ChangED
ChangED is an educator based podcast for Pennsylvania teachers to learn more about the PA STEELS Standards and science in general. It is hosted by Andrew Kuhn and Patrice Semicek.
ChangED
Exploring Conferences as Catalysts for Change
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Get ready to unlock a treasure trove of insights as we explore the world of educational conferences with the incredible Tricia Shelton, Chief Learning Officer at NSTA. We'll dive into the upcoming NSTA conference in Philadelphia, where over 1,500 sessions and 200 exhibitors promise to elevate your teaching game. Our discussion doesn't stop there. We shift gears to highlight the NSTA conference's role in championing lifelong learning. This is more than just a conference; it's an opportunity for educators to break free from isolation, translate theory into practice, and become indispensable knowledge hubs for their schools!
Experience more NSTA podcasts and learn about the Philly NSTA Conference by visiting nsta.org/podcast.
Want to send us a show idea or just say hi? Email us at: thechangedpodcast@gmail.com!
Welcome to the MSDA podcast hosted by ChangeEd. I'm your host, Andrew Kuhn. I'm an education consultant from Montgomery County Intermediate Unit. In case you're wondering where is Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, it is just outside of Philadelphia.
Speaker 2We actually border the Philadelphia County and here with me is Trish Semicek, also out of the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit.
Speaker 1Is your Montgomery County Intermediate Unit in the same location as mine?
Speaker 2Yeah, I believe, so I believe we work in the same location. Yeah.
Speaker 1Here with us today is Trish Sheldon from NSDA. Welcome to the show, Trish.
Speaker 3Thank you both. I'm so excited to be here and get to share things about the NSTA conference in Philadelphia with all of your listeners. This is an honor and an experience that I am very appreciative for, so thank you both for inviting me to your podcast.
Speaker 2Well, thanks for being here. We're excited.
Speaker 1Trish, I think it would be great if you share with us a little bit about yourself who you are, your background and what you're currently doing.
Speaker 3Sure, so I'm Trish Shelton. I am a retired teacher, mostly middle school and high school, from the state of Kentucky. I retired in 2017 and came on to work full-time at NSTA, mostly in the area of three-dimensional standards and professional learning.
Speaker 3I now currently at NSTA, I'm the chief learning officer. So conferences and professional learning, e-learning, university partnerships, that all of those teams are part of the division that I lead. I'm thrilled that my second career allowed me to stay engaged in the space that I dedicated my life to, because it's the thing that I'm the most passionate about, and that this job gives me an opportunity to continue to work to serve teachers who serve students, and to serve schools.
Speaker 1Trish, you don't have to get very far in the conversation at all to say that you're very passionate about education and what you do I also think it's a very strong testament to NSTA and the culture that is created within NSTA that you're, like I retired, but this is what I want to do. I want to keep this work going and this is the organization that I want to be with, Specifically as we're talking about the conference and why do I want to go to the conference you're very much a testament to this is somewhere that people want to be. They choose to be here and they choose to be part of it. So the hardest part is taking that first leap to say I'm going to go to this conference, I'm going to figure out how to get myself there, and then it sounds like you're hooked.
Speaker 1So if you're ready to get hooked, then sign up. Come to Philadelphia and experience NSDA.
Speaker 3Yeah, I love that. Coming to a conference and learning was very appealing to me. The idea of coming to a conference and sharing what was going on in my own four walls of the classroom was very intimidating and I also didn't feel like it would have a lot of value nationally. What I learned is that is one of the most valuable things that I can do is to share what's happening within my classroom because other educators care so much to hear about that. One of the reasons to go to an NSDA conference that I really push is to share your own expertise and stories from your classroom and we have lots of sessions where you can start. If that seems really intimidating, we have poster sessions in the exhibit hall where you create on a table the story of your classroom or you could pick an activity that you really love and your students have and show their work and teachers walk through that area and they stop and have conversations with you.
Speaker 3I walk through the poster area and at the last conference in New Orleans we had a teacher for the state of Colorado and she had gone to our conference in Denver and people at the conference had, after talking to her, really encouraged her to consider sharing pieces from her teaching and so she took them up on it and did this poster and she said she was really nervous. But she told me this has been so amazing for me I'm having the best time and I just didn't realize how much of an impact this was her saying I could have by being willing to share. I hear all the time from administrators and leaders in schools that to have teachers from their school share in a national conference it really puts a positive spotlight on that whole school and that whole school system and they will really encourage that. And so I encourage educators to have that conversation with their administrators about how that might look to positively represent their school. And we are willing to help educators prepare those presentations, give them tips. We are there to support them.
Speaker 2But I wanted to mention that I think that's really important is having been in a few of the NSTA conferences. What's great for me as an attendee is going to those poster sessions and the other sessions led by other principals, teachers, whatever and getting things that I can use tomorrow, like there's a lot of really good information that people are sharing and it's very practical application to what I'm currently doing in my classroom or what I'm going to be doing tomorrow. So I love that you brought that up, because I think that's one of the best things about these types of national conferences is finding someone who has similar demographics to me or similar connections to what I'm doing, and then just taking it and being able to run with it and creating those connections, which could be lifelong connections about sharing resources and making accommodations or changing things in your classroom. So I think it's a really awesome experience for anybody to be able to go to a national conference like this and walk away with potential new partners in learning.
Speaker 3Absolutely, and in addition we have over 1500 sessions in Philadelphia. Over 200 exhibiting partners are going to be there. The energy in the exhibit expo hall is just amazing. But in addition to that, one of the things that educators share a lot in their post-attendee survey is that you can go and download the materials from any session and you can filter in our session browser that we even keep up after the conference by topic, so you know you can go and experience many, many sessions at the conference. But then you have that opportunity To your point. There's so many resources that I can take and then use immediately, turn around and use in my classroom and you can go to the session browser and get materials from sessions that you didn't even have a chance to attend, which I think is a really important like.
Speaker 2It's impressive at how much information you can walk away from and transforming your practice.
Speaker 3Absolutely. We also offer professional learning clock hours and, depending on the state, some states can use those as CEUs continuing education units. Educators can get up to 19 clock hours professional learning hours on their transcript by going to the sessions and then to get the session on your transcript you need to evaluate that session, fill out the evaluation. But we also partner with Dominican University of California and you can get either one or two hours of graduate credit and it's really reasonably priced. One thing that's really appealing to administrators is you send a teacher and you create that expectation that teacher can come back and share in the department meeting or a PLC or faculty meeting and you're getting professional learning for a group of people in your school by empowering an educator to go at the conference, experience it and then come back and share that information. And NSTA certainly can help with that if an educator wants some help with those pieces.
Educator Benefits of NSCA Conference
Speaker 1That's great, Thank you. Why do you think it's valuable for an educator to come to this conference? The benefits are probably infinite, but from your perspective, what would be something that would really stand out? That you're like this is why you want to come to an NSCA conference, specifically in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3What people always think of first is the learnings. Teachers are lifelong learners. We love learning. Leaders are lifelong learners in schools, and so that opportunity and every year there's so much happening, especially now in the world, so to be able to get the latest learning, we have a whole room set up connected to AI, which is one of the biggest questions that we're getting asked about, and so it's important to us to be really timely and offer those learning opportunities. And then tons about theory to practice.
Speaker 3When I'm there and I am very fortunate that I get to go to multiple conferences I just, every time I say to myself this feeling of joy, of connection, of me getting a chance to walk through the halls of a conference and talk to teachers and just hear from them and what they're doing and how they are and what they're thinking about, and having them say how much joy they feel in getting to connect with other educators and have those moments in time. It's hard to describe in words. I'm no longer suffering from teacher burnout was a quote that I put out of a survey from a recent conference. Even though I feel I'm drowning, I'm not alone, and this quote I love, I felt welcomed is what an educator put into the survey by all of the other educators.
Speaker 3Lots of educators come completely by themselves to a conference and they wonder am I going to be walking through the halls of the conference all alone and not have that connection? And everybody is so excited to interact with everybody else that I feel like that it's what educators are made of, that they go out of their way for that community and for everyone. If somebody's standing off by themselves, that they'll say hello and introduce themselves, and so that sense of community and connection in a job that I feel like, when it comes to adult to adult interaction, can be a really lonely job. When I attend a conference I'm always playing detective. I feel like when it comes to adult to adult interaction can be a really lonely job.
Speaker 1When I attend a conference, I'm always playing detective. I feel like there's something I can take away. Always, I'm always on the look for, like what are those nuggets? What's something that I can take away from this that will improve my practice or that I could better understand, or maybe that I have more questions about that? I want to look into One of those, those hidden gems that I'm looking for.
Speaker 1Those nuggets are these connections to other individuals, because in education we talk about this on our Change Ed podcast all the time. In education, there's really five walls. There's the four walls that are your classroom, and then there's the fifth wall of isolation. By going to this conference, you're connecting with other people and then you start to move on that spectrum, from isolation, where you can find yourself, moving to advocacy, and within that journey there's a validation like oh, you're having this experience too.
Speaker 1I'm one of three science teachers in my building and we're all teaching different things, and so while I'm playing detective, I know that I can't go to all 1500 sessions, but there's something so encouraging to know that, like this, is a body of knowledge that I can then dive into at any point in time and grab that information so that I can be fed when and where I need to be fed. Because, I'll be honest, every time I've gone to NSDA I have FOMO fear of missing out when it comes to what session I attended and then 19 other sessions I wanted to go to at that exact same time. So knowing that I can gain access, I think takes this from a question of whether or not, as far as the administrator goes, whether or not I should pay for this educator to go, it changes the story to be like this is a huge investment. You know. This educator, then, can be a wealth of knowledge and also have all of these resources that come with it. Even if they didn't go to that session, they can grab on this and they can start conversations and dialogue in our school. It's a shift in mindset of being an investment versus an expense.
Speaker 1Trish, have you been to Philadelphia before?
Speaker 3In planning for the conference, I have had the opportunity to go to Philadelphia. I love it. I was able to participate in some of the historical aspects. The last time I went I went and I got to see some primary resources like from that story. That was just amazing. The Liberty Bell had my first Philly cheesesteak. I went there and went to Reading Terminal Market, which is right across the street from the center. So I just love the opportunity to experience the city. The center is really awesome too and the Marriott Hotel is connected and the other hotels in our block are very close. There's lots of things to do and places to eat right around the centers. And then we're also trying something new in Philly.
Speaker 3We've been noticing now that we kick off the conference with an opening reception.
Speaker 3It's a big networking and community model. So since we started doing that on Wednesday, we have a lot of attendees that come early to get their badge and we don't have conference programming on Wednesday other than our pre-conference events. So in Philly we are going to do something called a showcase, which is informal in one of our exhibit halls, where we're going to have a mobile lab that is the size of a semi-truck tractor trailer there for educators to explore. We've invited several of local Philadelphia partners to come and really highlight things to do in Philadelphia. We're going to have food there and some of our STEM partners are going to be there with information about opportunity for things to do with students, for things teachers can apply to outside of the conference and of those pieces. So we will have some place for teachers to be from 1 to 3 15 ish and then our we're going to do a first timer session and you can come even if you're not a first-timer. They sort of overviews the conference that afternoon too, right before the opening reception.
Speaker 3So if you happen to want to come early. We have some things for people to do on Wednesday as well, but the conference officially kicks off then with that opening reception Wednesday night, and then we have sessions all day Thursday, all day Friday, saturday until 2 pm, and that's when we have our closing reception, where we celebrate together.
Speaker 1That's a ton of fun no-transcript podcast will be so evidently true for each of those individuals at that closing reception. Just take that moment and look around and talk to other people. Well, trish, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I know that this is a super busy time as we're gearing up for NSCA in Philly, which is a few weeks away, so thank you for taking the time to do it. There are a couple of things that really stood out to me that I just want to make sure that I mention and share with our listeners. Number one there is a tremendous culture that comes with NSDA and attending the NSDA conference, and with that culture there's a spot for everyone, because we're coming from all walks of life, all experiences. You can come in and be part of it. Nsda has a very special formula that they figured out to build this culture, to maintain this culture, but also continue to move us along on the spectrum as professionals so that we can improve our craft and keep growing.
Speaker 1The other thing that I thought of was this comes from well, this is a commercial that's out from the NFL. I specifically resonated with me while I was watching the Super Bowl, which may or may not have been a big deal in the Philadelphia area if you're coming in. The commercial was from the NFL and they were talking to all groups, all different people. They kept moving the camera around. You saw different scenes where it kept saying I am somebody. And then they would say I am somebody. And that's what was resonating with me as you were talking about NSDA.
Speaker 1But I think that the quote for NSDA could be you belong at NSDA, there is a spot here for you, and coming not only benefits you professionally but also with what we were talking about at the end, about going and seeing and doing. That's also for your social emotional wellness. It's a refreshing opportunity for you to just to get that energy back, to get that excitement back despite all the things that are happening to you in the profession, to feel revitalized, like you can keep going and do what's best for students. So again, trish, thank you for coming on For our listeners, thank you for tuning in and listening. We look forward to seeing you at NSDA in Philly and for you tuning in and listening to future podcasts.