At the start of National AP Appreciation week, the MSSAA hosted this day of professional learning for Assistant Principals around the state of Massachusetts at the Doubletree Hotel in MIlford. Dr. Henry Turner, Principal of Bedford High School, was the keynote speaker. He acknowledge that “APs and school secretaries are the real people who run schools.” He gave the crowd of about 120 people the ground rules for the Edcamp model, including “vote with your feet” and “good conversation and good coffee.” He challenged all participants to use today to challenge the way you think to try to discover new ways of doing things or improve practice that you’re already committed to. The more diverse the group of people you invite into the discussion, the richer the discussion will be. Henry’s message was very eloquent and deep that if you take a risk by sharing, you will grow your own professional learning network that will keep on giving.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” African Proverb.
Henry’s main recommendations if you want to bring Edcamp to your school to push forward from the PD model into the Professional Learning model are to start small and keep it focused on your learners.
After Henry’s presentation, our participant proposed topics for the breakout discussions by building the board of discussions for the day posted here.
We moved into a presentation by Deb & Dana Hult of Core Trainings. They politely asked us all to close the laptops and put away the devices so we could do the hard work of making personal connections with our team. We had a very fun activity of building a tower with uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows. It was a blast!
The sessions I attended were very productive. All the notes for every session can be accessed on the MAIN BOARD, set up by Mary Anne Moran
Thanks to the MSSAA for putting on this great day of Professional Learning and Networking!
Teaching Context 