This week’s blogger is Adam Topliff: He teaches 8th Grade Social Studies and Civics at Wamego Middle School in Wamego, KS. Adam loves all things Hamilton!
Congratulations! You’ve made it to summer! Now take a deep breath and relax for moment. You should allow yourself some quality time with your family, catch up on some reading (ask Glenn Wiebe if you are looking for some good reads), and maybe do some things to make yourself better at your craft.
In recent years, summer professional development has become a popular trend and is taking on many forms. There are great webinars and online opportunities. Check out Twitter. You will find a great variety of chats and great people posting awesome ideas to steal. You can partake in the face to face opportunities (insert my shameless plug for KSDE Summer Institutes) along with many other organizations that have great professional development options. These might not be for you, either because of time or resources, but that does not mean you can’t get some quality professional development.
I love to use my summer family road trips to squeeze in some quality self-paced professional development. Every summer, the Topliff Crew heads to a variety of places around this great state and nation to explore and expose our kids to as much as we can. This summer, we have planned four days in New York City and we are pretty pumped! Each year as we plan our trip, I look into what the area has to offer historically. With New York City, the trip practically planned itself. We included many things related to Hamilton, including a visit to the famed Fraunces Tavern. Continue reading Summer Road Trip – Have Fun And Get Some Professional Development
student engagement. The different quadrants of the matrix ask students to think about how challenging a class is and whether they love or hate it. We’re thinking about using this to get usable data from middle and high school students. As in, “pick a quadrant that best describes each of your classes.”