In this week’s class, we had the opportunity to participate in an EdCamp. This was my first time hearing about what an edcamp is and how it can be beneficial to educators. I was unsure and nervous when I heard about EdCamp because I was not sure what it entailed but I was pleased with how it turned out. I think the reason I was nervous was that you are not sure what is going to happen until you get there so it is free for all. I think when it came to coming up and picking topics of what you wanted to talk about really stood out to me the most. I say this because a lot of teachers may be going through a similar thing and may want different types of strategies to help guide or assess them in a direction that will better help their students. I also found it interesting how anyone can facilitate the seminar and or chime in when they want. How no one is lecturing or presenting a slideshow talking about what they do and why they do it. Everyone gets the opportunity to participate and share their expertise or experience no matter the topic. For the EdCamp that we did in class, I got to attend three seminars.

The first seminar was all about Mental Health and how we can help those kids who may be going through something. Mental Health is a huge thing in today’s society and kids must understand how to express how they are feeling. As teachers, we have to help those students find ways to express those feelings or give them coping mechanisms. Overall I found this session very useful not only for the future but for myself and making sure I know how to express my own and communicate those feelings.

The second seminar was Classroom Management. Although none of us have had to deal with a lot of classroom management this early into our program it was nice to hear ways that would be useful for our practicums. Even though we are entering a classroom towards the end of the year we must reiterate their classroom expectations and enforce them as best as we can. This seminar was more a question and answer and less of a discussion but still beneficial to those who chose to attend.

Last but not least the third seminar was about helping ELL students. The reason I wanted to attend this one was to see some of my peers’ strategies and or experiences with ELL students. There is a student in my L2P who moved here last year and her English is pretty good but sometimes I have a hard time understanding how she explains things to me. I know that this will happen a lot but I know how hard she is trying and I do not want to make her feel bad that I cannot understand. After we talked about ways to better help those students we started to talk about ways of bringing different cultures into the classroom. This was also a very good topic to discuss as we all brainstormed ways to include diverse students and ensure they feel safe and welcomed. Overall I learned quite a lot from my peers and will be taking all of it with me to Wednesday’s practice!