is an organization that CTK belongs to. Our membership to MANS lets us be part of these conferences, but also gives us as a Private School, a voice. Mainly this voice is in the Michigan courts and congress. MANS fights for the equal rights and protection of Non-Public Schools. Some of MANS recently victories are the change to Shared Time teachers with the public school districts. They made it easy for private schools to work with school districts and work better to avoid conflict with public school districts that do not want to participate in the program. Another victory was dual enrollment for private school students. When I was the principal at Holt Lutheran, I was watching this case very closely. This victory lets private high school students dual enroll with a college or university. Previously the private school student had to enroll into at least one class with the local public high school and then they could enroll in classes in the college/university. MANS has been fighting for us for the last 40 years and I thank them.
So What did we learn?
As an administrator, there is not usually a lot of sectionals for me or the keynote speakers wouldn't be focusing on the office staff. Even with all that, I loved the keynote speakers. They were engaging, funny, smart, and full of wisdom. I have chatted with one keynote speaker over twitter a little bit, to thank him and to continue conversations. His, Kevin Honeycutt, presentation was more of using technology and tools to engage students and let them,the students, become important. I have read some of his stuff before, and seen his video about how teachers need to learn. The premise of his thought is, technology isn't something to be scared of, it is a tool and who is going role model it for the kids. Some of his thoughts and how he uses technology is interlaced in a program our teachers are working on. We are working on a Tech Plan for the school. In this tech plan, we are thinking about what do we want, where do we want to go, and how will we get there.
One of my goals for this tech plan is, that every graduate of CTK will leave with an iPad (or similar tablet). The need for them in high school is irreplaceable. Lutheran South is a BYOD (bring your own device) campus. What Mr. Honeycutt and I agree on, that yes it is a "toy" but more importantly it is a "tool" that can open your child's mind and feed his hunger for learning. My first goal is to get the teachers trained on how to use tablets in the classroom and to use them effectively. I see a tablet as important as a pencil or a ruler.
The teachers went to many different sectionals. I can't wait to discuss it with them and hear what they had learned. Some of the ones I am really looking forward hearing about is the RTI (Response to Intervention) and the FLIP Classroom sectionals (Flip classroom has been a teaching method I have used and seen growing over the last 5 years).
The best part of conferences is learning all this new stuff and being able to implement them into the classrooms.
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