Spark M.I.T presentations at Ulearn 2017

On the Thursday 12th October, our SPARK M.I.T team presented at the annual uLearn conference for educators in Hamilton. 

Spark M.I.T team 2017

We presented our inquiries through an ignite type session which was an interesting challenge as it made us refine our inquiries and not waste words.  When it came to my turn to present,  I was nervous at first but as I continued to speak, I felt a lot more at ease.  As I was presenting, I didn't realise that people were tweeting about what I was talking about - I've never been tweeted about before - what an honour!!

At the end of our presentations, the audience were given the opportunity to ask us questions which was positive.  Afterwards, we had time to sit down one to one with people who wanted to share their wonderings.

I had two people come and see me.  A teacher at a secondary school shared her frustrations about trying to implement an integrated junior programme at their school and asked for advice as to how to approach it.  I talked about how we started small last year, with a small group of teachers, then branched out into a wider thematic approach around the Olympics.  I let her know that we found teachers struggled with shifting from the subject silos to integration because they feared the change and needed time and P.D to allow for the shift.  I also said that support from the top is really important and finding models of how other schools are doing it helps.  I also invited her to check out my blog or to email me if she wanted to talk more about the process.  

The second person was a very charismatic Vicky Jeffares who stopped by to share her excitement about being at our session.  I loved hearing about how she was inspired by our team and I insisted that she said it on a video as proof, with which I've included below.  She was awesome and really excited to hear about what we were up to.   I invited her to come and visit our schools to find out more and she said she will bring at least 14 staff!  Talk about making connections!

Overall, working on my inquiry alongside my SPARK M.I.T team has been such a rewarding experience and presenting at uLearn was like the pinnacle.  Although we are nearing the end of our inquiries, I feel that I have grown so much along this inquiry journey.  Thank you to the SPARK team,  Lynne LeGros, my SPARK buddy Raven Garcia and Manaiakalani for your support.