Up early in order to work out with @poh and @bhsprincipal in the Windsor suites basement gym (seriously, what’s up with all those mirrors? Is that really necessary?)
Then off to a quick Starbucks breakfast (parfait!) with the NWP crew: @gailhd, @poh, @paulallison, and @janalon.
We hoofed it over to SLA where the place was jammed with people. We successfully found seats and listened to the most amazing speech by Marilyn Perez, the Central Region Superintendent. She espoused the kind of notions of social justice and equality in education that I love to hear.
Off to the first session with Ben Wilkoff, a young go-getter looking to describe our innovations as educators. We ended up talking about the ways our desks are arranged in our classrooms (having no classroom myself, I remained largely mum on this topic). The share-out included a bemoaning of standardized testing at which point I discussed that standardized testing is a sonnet, a Paul Allison “enabling constraint” that can be used to inspire creativity in the teacher as we navigate that world.
The ensuing wave of nausea indicated that it was time to go to the Encienda Educon session over the lunch break. Seven presenters, each with 20 slides that auto-advanced every 15 seconds to add up to a five-minute presentation. We were each tasked with presenting a big idea in 5 minutes. Random chance determined that I was to go first, and I was still chewing my potato chips when the slides began their awful march to the five minute mark. I rallied, and in the end I got some good feedback. I’ll post the preso later.
The others were, of course, amazing.
From there it was on to @ChristianLong’s Alice in Wonderland blog project.
And my final stop: the Leadership 2.0 conversation, led by Chris Lehmann, the fearless leader of SLA and Educon. We discussed the big questions and came up with more questions. Leadership is tricky and growing communities requires a delicate balance of love, trust, and care.
Paul Oh took pity on me since I was starving (I never got more than an handful of potato chips for lunch due to Encienda Educon), and we braved the wind and snow to eat the best Ethiopian food. From there, some schmoozing occurred at Rembrandt’s and we finally ended up piled into Paul Oh’s hotel room to strategize our new world order, or at least which blog sites are best.
A good day, all around.
