What a crazy couple of days!
Monday morning found me getting to see George Couros as a part of our district professional development. He's definitely one of my EduHeroes and seeing him in person was outstanding. He's an amazing speaker and someone whose ideas and book The Innovator's Mindset have had a HUGE influence on my practice. Genius Hour, students teaching a piece, my social media activity as both an individual and for our class, student music selections, my philosophy in general...all influence from that book. Reading it the first time was such a "YES!" moment. It felt like I'd finally found someone who was really speaking to not just the educator I was, but the educator I wanted to be.
After hearing him speak, I facilitated a discussion on Student Voice/Choice as a part of the PD for the rest of the day. I'll admit this didn't go quite as I'd hoped. I really wanted this to be a conversation between teachers and for them to walk away with ideas they could implement or try. But because I'm (shockingly!) not an expert in all content areas, I wanted those ideas to come from time planned as a part of our block for them to collaborate. Unfortunately I forgot that teachers can often imitate students when it comes to situations like this. The open ended question/conversation didn't seem to lead to much in the way of concrete ideas which was what I really wanted them to gain. I'm glad this came up though because I'm presenting on a similar topic at our state conference in January and will need to better plan the teacher participation part of the session that I'd like to try again. I'm just disappointed that people signed up for a session that they probably didn't get much out of.
At lunch on Monday, I left for the airport.
Late last June, I was contacted by an organizer for the Orange County Music Educator's Association asking if I'd like to come present at their November conference.
...
I honestly suspected it might be a spam email. I get those from time to time as contacts from this blog. But this one was pretty specific, and offered details when I replied. Impostor Syndrome is legit though and it took a while, but after researching the organization, a few more back and forth emails, asking around, stalling, hmmmming and hawwwwing, I signed a contract and agreed to fly out to New York.
And I'm so glad I did!
The conference day started with conducting a band reading session. I was honestly more nervous about that than the presentations. Conducting colleagues, even in Grade 1-3.5 music was a little nerve wracking. There was a point when I was waiting for the reading session to begin and realized I was the person who needed to get it started. Once we got going it was a blast though and I found a few pieces I might try out in the future. We even chuckled our way through a fun arrangement of Mah Na Mah Na.
(side bar: it was interesting to me that of about 20 scores offered up by two publishers, exactly zero were by women...)
The two sessions I presented on Social Media and Google Classroom both went well and people seemed really receptive to both with great questions and interactions throughout. I hope everyone who attended was able to come away with something. I even got to meet Wendy Higdon!
Even though it was surreal to realize I was the requested presenter, it was an honor to be included as a clinician with Wendy and the others who presented on Tuesday! I really hope it's not the last time I find myself getting to go beyond my comfort zone (namely our state music conference) to learn and share with others.
Can't wait to learn and share with all these awesome music educators at #ocmea2018! pic.twitter.com/J5MKJYnXN4— Amy Rever (@AmyLynnRever) November 6, 2018
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