Developing Educator Weekly: September 2nd
If you ever spend time with me, I will probably wax poetic about the phrase, “Becoming”. I love the idea that no matter how good we are at our jobs or naturally talented at anything, we are constantly in the state of ‘becoming’, or trying to continually push ourselves and learn everything we can to be consistently better at what we do. That is why this weekly post is called “Developing Educator”. I don’t think anyone is perfect at teaching or the myriad works happening to support educators and students worldwide, so we all are developing, or becoming, educators as we work, build, connect, fail, and grow. It takes time and effort to build what we want to be, even if we may never get to perfection. We still strive to be better.
Join me below for some assorted musings about my Summer 2022 conference schedule, the inaugural edition of ‘Who I Follow / Why I Follow”, and any recent updates from edtech and the larger educator community.
Summer Conference Rewind
Although I went to a lot of amazing local conferences, ISTE22 dominated my summer conference schedule. ISTE is a powerhouse conference and every year I am happy to I went. In prior years it provided me opportunities to meet people, connect, enrich my teaching with new ideas, and build out new approaches to education. This year, while all of that was still true, it was a reassuring experience from the larger educator community. I saw so many community members that I had not seen before the pandemic or that I had only previously met via social media. At SXSWEDU22, Dan Ryder extorted his session attendees to “Choose conversations over sessions.” I did just that. I focused on taking my fellow Utahn educators around the conference, attending sessions with them, and generally trying to help connect the people I love in my local community to the people I love in my larger community.
If you are interested in following my journey at ISTE22 or just seeing which resources I found throughout the conference, check out the Wakelet to the right. It has a couple hundred links to resources, presentations, ideas, and Twitter handles from my journey through the conference. Enjoy!
In July I was lucky enough to present eight sessions at the Utah Rural Schools Association Conference in Cedar City, Utah. It was a blast to break out and do some creativity-based sessions, a Google Bootcamp, and some amazing design thinking. I love that I get to have these kinds of opportunities in my day-to-day working life. There are just so many amazing people in education and I am so happy to be able to get to know many of them.
Click on the picture to the left to access my sessions and explore some of the ideas I shared at the conference.
I didn’t know Kayla before last summer, but when she joined the team I am on at Utah Education Network, I knew that I would like working with her. Kayla is so pioneering about building out ideas and connecting with the community, so a lot of the work she does coincides with the work I am doing. She is a solid follow for many reasons but there are three that come to mind:
She is a Utah Teacher Fellow and helps promote the good work happening in Utah education. She also produces their podcast, which is an amazing listen.
She has a wealth of knowledge in everything education, but she is a complete expert in K-6, which is something I rely heavily on her for.
Kayla promotes other educators and helps consistently helps amplify other voices in the community.
First off, some Utah podcasts you should check out:
I co-host the UEN Homeroom podcast with Dani Sloan. We are about to enter our fifth (!) season in the middle of September (more on that later), but over the summer, I co-hosted a bonus season with Jenn Gibbs called Summer Litflix on the intersection between Film and Literature. They are amazing bite-sized episodes that are amazing for classroom learning or just because you love literature and film. In the picture to the right, I have linked the first episode with Utah Film Center’s Julie Gale. Dani and I are excited about the new season and we can’t wait to share the interviews we have lined up with everyone!
Check out the latest episode of the Utah Teacher Fellows Podcast with Audyn Damrom. It chronicles her campaign for a seat on the Utah State Board of Education and what it takes to run an election while also being an educator. Check out the link in the picture to the right.
Finally, the UCET Podcast is coming back for a new season at the end of September, but check out the last episode from last season where Kiera Beddes discussed creativity in education with two amazing Utah educators.
