If you were like me growing up, summer camp was the paramount part of every year. Hartland rocked my socks off every summer for 9 years in a row. Some of my best friends are people that I met at Hartland and I have so many wonderful memories of all the fun we had. Last week I went to a conference in Southern California that was so summer campy, I loved it. It was extremely busy, hilariously entertaining and ultimately changed my outlook on teaching, my life and my school. For those of you who are educators, you know that the majority of conferences we attend are a waste of time, just some new jargon to get us through this years observations. But this conference was different. It's hard to put my finger on just what made it so good, but the only concrete example that comes to mind is the enthusiasm of the presenters. The information was good, the program was well thought out but the presenters and the "coaches" made all the difference in the world. I guarantee that you haven't walked into a room full off teachers singing "come on girl, ride that pony" and dancing with complete strangers without some sort of alcoholic libation involved, but it happened on multiple occasions at this conference. As educators we get so bogged down by the system and by other negative forces surrounding us, we forget that one of the key reasons we entered into the profession was to influence people, and it's very difficult to do that without enthusiasm. To conclude this post, I drank the kool-aide and I'm totally in support of this new program. I'm excited to get it started; it's rare to come across a program that I feel this strongly about and I'm stoked! So again, I have committed myself to yet another cause and I know it will work out. But now it's go time, Acadec super quiz this week, History Day, Swim season starts, AP is winding down, I'm taking an online class and now link crew. It will be nice when I don't have a big sticker on my forehead that says "untenured sucker", but until then I will try to stay afloat.
