Utah Council of Social Studies Conference Wrap-Up

First off you have to know how much I love going to conferences. Being the only Social Studies teacher at my school, I need to go hang out with "my people" every once in a while.  And this is one is a tradition for me. Twice a year UCSS puts on a conference that is absolutely superb.  Why you ask?

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1. It is on Saturday...it is hard to take a "day off" from school
2. I always have three sessions that I can attend and learn something new
3. And usually in these sessions I have at least one thing that I can use on Monday if I so chose
4. Great people that present and great people to meet

I wanted to give you a little bit of how awesome my day was.  First I had the great opportunity to hear from a teacher who got her Master's in England and taught there for four years.  England does high school a little bit like I do in the fact that they only have class once sometimes twice a week....so she can only do the big topics like me.  England focuses A LOT on sources it sounded like.  This is something that I need to be doing more of! And I loved the advice and resources she had to offer. 

Then I had the opportunity to hear from author and illustrator, Nathan Hale.  His talk was very entertaining and really brought home how much more I need to use visuals with my students. They get the visuals in lectures and PowerPoints--but the visuals of books is an awesome thing to do.  Quinn Rollins followed him up with a great list of books--which he promised to put on the UCSS blog....so I hope to see that soon because he had a great list!

Finally, I went to a great session in which the presenter had created a list of the top 10 pre-modern and modern migrations.  I learned SO much!!! World History and Geography are where I don't know as much background information---and now I have so much more and a serious desire to get more! And I think my students would be very interested to understand why some of these migrations have affected and still affect our current affairs. 

Overall, thank you UCSS for an amazing day of sessions-I loved the conference and can't wait for spring!

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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