This week we have some changes to our usual routine, family conferences, early dismissal, emergency preparedness and sharing holiday wishes. Then, on Friday, we all head home for our first Fall Break where our celebrations continue with our family and friends.

True for some, not for all. As fall and winter breaks draw near, along with all of the excitement, it is not uncommon to see an increase in undesired behaviors and regression to previous behaviors in our students. For many of our students, home is a place where relationships are unhealthy, meals are not prepared, and drugs, alcohol or violence are a part of daily life. For these students, many of whom we may not even be aware of their circumstances, the most consistent, positive and secure part of their life is time at school; which is about to come to an end for one long week and soon another two weeks. No wonder they are exhibiting some stress. When these students walk out our doors on Friday, there will be no breakfast and lunch program, no counseling program, no celebrations, no gifts, and no one to encourage and support them.

So we support our children. We collaborate with our community to provide basic necessities, food, coats, pajamas, meals and gifts delivered to the home. We give our kids books from our classrooms to read over the break. We express that we are thankful for each other and look forward to being together again as a community soon. 

And even though we are tired and looking forward to a much needed break ourselves, we keep an eye on those who are acting out more than usual. We give them structure and routine. We give them a break. We give them encouragement. This may not be their favorite time of year.

Thank you for ALL you do for our kids EVERYDAY.

ED Camp SLO
This past Saturday I had the opportunity to be a participant at #EDcampSLO, an amazing home-grown, grass-roots event held at Bellevue-Sante Fe Charter School in Avila Beach. I have been enviously hearing about ed camps from my twitter PLN for the past few years and was thrilled to finally have one in my area. So this Saturday marked two firsts, my first experience at an ed camp and the first ed camp in SLO. 

The Session Board
The day started in Ed Camp fashion with participants generating topics and organizing them on the board into sessions that would run through out the day. This was the part of an ed camp I was most curious about, the organic creation of the day. I hadn't seen anything like it before and realized that I had no framework or schema for this type of 'un-conference'. 

This is NOT Your Mother's Conference
I decided to go to the first session titled along the lines of "Using Google Forms to Support Learning'. When I walked into the room, I was the second attendee and I said to to the guy already in the room "Are you the Google forms guy?', thinking he must be the presenter. He chuckled and told me that he wrote the topic but knows nothing about Google forms but was hoping to learn. That was my first lesson of what an ed camp is really about. 

The next session I went to was on Twitter. I am a Twitter evangelist as my professional life has been enriched beyond measure through the network of people I have connected with on Twitter. I didn't want to pass up a Twitter session as I thought I may learn some new strategies. It turned out that in this session I was one of the more advanced users and I shared a lot of my knowledge with the group. While I tried not to preach too much I did hear myself say "Twitter is the best thing in my life besides my family'. I do love my PLN!

As the day went on, I connected with educators from schools throughout our county and from out of the area. I also had the chance to meet some amazing educators who I follow on Twitter. With each session, the synergy grew and a contagious excitement filled the campus. I joined a group of folks for lunch and our conversation ranged from SBAC assessment logistics to Project Based Learning. After lunch I attended two more sessions, one on genius hour where the elementary students shared their projects with the group (they blew my mind- creating a website about how to play guitar, coding to create a video game...) and my final session was on PBL. All in all,  #EDcampSLO was an awesome day of connecting and learning!


A New Framework for Learning
For the rest of the weekend, ideas were swimming around in my mind as I tried to fit this concept of an un-conference into the definition of learning that I had known for most of my life. Well, as you probably guessed, an ed camp doesn't fit into a traditional model of learning, an ed camp redefines learning itself. 

Rather than knowledge being protected and passed on from an expert to the learner, the knowledge flows in all directions. There is no one expert. The room, the people who make up the room, as a community create the expertise. That being said, the ed camp experience is about so much more than being both a consumer and contributor of knowledge. It is about collaborating, connecting, learning, and contributing to the learning of educators who share your passion! A perfect Saturday in SLO. 

Looking forward to #EDcampSLO 2015!