Yesterday was an in-house PD day for our district. I went into the process a bit discontented. A speaker from somewhere else was coming to talk, part 2 of something I had missed part 1 of. I was somewhat going into it with a bad attitude.

The speaker was Anita Kishel from Ruby Payne's aha Process Inc. We started the day half an hour late, no fault of the speaker, just a miscommunication from our administration. This only served to further annoy me as I sat in the cafeteria thinking of all the things I needed to be doing in my room.

Once Ms. Kishel got started, she spent the morning reviewing ideas from the first workshop, and having us jigsaw this book we were given. It was tedious and boring and I was annoyed. I had read some of Dr. Payne's work before, and while I find it interesting and relevant to my teaching, I really wasn't learning anything new.

Finally, after lunch, Ms. Kishel starting giving us strategies to use with students. I was immediately drawn in. I LOVE things I can use, new ideas, new tools to reach and teach kids. Of course, all the ideas she presented won't work for me, but I came away with several I can't wait to use!

I think my favorite..... it is a kind of word wall of sorts.... This is a somewhat adapted version of hers.... I am going to post the alphabet on a large laminated sheet, and as we study units in social studies, students will scrounge for words that represent that region for each letter. I think it will be engaging and fun, and will grab the interest of some of the lower level students I have.

The day did seem to drag on, what should have taken half a day was drug out all day... but I left excited with new cool ideas, so overall, I give it a B+!