The WAEA board meeting and conference was an interesting experience. I was able to travel with my CT up to Eau Claire for both. Wednesday night was the board meeting and my CT is the representative of private schools. We came late so I missed the introductions of everyone, but I was able to catch up with what was going on. I began to gather where everyone was coming from and what they represented. They overviewed topics of discussion and then broke up into small committee groups. In these committee groups they decided what topics needed motions to bring up to the whole board. In our committee we discussed the IDEAS Exchange, which I thought was a very helpful event for educators. In these exchanges, a person would bring one lesson of their own to present with enough copies for others. You would be able to take away a copy of everyone else’s lessons and start to build a collection of others. The other topic was on the grant monies the Association has to give to teachers who write grants for programs for their classrooms. Our discussion was about how to promote these grant opportunities for their members because most of the board members did not even know these monies existed.
The conference the next day was an interesting experience. The space seemed a bit small for what it could’ve been. I found out the University pulled out in May and the State Theater was the only place in the city to accommodate it for when it was to be held. Because of this, there were less vendors, schools, and selling artists at the conference, which to me, was disappointing because of everything I had heard about past conferences. It was a bit unorganized for where and when workshops were to take place. Times were misprinted in the programs and things were not posted effectively for the changes. There was a lot of confusion and frustration.
It was fun talking with the vendors and hearing about their products. The keynote speaker we saw was Ben Schumaker of the “Memory Project”. It was interesting to hear his experience creating the project at UW Madison and how much it has grown. He gave several ideas of how to incorporate the project in different kinds of classrooms such as different grade levels and different medias.
One of the workshops I went to was one about “Wandering Wisconsin” and women from Kohler Arts explained how to incorporate Wisconsin art landmarks into lessons. I was familiar with some of these artists already but it was nice to obtain lesson ideas.
Another workshop I went to was “Creativity Books” which was basically just a talk on using books for professional growth as well as books for personal use. She presented interesting books and gave us an extensive book list that I will find useful.
I helped Jodi with her bookbinding workshop. The teachers in the session found the project useful and told her afterwards how many ideas they got in how to incorporate the book/sketchbook into lessons. Each person in the session was able to walk away with their own hardcover sketchbook.
The last thing we did was a self-guided sculpture tour. The pieces on the walk were so diverse and unique. The artists were from all over the country. From the tour, we also found some cute little boutiques and shops, some of which also had art in them. We also discovered the member show in one of the shops.
Overall, the conference went well for my first time experiencing it. However, from what I heard from other teachers, it did not give back to its members as much as it could have.
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