Hey all, I’m going to take a moment to share my feelings about my experience at the KATE conference this past Thursday and Friday. Overall, it was a positive experience and it was wonderful to see so many enthusiastic professionals speaking about their passion. It was a very different environment from what I experience day-to-day in the classroom. I was able to take a look at the minds behind lesson plans as opposed to what I’m able to see in the presentation of a lesson.

 It was great to see a high level of dedication from individuals who already work in the career that I am pursuing. I found myself thinking about what I what kind of teacher I want to be ten years in to my career. I feel like there were many positive role models in attendance at the 2014 KATE conference, and I’m happy to have attended. The following were the highlights of the event for me:

1. I came up with a ton of new ideas for my future classroom. People provided me with an enormous amount of resources for my future student planning. In almost every lecture I attended, I acquired something physical that I may use to help my planning, and in many I collected in-tangible concepts and understandings that will help me think about my future profession in a different light.

2. Talor Mali is a total lady’s man and I’m fairly jealous. What can you do? He’s a babe. John Donne ain’t got nothing on Talor Mali.

3. The enthusiasm and positive vibes of dedication that I picked up from many teachers in attendance was contagious. It was different from the routine, and it was nice to see people speak of teaching as though it was worth the stress and effort that the profession demands. These people have been doing this for a while, and they’re still learning. I think this is a good philosophy to maintain in my future endeavors into the field of education.

4. Okay, so this wouldn’t be a real blogpost if it wasn’t a rant, and it wouldn’t be a real rant if I wasn’t hot-and-bothered for at least one paragraph. There were a couple breakout sessions that were pretty lazily put together. Two, in particular. One’s focus was implementing a certain classic writer into the modern classroom. Upon starting the lesson, the speaker announced he was going to have to leave in 15 minutes in order to pick up his step-daughter.

I get it, dude. You’ve got a step-daughter, that’s a huge obligation. But, perhaps, don’t attempt to give a lecture when you already have obligations? Just cancel the day before or something? He ran through the lecture quickly, and here were his points:

1. “The current method of teaching this topic doesn’t work very well.” (that’s why we’re here, bro)  2. “There is an app that works really well for helping. It’s a good app.” He did not show us this app, but he told us about it. We never saw it.

Then, after pretty intensely plugging his ibooks which were for sale, he peace’d out. On the flip side, this encouraged me to try presenting sometime, as he made it seem totally unintimidating.

Pardon the negativity. Overall, the experience was wonderful. Though after a while, it did take a toll on me. It was a lot of talking about teaching in a very short time period. Maybe I’m just not yet well-seasoned for this thing. It was hard to take it all in within such a short time period. However, it ranked among the most realistic and motivating experiences I’ve had in my time in the Wichita State University School of Education.

What did you folks think?