Promising Practices

This was my very first time attending a conference at Rhode Island College on Saturday, November 1st. Since this was my first time I really was dreading this conference because I thought it was going to boring and a waste of a weekend. Promising Practices  

The first workshop I attended was called Making it personal. Buddy Comet was the person who ran this. He is the dean of Pedagogy at Central Falls High School. Karen Oliviera also helped run this who works at Rhode Island College school of social work. Out of the two workshops I attended I feel as though I liked this one better. During this workshop we spent time learning on how to help students who have an IEP. When personalizing students you are taking a whole new approach. Sometimes you are in a self contained setting, you are traveling throughout the day but always with a teacher. Sometimes the students have anxiety disorders, learning disabilities and diverse ability. Buddy said that he likes when students move around in the classroom rather than sit in the desk all day because kids are kids. They need to move around to learn and stay focused. He had us pretend we

were students and go from table to table to complete a task. He said that it is okay if we don't finish each task. Every task that I did reminded me of Delpit and a little bit of Kozal. He had the directions printed for each table and had the power to make sure we knew how to do the activity correctly. The second part of this workshop Karen ran the workshop. She talked about what students face at school and out of school with foster card, divorces etc. I could related because my parents got divorced at a young age. I thought of Kozal for this because of when he was talking about the neighborhoods some children live in. I really liked how a lot of people help out these students. Leaving this workshop, I thought about minoring in social work. It is still up in the air for me. But overall this workshop was my favorite.

The second workshop I attended was called Comedy in the classroom ran by Elizabeth Anne Keiser and Tall University students. I really thought this was going to be my favorite workshop. I read the description when signing up and though wow this seems fun and interesting. When I got into the workshop they were running about 10 minutes late. Students introduced themselves as we walked in. There was also little to no room to move because of all of us plus the tall university students. This was not very structured and organized at all. We worked with the students and tried  to understand what the point of this workshop was about. It was hard to understand because the students seemed like they did not know what they were going either. I wish the adults ran it a little better so I could understand it better.

Christopher Emdin did the keynote. He did a great job tying everything I learned together. He gave a great speech and tied what he talked about by putting it in the classroom and how much the teachers role play in a students life. I could see this by working at my daycare. I ave gotten called "mom" by so many students because most of their life is spent at school and at the daycare until 6:00pm. I was happy I attended this conference and I can not wait to have my own classroom.