NCETA Conference: Well worth the effort

My colleague Kelly Fox and I spent last Friday in Watson Education Building at UNC-Wilmington enjoying the professional development opportunities at the North Carolina English Teacher Association's annual conference.  While it may seem odd to saying enjoying and professional development in the same sentence, my enthusiasm for the NCETA conference is genuine. Even though I was unable to stay at the conference for its full duration, I learned enough in one day to keep my occupied for quite some time. In fact, much of what I learned will be immediately applicable to my classroom and the rest I can tuck away neatly until the summer break allows me time to regroup and reorient.


One of my favorite takeaways wasn't just an idea, it was an entire packet of them.  Anna Frost and Alex Kaulfuss from the NCDPI presented on "40 Ways to Read Like a Dectective: Supporting Text-Centered Instruction".  Honestly, as I was heading into the session, I wasn't expecting more than the basics.  I was more than pleasantly surprised by the well-crafted demonstrations of some valuable strategies, in particular the strategies for close-readings of visual texts such as Waterhouse's paintings of The Lady of Shallot in comparison to Tennyson's earlier rendering of the same story in his famous ballad of the same name.   I loved the questions that framed the discussions because provided classroom teachers the experience of being a student.  The icing on the cake was a packet of the strategies all bound neatly on a ring!

Another session that inspired me was "Flipping the English Classroom".  Believe me, I have read and heard plenty about flipping, the practice of moving lectures to online environments so that teachers can focus their time in class on assisting students with meeting the learning goal and giving students time to demonstrate their understanding.  What I hadn't heard to date is how that might look in an English classroom, with its broad, integrated, nonlinear objectives.  The presenter, Sherrill Jolly of South Brunswick High, did an outstanding job of recounting her successes and alerting us to the pitfalls that she experienced as she flipped her classes.  Ms. Jolly was clear, her thoughts were well-organized and her southern charm and wit quickly won over the participants.  For me, I believe that this session will have the biggest impact on my classroom instruction.  I am anxious to try many of the methods that she used for my class this week!!

I would encourage any of my colleagues to attend next year's NCETA; the price of preparing for a substitute was well worth the benefit of all that I will bring back to my classroom and to my school.