Two weeks ago, I had the joy of going to Las Vegas for SDE's "I Teach 2nd Grade" conference and the "Teachers Pay Teachers" (TPT) conference. If you have never been to any of the SDE events, I highly recommend them. They are well worth the money. They are great about bringing in fantastic presenters that are experts in their topics.
The first part of my time in Vegas was spent at the "I Teach 2nd" conference. This was the first year that SDE did this conference, and I sure do hope they keep it going. I learned so many great things that I am excited about taking back to my classroom this fall, like making my lessons more engaging and improving vocabulary instruction. We also got to meet and hear from some awesome celebrity teachers.
Here is my friend Tricia and I with Cara Carroll from the First Grade Parade. We also got to spend some time with our friends at Go Noodle (left pic). You must check out their site for brain breaks if you have not yet. My students love getting to have Go Noodle time.
Here we got to meet Mr. Greg from the Kindergarten Smorgashboard
And finally we got to meet Rachelle from What the Teacher Wants. Every one of these teacher celebrities were so sweet and excited to meet lil 'ol us. It was such an amazing experience to get to attend this wonderful conference!
On Wednesday, I attended the huge Teacher Blogger Meet up. I always enjoy attending this event, but I usually get overwhelmed with the large number of people who attend. In the pic below, you can see how big this ballroom is and how many people were there. I think the final count was 1,100 teachers. Now that is a lot of teachers.
I am really glad I attended because I got to meet this sweet girl, Ali from cupcakes & teaching. We both were a little shy about this huge event which allowed us to get along great. We were even kind of matching!
I also actually won one of the raffle prizes. What?! I never win, and Ali had to tell me that they called my number.
Thursday was when all the TPT fun began. We started out the day with some grade level networking and boy oh boy, was I nervous. This shy girl does not do well with new situations and new people, but I stepped outside of my comfort zone and met lots of new people. I was so proud of myself. I was even able to go to lunch with some old and new friends.
We had so much fun at lunch! You must go and check out these amazing girls if you do not already follow them. Molly from Lessons with Laughter, Sandy from Soaring Through Second, Angela from Lights, Camera, Teach, Lawren from Teaching is a Royal Adventure, Beth from A Kindergarten Life for Me, and Kristen from Easy Teaching Tools.
During the sessions, I won another raffle! I was surprised when my number was called again! What, I won again? Too bad I did not go and gamble. I was on a roll!
If Vegas was not in the cards for you this year, i hope you can go next year. It was such a great experience, and I learned so many great things to improve with my TPT adventure and to take back to my classroom. It was so much fun to be around other amazing teachers who have the same passion as me!
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