Have you been camping lately?

This may seem like an odd question at this time of year.  I like to camp and always have.  My parents used to take us on camping vacations every summer to Leech Lake in Minnesota.  We did not have a ton of money so we used to camp.  This was always great fun for us.  I came to enjoy setting up camp, sitting by the fire, cooking our meals, fishing, and I even enjoyed the long rides in the back end of a pick-up truck to our destination with my brother.   I was also an Eagle Scout and learned many life skills by having to stay away from home on trips while camping with the Boy Scouts.  I feel that I can contribute many of my leadership skills to experiences learned in this arena.  However, to me one of the most enjoyable aspects of camping is the quiet calm surrounding you when you are immersed in the wilderness.  This always gives me the opportunity to reflect on the past and set goals for the future.  So what did I do this weekend?  I went camping, EdCamping! I was able to take part in the same type of deep thought this weekend just in a different setting.

This week Bettendorf High School was a co-host for the first ever Ed Camp Iowa.  This event brought together educators from all over the mid-west.  We were joined by a simultaneous Ed Camp for the western half of the state at Buena Vista University.  Scott McLeod, Jimmy Casas, and I all helped to organize the event and were very pleased with the participation and sharing that went on.  EdCamps are not your typical conference, they are actually an un-conference.  The participants determine the schedule and facilitate the sessions.  We started the day by building an agenda (after doughnuts of course) on a Google doc.  From there the participants were engaged in five sessions of their choice.  This was my second EdCamp experience and similarly to the first my head hurt by lunch time.  Many people commented on the way out the door that this was the most valuable education conference they had been to.  Awesome! It is even more exciting when we think about the fact that it didn't involve a big name presenter, time out of class, and a day of "sit and get".  The only thing we needed were 150 educators committed enough to give up their Saturday to come and talk about the topics they were most passionate about.

So the reflective part of me started thinking, if this experience is so much better then how can we take this new experience and actually do something with it?  How do we not get the same results of other conferences?  What will be our next step?  How do we transform our words into actions for our students?  There is no easy answer to this or a quick fix solution.  Rather, I believe it has to be about mobilizing these voices and building this culture of learners in our own building.  What if we ran our next professional development this way?  We design it for the teachers by having the teachers design it right there! How great could these conversations be?  The most empowering part of the whole experience for me is realizing the answers are within us! We are the solution! We just need to make it happen! Have a great week and as always it is a great day to be a Bulldog!

Matt