{"id":6333,"date":"2018-01-12T02:34:52","date_gmt":"2018-01-12T02:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/?p=6333"},"modified":"2018-01-12T02:52:13","modified_gmt":"2018-01-12T02:52:13","slug":"the-power-of-professional-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/2018\/01\/12\/the-power-of-professional-development\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Professional Development"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"Chris<\/p>\n

\nThe Power of Professional Development<\/strong>
by Chris Mares.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In November 2017 I attended Colorado TESOL as a featured speaker and returned to Maine inspired, energized, and ready to hurl myself back into my teaching and writing with even more energy and enthusiasm than usual.<\/p>\n

There is nothing quite like teacher energy, particularly\u00a0at conferences and workshops.\u00a0There we all were for two days sequestered in the Radisson South East,\u00a0in Denver,\u00a0surrounded by freeways and concrete, doing what we love \u2013 sharing our stories, listening for ideas, giving inspiration, pawing through texts, meeting new people, reconnecting with old friends, and realizing that what we have chosen to do is meaningful and worthwhile.<\/p>\n

I was gripped by Andy Curtis\u2019s pertinently brilliant talk on teaching as a political act and Dorothy Zemach\u2019s artful commentary on\u00a0music, metaphor, and teaching.\u00a0Maggie Sokolik brought me down to earth with her pragmatic insights into writing, students, and classroom practice.\u00a0Finally, the gifted and\u00a0lyrical Thomas Healey, in the final session, had us all dancing The\u00a0Chicken while revealing how it is possible for teachers to be in two places at one time.<\/p>\n

I took frantic notes and my head span with ideas.<\/p>\n

And I was in Denver,\u00a0far from Maine,\u00a0sitting at breakfast with a group of wonderful teachers attending their first conference.\u00a0One was going to give her first ever presentation and our table hummed with supportive energy.<\/p>\n

A month earlier I had been in Japan observing teachers in middle schools in Aomori Prefecture.\u00a0 It was wonderful to see how far along public school teaching has\u00a0come since I had lived in Japan, twenty years previously.<\/p>\n

I even managed to inspire myself with my own talk on using teachers\u2019\u00a0anecdotes and stories as material for classroom use.<\/p>\n

What a giving lot teachers are.\u00a0There is so much sharing of materials and ideas, so much time spent supporting and advocating for students.<\/p>\n

I listened to teachers talk of the work they do with immigrants and refugees.\u00a0 I was moved to my core by the lengths teachers go to on behalf of their students in various parts of Colorado.<\/p>\n

Then,\u00a0of course,\u00a0there was the joshing and banter.\u00a0Andy Curtis, who said to me, \u201cGreat presentation. So old school. No handouts, no power point, glasses up\u00a0and down like a yoyo, get some\u00a0gosh-darned\u00a0bi-focals.\u201d\u00a0He had a point.<\/p>\n

On the plane back to Maine, I looked down at the towns below thinking of all the teachers there are\u00a0in the US and around the world.\u00a0All of\u00a0us trying to make a difference.\u00a0And in these times of political despair,\u00a0it struck me that we have a duty to do what we do as well as we can and to\u00a0model acceptance and tolerance.\u00a0We are in a position of power where we can inspire and\u00a0motivate our students to become the best they can be, not only for themselves but for each other and for us.\u00a0For the world.<\/p>\n

And so I look forward to TESOL in Chicago in March of this year, and IATEFL in Brighton, in April.\u00a0I know I will see familiar faces and meet new people, and return to Maine with that fresh feeling of wanting to make a difference.<\/p>\n

In a good way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Power of Professional Developmentby Chris Mares.   In November 2017 I attended Colorado TESOL as a featured speaker and returned to Maine inspired, energized, and ready to hurl myself back into my teaching and writing with even more energy and enthusiasm than usual. There is nothing quite like teacher energy, particularly\u00a0at conferences and workshops.\u00a0There … Continue reading The Power of Professional Development<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-professional-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}