Standard 7 references the extremely important notion that educators are never finished in their learning journey and there is always room for growth. Professional development days are offered as a way for teachers to collaborate, learn and continue their journey as learners in the classroom. This is something that teachers are obligated to go to as a way to contribute to the profession and always keep their students success at the forefront. As society grows and changes, ways of teaching and learning changes as well, and often times these conferences and keynotes are extremely beneficial in inspiring new techniques, strategies and activities for educators to implement and use.
Recently, our program had the amazing opportunity to attend the Early Learning Conference here in town, which was attended by many SD57 employees. Not only did we attend some amazing speakers, we were able to meet, connect and collaborate with so many SD57 teachers who we will hopefully be working with in the future. I started the day in Playful Mathematics for the Pre-K-1 age level, which is the ideal age level that I would be teaching after graduation. I’ve often been avoidant of math and participating in any math type lessons or activities, so I made sure to push myself out of that mindset and attend a math-based talk. The presentation was amazing and I have so many resources and lesson ideas that I can use. We also did a little group project, collaborating with other teachers, and a gallery walk to see all the other ideas in the group. The last presentation I attended was a talk by a teacher in SD57 at Ron Brent, who spoke on her experience bringing the classroom to the community and bridging that gap between the two. In this presentation, I could see how effective and meaningful outdoor learning can be in the community, and how exciting it can be for students to leave the school and use Prince George as their classroom. She also discussed bringing community members into the class to speak about their jobs, and to approach professionals in the community who can speak with the students for 5 minutes and answer a few questions. Hearing her talk about how passionate the children can get, and how exciting it can be to have these new experiences really inspired me to want to implement this into my future classroom. Overall, it was very meaningful to me to participate in this experience, and to be surrounded by such inspirational and likeminded people.