#45 Speak at an educators' conference

In the fall, a colleague of mine submitted a proposal to present at a statewide conference for charter school teachers and administrators.  He had mentioned it to me to see if I wanted to submit a proposal too, but drowning in graduate school work, I ended up missing the deadline.

Well... he didn't miss the deadline and his presentation was about something that I have a LOT of experience with -- using non-profit organizations as a resource for authentic instruction.  Knowing that this is an area I have some expertise in, he asked me to partner with him in his presentation. I was thrilled. 

The week before, I went through all of my resources and came up with some good stuff, including photos, and then the night before he and I stayed up until about 1am preparing our Powerpoint and getting prepared, but it really paid off. 

The presentation went really well and we got a lot of good feedback.  I went to a lot of other sessions at the conference, and I really feel that ours was high quality and of great use to teachers.  This was sort of a watermark moment for me. Even though I have always viewed myself as a "teacher leader," I really had only thought of myself as being a leader at the school level, but this really made me believe that I could be a leader at a higher level too.  Not like I want to become an administrator -- I don't.  I just think that perhaps I could become someone like the greats I read about and brag about, people like Kelly Gallagher or Cris Tovani or Penny Kittle. 

Maybe someday.