That's right, throughout the world, teachers gather yearly to continue their own education. The conferences for my school regularly take place in the first week of October because it coincides with National Holiday in China. Here are some things I've learned from my conference experiences:
1) The more specific the session, the more useful. I've found that general sessions can be so general, that they can rarely be useful. Educators love to point to the fact that we all must find our own style and learn what kind of teacher we are without ever explicitly saying how we are supposed to do this.
2) Sometimes teachers like to make others think so much that they've forgotten how to think themselves.
"Professor, but how can I....?"
"Well, that's a great question. What do you think? Anyone?"
This is NOT an exaggeration of a real situation.
3) There's never enough time for collaboration. What we teachers really want to do is get together and hear awesome ideas from others who teach the same subject and grade as we do. Turns out, there's no time for that because we're so busy learning about general topics and being asked, "So what do YOU think?"
I'm convinced that the fate of teachers (and perhaps most professions) is to spend vast quantities of time on work that is both seemingly less useful and most clearly less interesting than what we would do if given the time to better ourselves. But maybe my view of human nature is skewed.
4) Titles can be deceiving. Had a friend go to a session entitled "Writing Indicators" thinking he would learn about how to teach writing. He soon found out it was really about how to write indicators (which are what we base lessons off of)...a significantly more drab topic (as far as most are concerned).
1) The more specific the session, the more useful. I've found that general sessions can be so general, that they can rarely be useful. Educators love to point to the fact that we all must find our own style and learn what kind of teacher we are without ever explicitly saying how we are supposed to do this.
2) Sometimes teachers like to make others think so much that they've forgotten how to think themselves.
"Professor, but how can I....?"
"Well, that's a great question. What do you think? Anyone?"
This is NOT an exaggeration of a real situation.
3) There's never enough time for collaboration. What we teachers really want to do is get together and hear awesome ideas from others who teach the same subject and grade as we do. Turns out, there's no time for that because we're so busy learning about general topics and being asked, "So what do YOU think?"
I'm convinced that the fate of teachers (and perhaps most professions) is to spend vast quantities of time on work that is both seemingly less useful and most clearly less interesting than what we would do if given the time to better ourselves. But maybe my view of human nature is skewed.
4) Titles can be deceiving. Had a friend go to a session entitled "Writing Indicators" thinking he would learn about how to teach writing. He soon found out it was really about how to write indicators (which are what we base lessons off of)...a significantly more drab topic (as far as most are concerned).
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