A Day out of School

Spent the day today at the Teaching and Learning 2015 conference in Washington DC. There were a number of "take-aways" for me:

Morning at the Chinatown Gate - DC

• Riding the metro train and walking to a location in the city is totally awesome on beautiful days like today! 
• Registration for a conference with 3000 attendees is crazy - and the s-z line moved really, really slow.
• Arne Duncan is continuing to support teachers in our quest to both remain in the classroom and lead in the field of education.  
• 1.5 million new teachers over the next five years, that's a lot of students having first year teachers.  We need to prepare those new teachers much better than I was prepared, for the kids sake.  We can't risk a lost year.

  

  Secretary Duncan T&L 2015

• Attendance statistics often show up on a graph in a U shape - high in Pre-K and early elementary, lower in those middle grades, and then higher again in late middle and high school.  We need to examine our attendance data, including those excused absences and determine how many students are missing 10% or more.

Were you there?