Conference Recap

I’m a teacher. I’m a teacher and I love it. I love teaching and I love learning. One thing about the education field is that we teachers never stop learning. Last weekend is a great example of how we never stop learning.

North Dakota United is the North Dakota Education and Public Employee union. As teachers it’s a fabulous organization to help us advance in the area of teaching and advocacy.

Last weekend, we were able to go to the NDU Bargaining and Advocacy Conference. And let me tell you, I was not excited to go. I had a very poor attitude about the entire thing.   I’m just so tired and I don’t want to be away from home. Do we really have to go? I know it’s a free conference, but still. I don’t want to be there. Kyyyylllleeeeee. See. I was a gem to be around.

But we went and I’m so glad we did. We were able to visit and connect with some of our colleagues from around the state and dive more in-depth on issues that we're interested in.

Speaking of colleagues...if you’re in District 16 in West Fargo, check out Lisa Dullum’s campaign for the ND House! Go like her Facebook page and help her get elected! Lisa has some great ideas for our state, especially in the area of education.

Alright, now that you’ve checked out Lisa’s page, let’s continue. My full day of sessions started off with a Viral Marketing and Communications session led by Kelly Hagen from NDU. We learned that in order to reach our target audience, we need to be connected to social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Let's see how well we can do with our association.

I followed that up with a session on Rights and Ethics within the education profession, led by lawyer Mike Geierman. He discussed the differences between ethics and law. He proceeded to use local (our state) examples that we can all relate to.

And we finished up with Grievance Procedures in education. It was great to hear about how to go about trying to be heard if you're not sure that "right" is being done by you. And I know, our day sounds awfully dull. But it really wasn’t. Honest. I really love to learn and when it’s information centering around my passion it’s that much more exciting.

If you’ve survived this post, you’re now fully realizing how much of a nerd I am and how much I loved these sessions. If you’re interested in what we discussed in each of these sessions, I’d be happy to talk to you about them! Shoot me an email or leave me a comment below.

As always, Happy Thursday!

And stay tuned, a special Valentine’s Day post is coming your way this weekend.