Chased by dogs or my first international conference experience abroad

In this blog I want to share with you my first experience in taking part in the international conference abroad. During this journey we were chased by dogs, get lost, exposed to rain in night Istanbul and spent approximately 14 hours in Istanbul airport. Also we met interesting people, saw night Antalya and of course presented our works during the conference.

It is actually the second international conference in my life, but the first I attended while studying for my Bachelor in my home town - Aktobe. It was organized by my university, lasted two days and hosted a lot of participants from neighbour countries, mostly Russia. After opening ceremony we were divided by our themes to several sections and mine was history and economy. The topic of my presentation was History of American dollar. I was telling about masonic theory of its origins, how dollar was designed, what inscriptions mean and why they were chosen. It was interesting for me to investigate this subject and listeners also liked my presentation. That event was a combination of conference and competition, that is why there were judges and at the end of the conference I got the second place.

And my recent conference experience was in Turkey a week ago. I went to that country for the first time and was nervous about it as well as about presenting my work in front of all these strangers from different countries. When we arrived to Goynuk (tourist village near Antalya) to our hotel, we were so excited even though it was cold (in sunny Turkey!!!) outside. 

We had two days to prepare to the presentations and on the first day we decided to go to the nearest shopping center and get lost (again). The second day we attended some sessions to see its overall organization and style.Seven sessions by five or six individual presentations in each both on Turkish and English languages. Sessions were organized based on topics: ICT in education, medicine, biology, pedagogy, higher education and secondary education. Our expectations from this conference were high; however they were not quite met. The atmosphere was relaxed, nobody was nervous and we decided not to worry about our performance and just enjoy the company of interesting people. After comparing our presentations with others’ we concluded that our training is much better. And now I am thinking, what is more important to possess good presentation skills or to have an interesting topic, especially if you cannot combine them.

National Writing Project developes Teacher Learning Communities

Teacher professionalism includes ongoing teacher development and learning. School leadership coexists with teacher professional development and it should be encouraged to achieve common goals. In this context, teacher learning communities (TLCs) which fosters collaboration among school teachers, put impactful effort toward educational development of students and teachers themselves. In this post, the author gives an example of the educational project where teachers are involved to enhance their expertise in writing. National Writing Project (NWP) discovered and developed writing skills of teachers; thus, students were positively influenced by acquiring writing skills and techniques.

NWP as a networking project has started to operate since 1974, over USA (Lieberman & Wood, 2002). The researchers believed that this project is one of the best blueprint that developes TLC. In the way of motivating and creating new social and professional networks among teachers. NWP considers summer schools/trainings for teachers who are willing to develop professionally in general, and in writing skills in particular. As  Lieberman & Wood stated that the “core activities during the summer institutes include sharing best lessons or strategies, participating in small writing groups, and receiving peer feedback” (p.40). Sense of common goals as to raise professional competence in writing, teachers are able to share their best practices with each other. Consequently, Lieberman (2000) added that such activities improve teachers’ “efficacy” (p.224).

To sum up, out of school professional teacher networking creates new model of TLC. NWP serves as a benchmark for any other teacher development projects. Taking into consideration the number of teachers (more than two millions) who participated in the project, attractiveness and effectiveness of such projects are noteworthy (Peterson, 2003). Therefore, powerful communities of teachers could be effectively created and developed as it is seen from this example. “Out of school” TLCs, to some extent, create professionally friendly environment to avoid professional and psychological isolation and underestimation of their knowledge.

Question for you: Is there teacher professional networking in Kazakhstan? If so, could you give an example? 

References:

Lieberman, A. (2000). Networks as learning communities shaping the future of teacher development. Journal of teacher education, 51(3), 221-227.

Lieberman, A., & Wood, D. R. (2002). The national writing project. Educational Leadership, 59(6), 40-44.

Peterson, A. (2003). 30 Ideas for Teaching Writing. National Writing Project (NJ3).