The K.A.T.E. Conference!

I was particularly excited about attending the K.A.T.E. conference this year. I have never attended and it looked like the conference would be a great way for me as a future teacher to learn new ideas and prepare for my career as an educator. Unfortunately, due to a morning class involving a test at the school, I was unable to attend the KATE conference on Thursday until shortly after 12 or so. I made it in time to see Jaqueline Woodson speak. I thought that she was very informative and a great speaker. It was motivating to see her passion about translating issues such as LGBTQ persecution into her books and I was excited that I got to pick up a few books from her to buy as well as have them signed!

On Thursday, I went to the breakout sessions by Dr. Cramer on LGBT in young adult literature but with the focus on T (transgender). I think that we are beginning to see a lot more attention being placed on transgender men and women as well as students and younger people who are transitioning or something similar. Dr. Cramer gave brief book talks about the many different books that could be included in the classroom. I really enjoyed this breakout session as it gave me some interesting ideas for my unit that I am developing for our methods class since I am focusing on persecution throughout history and one of my novels involves persecution along the lines of LGBT content.

The next breakout session I went to was with Laura Packer. I really found her quite interesting. I've never really thought of the basics of just being a storyteller and how powerful the telling of a story can be and her storytelling activity (as well as the prep work that it involved) were very interesting and ones that I might want to include in my classroom.

After that, the conference was over for Thursday. I really wished that I could have attended in the morning as there were some breakout sessions involving student group collaboration I believe and a few other things that I would have been interested in attending. My favorite thing about Friday were the KATE stories. I was very impressed with the ability of each storyteller to be able to get up there and tell a story that was authentic and true. I was a little disappointed with the breakouts I attended. I attended one about Shakespeare and it really wasn't what the program described it to be. The speaker was mainly focused on explaining the upcoming Shakespeare related events that were taking place at KSTATE and I felt I could have found this information online. I thought the session was going to involve teaching Shakespeare in the classroom, but it really didn't focus on this at all.

I also went to the breakout session about the new students in regards to ELA in the classroom. I wish I had not attended this one. As a teacher starting out, I found it very daunting and all of the standards (as well as discussion about how assessments were created) to be very overwhelming and I think the session was probably more suited to those who have been teaching for a while and are familiar with the students. I had a hard time following along as well.

Overall, I really enjoyed the KATE conference this year. From what it sounds like, most school districts (in Wichita) will only let teachers attend one day of the conference. Next year, I will probably only attend Thursday as it seemed the more interesting sessions were on this day. I also enjoyed attending the social that was held afterward and conversing with my fellow colleagues!