It has been a year filled with inspiring professional learning, and soon I will have the time to step back and let all the wonderful ideas I've learned take hold during the summer months.
In the meantime, there's a few more events to attend including The Wayland Literacy Institute, The Wayland STEAM Institute, SRSD Math Writing Workshop, and the Deep Learning Conference at Regis College. All of these educational events are open to interested teachers.
In many ways you have to push yourself to attend professional learning events after the busy school year. You're naturally tired particularly at this time due to so many new standards and initiatives, yet making the time for one or more professional events during the summer months serves you and your students well in the upcoming school year and beyond.
The key is to strike a good balance of service to children, professional learning, and personal time, and the summer months are a good time to determine that balanced path for the year ahead.
While I attended multiple events this year, next year I'd like to attend less professional learning events and focus more on deep learning related specifically to my classroom goals. I'll carry forth the learning from this year into next year's curriculum too. Focus areas such as the use of rich text, better writing, effective technology, and mathematical thinking will lead my learning during the learning events noted above and my work in the year ahead.
