Tales from a Loud Librarian

Bordelon, Kahn, Simpson and Valence visit Boston Museum of Fine Arts before the conference begins In April, we found out that our team of five won a Fund for Teachers grant that would send us to November Learning's Building Learning Communities Conference in Boston in July. Well, I am just back from the conference. I attended this conference three years ago with one teacher from PFTSTA, but it was even more exciting to attend with a team of teachers and the principal, Jaime Zapico. Only the teachers were able to apply for the grant but having our principal with us meant that we could make some solid plans for the 2014-15 school year.  Each day began with a continental breakfast where we could network with other educators attending the conference. I would find a table with empty chairs that had several people in an active discussion. I really found it to be an invigorating way to start the day. One of the teachers I met at breakfast was an English teacher who explained tha...

Read about our program on the Fund for Teachers website It all started way back in the fall when Lisa Valence and I read about a grant that would pay for teacher's professional development in the JPPSS district newsletter. We thought it would be a good way to get a group of us teachers to one of the summer conferences like ISTE or BLC . The application was due in late January. With the move to the new facility in late July, I was backed up and never got a chance to work on the grant. Until..... We were going to have two days off for bad winter weather---sleet and snowy conditions--in southern Louisiana!!! I went around to four teachers, each from a different department, and asked if they would be available on our snow day to work on a grant. We input the info with the rubric on a Google Doc and divided up the sections. Each person wrote a section. Then Lisa and I did some editing to make sure it sounded cohesive. Our English teacher, Cheryl Bordelon, read it for clarity and sm...