March UCSS Conference

Teaching at Cedar Ridge Academy in Roosevelt, Utah, I sometimes feel out of the loop a lot from the Wasatch front--I teach in my departments alone and then there is the rural aspect.  It takes a lot more planning to get us involved.  I think we do a good job of taking advantage of things though as our Facebook page and blog page show. (P.S. Go like our Facebook page please---it helps us be more searchable).  So I plan on attending this conference every six months.  UCSS stands for Utah Council for Social Studies teachers, which I am a proud member of.  (P.S. Follow them here on Facebook and on their blog).

Biggest reasons to go to a conference (at least for me) are #1. the interaction with fellow teachers and #2. ideas for my classroom. So I went to three different session--one that focused on U.S. History, another that focused on World Geography/World History/Government/U.S. History, and another that focused on World History/Government.  That was the great thing about the sessions that I went to this time--I teach everything...so being able to deal with everything was great.

My favorite all-time session was with the teachers from Diamond Fork Junior High.  They have worked with their department and made huge strides in cohesive teaching across the grades.  I loved what they do with story-telling and teaching concepts like the 5 Themes of Geography, three branches of government, and types of government.  This idea of story-telling brings me to the close second: Dr. Crowe and Dr. Nokes--they talked about teaching history in context and with novels.  This really sparked my ideas to write historical fiction more that teachers can teach in their classroom as Dr. Crowe has done.  The close third with my favorite sessions was with Dr. Brown--she is a smart smart women.  I saw her last time so she didn't get the favorite spot because she was really favorite last time.  I love her Russia stories and her clear way of explaining the difference between communism, socialism, and Stalin's version of socialism (fondly known as Stalinism).

If you ever get a chance to go to a UCSS conference...totally do it!!!

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