The Summer of Professional Development

It’s been a little quiet around here, mostly because I’m having one of the busiest summers I’ve had in a long while.

Last year was the summer of travel. My kids and I took an 8-week long adventure through Central America (starting with a California road trip) and it was an incredible, horizons-broadening experience.

This year, my daughter is going to college in the fall, so she wanted to make the most of being at home. I took the opportunity to sign up for a bunch of conferences (it helped that my school had some “use it or lose it” funding.) I ended up with three very different conferences and I got so much out of each of them. There have been some years when I have considered skipping out on my professional development — well if you hear that kind of talk from me in the future, remind me to go back and read this post.

World Domination Summit

The first conference I attended was a personal growth/renewal conference called World Domination Summit. It is run by entrepreneurship guru Chris Guillebeau (awhile back Chris featured A Waldorf Journey on his podcast called Side Hustle School.) It was a pretty self-indulgent conference and I made some great connections and got really inspired to pour more of my love, energy and attention into my work in the classroom and on A Waldorf Journey.

This was definitely not the kind of summer conference I usually attend, but it was so great! There were lots of inspiring speakers and the other attendees were fantastic people who are committed to self-development. Everyone was ridiculously friendly and it made for a super-fun weekend. I’m already thinking about next year’s lineup.

One of my favorite experiences of the conference was a course on travel-hacking taught by Stephanie Zito. That night I signed up for the best rewards card, enrolled in a rewards dining program and got my hotel points all figured out. My next step is to plan next summer’s big trip!

Art of Teaching Grade 2

This was a course I was on the fence about signing up for — I definitely considered doing the online grade 2 training. But I’m really glad I went. There are a number of teachers in my cohort who looped back from 8th grade (hi Molly and David!), so we’ve been going to the training together for years. I got a lot out of the training, but I got the most out of seeing those folks and spending the week thinking about the coming year.

The biggest highlight of this training for me was that Patti Connolly, from Waldorf Inspirations, led our language arts course. I got SOOO much out of this class. For someone who has never taught 2nd grade before (and never taught a class full of students to read!) this class was an absolute godsend. Patti’s course came mostly out of the new book Roadmap to Literacy. The authors have been kind enough to send me a review copy and as soon as I make my way through the whole thing, I’ll be posting a review. So far it feels like an absolutely indispensable resource that the Waldorf world has done without for far too long!

Responsive Classroom Advanced Course

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you know that I am a huge fan of Responsive Classroom. I think it is just the thing to fill in the classroom management/creating a class culture gaps our Waldorf teacher trainings leave. It is a mainstream approach that aligns with Waldorf ideals really well and I’ve been using it with my students since I first learned about it years ago.

I took the first course about three years ago and it completely transformed my way of working with my students. This advanced course focused more on bringing your students choices in their academic work, and how to manage it in a way that supports their learning. We also discussed some tricky behavior topics and how to handle them. There are a ton of great Responsive Classroom resources out there (just do a search on Amazon) but my favorite book (and a good one to start with) is called Teaching Children to Care. Check it out.

I’m so passionate about Responsive Classroom and the tools that the approach brings to teachers, I’m excited to continue the work and start helping other teachers find and use responsive classroom strategies.

Now that all of this training is done, I’m home and I’ve started planning the school year (and taking a bit of downtime, of course.) This summer I launched a pilot program to help support and motivate teachers with their summer planning. We’re in week one of the program and I’ve outlined a set of planning goals to get started. I’m so glad to be doing this as it’s helped me to jumpstart my own planning!

It’s too late to sign up this year, but keep it in mind for next year. Participants are already raving about the program and getting lots of planning work done!

How’s your summer planning going? Fill me in in the comments. And don’t forget — if you’re teaching 1st, 5th, 6th, 7th or 8th, I’ve got some curriculum guides that might make your planning a whole lot easier.