KATE Conference Breakdown

       My favorite keynote speaker was definitely Bill Konigsberg, though I did find Stacy's lunchtime keynote on diversity in literature to be a rather perplexing topic for discussion. When Mr. Konigsberg started speaking I was immediately hooked in by how gracefully he composed himself. A lot of the things he had to talk about were also very personal to me. From a very young age I found myself constantly being bullied so when he said "when I meet what I see as hatred with hate no good can come of it" that connected with me in a powerful way. If Mr. Konigsberg and I could both think something like this then there are others out there who do as well. And it is up to people like us to spread the understanding to everyone. I strive to teach my students this attitude of positive thinking and understanding of peoples uniqueness. Another point he made during his keynote that I found particularly interesting was his talk on over correcting behaviors. I believe that most of the time when we hear certain microaggresions, as Mr. Konigsberg calls them, we tend to ignore the fact that they might simply just be ignorant of their actions and that is something that I never thought of. By correcting their microaggresion incorrectly we are inadvertently shutting them down from expressing their own opinions, and that is no good. So to hear this being brought to the surface for all of us to hear it really helped put the issue into perspective because it is something that I think all of us in the profession are constantly wondering how to go about doing.


       The first break out session that I found to be very useful was "Student Teacher to Teacher: Navigating the Metamorphosis" ran by Keely Tolbert and Holli Boyd. This session answered literally (not literally) a metric ton of questions I had about the next big step into transitioning into the real world scenario. In my previous reflections I tend to talk about my existence within the classroom and they couldn't have said it better: "it is a lot different being in your own classroom rather than conforming into the space that someone else has already laid out" is a really good verbal representation of my feelings regarding that issue. Getting to see how previous student teachers were transitioning into their roles as educators helped get me prepared for my future and it allowed me to gain a sense of calm in the raging storm of graduation.


       The next breakout session I went to was "Student Learning Through Visible Thinking" lead by Tara Martin. This session was so much fun (we played with Play-Doh!) and very thought provoking. She started us off by asking us to make a Play-Doh model of someone that has a special meaning to us and represent them any way we see fit. This was an introduction into ways we can see our students learning in a visual way. We get to break down their individual thought process by watching them create their sculptures. Another tool I picked up for my arsenal of visual learning skills is an app called Seasaw. This app has many cool features such as a drawing app, the ability to record videos or edit photos, and even a place for links to go in case you need to show your class a YouTube video, or even link them there own copy of the PowerPoint for note taking. With this app we recorded ourselves talking while we drew out a story model for Goldilocks to demonstrate how we can monitor each students individual styles of learning and keep a running record for them to show us how they arrive to the conclusions that they arrive to. The reason I chose this session over the other three that ran this block was specifically to understand how to spot visual thinking in my current and future students. I learned how to determine whether or not my students are gaining what they need out of lessons through the use of the Seasaw app and feel like I will be integrating it into my classrooms from now on.


       The final session that I attended was "Using Graphic Novels in the ELA Classroom" lead by Caitlin Doolittle. I am a big advocate for the use of graphic novels in the classroom and have seen them used, whether correctly on incorrectly, in several classrooms so I wanted to attend this session to gain some more useful tips on the best approach to teaching with one. Needless to say we weren't even 15 minutes into the presentation when an epiphany came out of the room. Using the panels in a graphic novel as multiple choice questions, or even providing panels with no text and just the pictures so that students can predict what the scenes are about or vice-versa; the possibilities for the graphic novel are endless.


       As far as networking is concerned I didn't get the chance to meet with many people outside of the kiosk vendors in between sessions. Although I did get to have a micro-conversation with Bill Konigsberg during the book signing (yes it was awesome) so that was very cool. I plan on keeping in touch with him through twitter. I also connected with Tara Martin through twitter after having a conversation with her about all of the different ways I wanted to implement her strategies. She was even interested in hearing a strategy of my own and wants to keep in touch to see how it works out.
Seeing how this was my first KATE conference I felt that I was going to learn a lot of new information. While this is true there were so many sessions I wanted to go to but couldn't since they happened at the same time. Luckily I had classmates there with me to divide up the load in order to get as broad of a picture as possible. So it's not so much a point where I wanted to attend something that I couldn't rather it was a scenario where each of found something different a little more interesting than the others so we all went to each and came back to share notes. As far as I am concerned the KATE conference has everything layed out perfectly.