I found something.
It's called the Good Teaching Conference. It's hosted by the California Teacher's Association(CTA).
For years I have been following conferences where they teach you about utilizing tech tools in the classroom like GAFE Summits and CUE conferences. But our district has been a 1:1 device school for... I honestly don't know for how long. My first presentation at a GAFE summit was in 2015, so Perris Union High School District must have been a 1:1 device school since 2013 at the latest.
The cool thing about tech conferences is that the attendees are excited to learn about utilizing technology in the classroom. And even if they are not, they work in a district where the devices are available for the students and the district is forcing teachers to learn, so the participants might complain here and there, but they end up participating. Presenters get excited because participation rates are high during sessions and participants get excited because sessions exude high energy, kindness and a spirit of collaboration.
But after a while, you learn that there are so many apps and online tools that basically do the same thing. It's just a matter of cost and ease of use. And the more conferences you go to, you realize you can't really keep up with all the things that pop up and gets left behind for whatever reason.
With that realization, you learn that tech tools are cool, but there needs to be a purpose for everything. Since more and more districts are becoming 1:1 device districts, more stakeholders are realizing that sessions geared only towards utilizing apps is not productive. These days, all you have to do is drop the name of an app and teachers can figure things out from there. If you want to emphasize social emotional states of students, you would have to find an app that would help with that in order to present at these conferences, unless I'm misinformed.
What I liked about the Good Teaching Conference was that although I saw savvy technology using educators here and there, half the sessions I went into didn't even require participants to have a device because that was not the main focus. The main focus was on "Good Teaching". Apparently, teachers have to be physically and emotionally healthy to support struggling students. So there was a session on that. When dealing with behavior issues, we need to understand first what the child is trying to accomplish or avoid, so there was a session on that. To make sure our students do a better job on the CAASPP in math performance tasks, teachers have to first understand how the assessment is scored. Then teachers need to think about different ways to instruct our children. So there was a session on that.
I am a CUE Rockstar. I don't know what that means to anyone else in the world, but to me, that means that I value students creating something using technology to display their learning. Here is a link that explains the SAMR model. And that is all amazing and great. I also have to admit that today in 2019, the well known names in education out there are not the ones pushing the use of this or that app but the ones who solve problems in our classrooms using technology. But I was busy trying to keep up with all the apps and extensions that I didn't really have time to think about the most important things. Like why I suddenly have days when I feel unmotivated to go to work. Like why my students are behaving the way they do. Like why I keep thinking students who can't add or multiply cannot learn higher level math. Like why I think some parents don't care. Like why I think my ideas in the classroom are better than other teacher's ideas.
It was refreshing. The conference was really refreshing. Because it was a mix of everything. Like the real world should be.
I wanted to attend a session that explains the brain of a child and how it relates to behavior and learning. But I didn't have room in my schedule. That's ok. I'll catch it somewhere else. Now I'm off so I can apply what I learned.
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