Catastrophic Tech Failure AND a Wonderful Day!
Dedication:
This post is dedicated to the exhausted executive members of PSAs around the province who experienced catastrophic failure yesterday and still put on an amazing pro-d. Special shout out to Jennie Slack who is my friend and the president of myPITA, one of the largest PSAs in the province. I know that Jennie and her exec worked tirelessly to get their attendees online…and a second big THANK YOU to Kristina Preston who was helping MULTIPLE PSAs get their conferences up. You are an unsung hero!
A Hiccup in My Favourite Professional Day
October has my favourite professional day. It is a province-wide professional day and all of the Provincial Specialist Associations (PSAs) run massive conferences. In a non-pandemic year, these events are joyful reunions, especially for teachers like me that moved districts. It is a time of deep learning, laughter, and usually some hugs. Many of us wander around the vendors and get ideas for field trips OR spend tooooo much money on books (is that even possible?). It is magic and I miss it.
We cannot control global pandemics and the amazing PSAs have adapted. For the last two years, many have been working together and also working with digital platforms to provide powerful professional development to members throughout the province. As a BCTF member, I could not be more impressed with the dedication of PSA executive members to show resilience within our profession and find ways to keep the learning relevant and accessible.
For a few years, I was on the executive of myPITA (Middle Years and Provincial Intermediate Teachers Association), so I know a bit about what it takes to run a conference for 800+ that is in-person. It takes months of planning, weeks of co-ordinating, 1000s of emails between vendors, volunteers, presenters, and attendees…and of course stuffing of swag bags. It takes long days of setting up….a whirlwind of activity that makes a day go smoothly, and then when you are bone tired, cleaning up a space and trying to leave it exactly how you found it before you spend hours carefully reviewing feedback from attendees in order to make the day even better next year.
Every single moment of the time is volunteer work. Every single executive member is a full-time teacher dedicated to their kids as well as the members of their PSA.
If it is so much work, why do they do it?
Every executive member of every PSA believes in our profession and that we have the right to powerful professional development experiences.
And then a global pandemic took this in-person job and made it harder…and these amazing educators made it look easy. Last year, I attended myPITA online and it was fantastic. I was sad to not be in person this year, but I understood why. I excitedly signed up for workshops and looked forward to my day of learning.
What happened?
The absolutely unexpected and out of control thing….the platform many PSAs were using to run their conference crashed. Presenters, attendees, and exec were locked out.
What did the AMAZING PSA executives do?
The showed absolute grace under fire. They worked together and did what teachers do best. They were flexible and looked for solutions. They got information out to attendees and presenters as soon as possible and created work arounds so everyone could get to their conference….even if it was a bit late. I have received no less than three emails from myPITA helping me and telling me about the access I will now have to recordings. These execs have not slept since….well who knows when and all they are thinking about is how to support their members in order to provide the best professional development opportunities they can.
How can we show gratitude?
Tag your PSA on social media with a post using an idea or activity you learned about during your workshops. Send a little thank you email. We know everyone was frustrated, and trust me when I say…no people were more frustrated and terrified than the executive members of every PSA that suffered a catastrophic tech failure. Let your PSA and the executive know that even though this happened, you are grateful for the 1000s of hours of volunteer work that these people do in order to create quality professional development opportunities.
Bonus idea…if you teach at a school where an executive works…maybe bring them a coffee this week, because they will be tired!
Here is my thank you: My Favourite Workshop
Powerful…Organized…Useful
I attend a fabulous workshop created by Nerlap Sidhu based on the Equity Backpack Project she designed for her class last year. It was inspirational and powerful. It was what good pro-d should be…she gave us ideas to use in our classroom on Monday as well as ideas to shift our practice in larger ways.
Nerlap presented with two other educators and they worked very well together. The presentation slides were accessible and helped support an organized/thoughtful presentation. Nerlap is inspirational and really made every educator in the workshop feel like they could talk about hard things and build powerful understanding with students.
The workshop was also a great balance of interactive and informative, which is hard to do on a digital platform. We were put into breakout rooms a few times to deepen our conversation. During one of the breakout sessions, the group worked together to make digital word art. The words we focussed on were identity words. The example from my little group of two is the image above.
I really appreciated the care put into this workshop and the passion of the educators involved.