Professional Conference: Dr. Marcia Tate Workshop

Professional Conference: Dr. Marcia Tate Workshop

Although I am still in the beginning weeks of my student teaching experience, I have been lucky enough to attend a few different staff and policy meetings, along with an incredibly informative professional conference that was put on by Dr. Marcia Tate, prior to the official start of school, on August 23^rd, 2016.

During my time of attending the professional conference on Dr. Tate’s philosophies and educational practices, I was able to leave the conference feeling incredibly inspired and even more excited for my student teaching experience that was to come not too long after the conference. This particular conference was technically considered an in-service opportunity for the employees of Havre Public Schools, as many of the teachers and paraprofessionals in attendance were able to receive continuing education credits, but for me this was an opportunity to be able to participate in a professional conference that would actually be influential and impactful on my actual teaching habits and styles.

The conference its self was titled, “Shouting Won’t Grow Dendrites”; it was actually based off of one of Dr. Tate’s best-selling educational books with that same title. She also has other educational books titled “Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites and Preparing Children for Success in School and Life”. The purpose of the book is to provide educators with 20 alternative methods or  steps to help ensure a positive classroom environment, positive classroom management and active student participation in class.

With this conference or workshop as some referred to it, we spent the entire day learning different ways on how to approach our students and how to maintain positive classroom environment. Topics discussed throughout the conference ranged greatly from classroom management and classroom organizations (or even arrangement and decoration) to greeting students as the enter your classroom. I found the entire workshop to be incredibly informative but it was also a lot of fun for the participating educators.

Active participation was a key point throughout the workshop as it was continually pointed out to us that if we wanted our students to actively participate in our classroom we needed to just as proactive with them. One particular phrase that stood out to me that Dr. Tate used was, S.M.I.L.E. With this Dr. Tate reinforced the idea and concept that us educators could potentially be the only real advocate in our students lives and that because of this it is very important that we show our students that they are loved, the word S.M.I.L.E. then stands for “Show Me I’m Loved Every Day”.  As Dr. Tate used this phrase with us, she explained a few things about how we can do just that for our students but also why this is so important for our students as well; she explained that by acknowledging a student by positive comments, words of encouragement, positive reinforcement, and even greeting them as they enter the classroom and saying goodbye as they leave can make a big difference in their attitude and overall performance within the classroom. Dr. Tate continued to show and explain to us that some of our students will not have been shown any sort of love or positivity by the time they come to school in the morning, and because of that it is very important as their educators that we remember to positively acknowledge them because this could have an incredible lasting effect on them.

To help us better understand the lasting effect these actions or the lack of them can have on a student, Dr. Tate introduced us to the concept of Chronic Behavior Disorders. In this introductory unit, she helped us better understand a multitude of disorders, but she mostly focused on; Attention Deficit Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and Acute Stress Disorder. With each of these chronic behavior disorders, Dr. Tate explained to us how these different disorders may develop do to circumstances and environments students and children may experience at a young age, and that because of that, they are at extreme risk of potentially having aggressive or explosive behaviors that are associated with these different disorders.

To help with the approach of these different disorders, Dr. Tate explained a few different strategies that can be approached to help take advantage of how the brain best learns and how we can have these strategies benefit our students and lead them to success.  Here are the twenty different strategies she discussed and demonstrated with us.

1.)            Music

2.)            Movement

3.)            Visualization

4.)            Visuals

5.)            Reciprocal Teaching

6.)            Class Discussion

7.)            Writing

8.)            Story Telling

9.)            Games

10.)                Humor

11.)         Mnemonic Devices

12.)                Role Play

13.)               Metaphors, Analogies, and Similes

14.)               Graphic Organizers  

15.)                Drawing

16.)               Project Based Learning

17.)                Field Trips

18.)               Manipulatives

19.)               Technology

20.)              Work Study

With each of these different strategies, it is obvious that different ranges of these strategies would be used for different grade levels. Kindergartners would not use the same graphic organizers or games that would be used in a 9^th grade English class a vice versa, so it is just as important to use age appropriate strategies as it is to implement them within your own classroom as well.

Along with the implementation of these different strategies that Dr. Tate introduced to us, it is also important to establish an appropriate and adequate environment for learning and to create a proactive plan for classroom management as well. In the preparation for the establishment of a proper learning environment, Dr. Tate reminded us of a few things to consider when organizing our classroom and the overall environment as well. She reminded us that the five main areas to focus on when developing your classroom environment are color, music, lighting, aroma, and seating. Now, obviously there are certain things that we cannot control within our classroom environments as teachers, like florescent lighting being installed in our classrooms or the color of our classroom walls, but we can control the color of our educational boards and the colors associated with our room in general, we also can control whether or not we want to strictly utilize fluorescent lighting our if we would like to incorporate natural lighting or lamps into our classroom instead. Depending on school policy we all can control the aroma of our classroom as well, and whether or not we want to have more calming scents like vanilla and lavender or if we want higher energy smells like peppermint or citrus within our classroom instead. Dr. Tate also mention how the way we set up the seating arrangements of our classroom can also be impactful on our students’ learning, and that having a more flexible seating arrangement that allows some movement for students can be much more beneficial to their overall learning experience.

It was very enlightening to hear all of this from Dr. Tate because even though I don’t have my own official classroom yet, I now know of different ways to establish classroom management and how I can approach different situations or obstacles when it comes to ensuring my students’ success within and beyond my classroom and their personal growth as well. I found Dr. Tate’s workshop to be one of the best educational presentations and workshops that I have personally attended. I was very happy that I was able to participate in this in the week prior to beginning my student teaching experience because it made me really consider not only how I was/am going to work with my cooperating teacher, but how I was going to utilize our most likely different teaching styles to help ensure the overall success of the classroom and the personal success of the students. If I have the opportunity to attend another presentation or workshop by Dr. Tate, I will certainly be taking advantage of that opportunity. Even after talking with a few of the other teachers and paraprofessionals that attended the workshop, I discovered that essentially all of them left that workshop feeling very similar to myself was and that they were thoroughly impressed by the workshop as well, infact many of the teachers and paraprofessionals agreed that this was the most fun they had had with an inservice workshop in a long time and that they plan on utilizing the different strategies and topics discussed in their classrooms. I was very happy to hear all of this because that was something that I felt as well.

Along with this professional workshop by Dr. Tate, I have also attended a few different policy and staff meetings as well. These meetings have been for both the high school and the special education department since I am also working on my student teaching experience for special education as well.