Hello Education Friends!
As a future teacher or early childhood educator, you have the opportunity to attend education workshops. Brock University’s concurrent education workshop is held once a year in March for one day. The day is filled with ice breakers, an opening speaker, two workshops with guest lecturers and a closing speaker. Workshop topics can be anything from technology, reading, teaching strategies for culturally diverse classrooms, surviving the first year of teaching, interview tips, teaching resources, etc. Conferences allow you to extend your education in a different way from new perspectives (of different speakers) and various topics. I highly recommend attending any education workshop that you can! Oh and FYI, keep your certificate (of completing the conference) for your future portfolio.
I have attended a few education workshops in the past. I have attended the past two Brock University conferences and Queen’s University conference once. Every presenter or speaker brings something new into your life. For example, Mike Pierce, the guest speaker at the Queen’s Conference I attended talked about the importance of a teacher’s role and how it may take 5 minutes to listen to a child because this child may have no one else to talk to. My friend, Selena, attended the Brock’s Conference this past weekend. Her favourite part was the guest speaker and a well-known professor at Brock, Nancy. Nancy spoke about importance aspects of resumes, interviews, cover letters, how to social network and the significance of understanding a child’s ‘backpack’ (metaphor for understand a child’s past experiences that influences the child’s thoughts, opinions and behaviors). She energized the audience with her passion for teaching. All of the conferences have been worthwhile and educational!
If you are interested in hearing moving speeches from educators today, use youtube! One of my favourite videos is a speech by Sir Ken Robinson. It is a 15 minute video about how schools ‘kill’ the creativity of students. You can see this video here. enjoy!
