PD Day

This posting is just a little late, but I just wanted to post a little comment on the first PD Day that I had attended last Friday. I participated in two workshops, as well as listening to a keynote speaker (Larry Swartz). Larry Swartz is a professor from the University of Toronto and specializes in literacy education. He provided great resources and examples on how to incorporate literacy into the everyday activities in the classroom, as well as sharing stories about his past teaching experiences and comments he had received from students over the years. I love hearing stories about other people's teaching experiences, as well as how their experiences have helped them to grow on a professional level and I am grateful for the opportunity to sit in on a lecture given by such a great individual.

The first workshop I attended that day was put on by OPHEA and dealt with how to manage your own Physical Education class and all of the teachers and myself had a blast. I personnally took nothing from the course because I am a Phys. Ed. major, but the experience was welcoming and I feel that understanding how to properly manage a class while in the gym is completely necessary to ensure that students maximize their movement time, considering they barely have any these days.

The last workshop of the day was a Religion/Reading workshop and was actually the hardest to sit through becuase it was right after the huge lunch break and before leaving to go home. The focus of the workshop was to discuss ways to introduce students to story telling and relating the themes to religious expectations. The material was interesting but presented in a slideshow fashion with the presenter reading right of the screen. One of the teachers present even rested their head down on their desk and made a comment about how they felt sorry for what their kids had to go through. This got me thinking that, for effective instruction, we do need to get the children active in the lesson and foster creativity and collaboration to ensure that students stay ingaged and that learning occurs. This was my general thought, but I could talk forever about how I would have done things differently.

That was the day and I feel that I managed to take much information from the workshops. I definitely would have enjoyed it more if I got paid for it like the other teachers, but my day will come, I hope. I definitely cannot wait for the next PD Day, because I feel continual learning is very important for teachers and I am looking forward to becoming a part of that community.