Convention Wrap-up

Phoenix served as a great host for the NASSP convention, beautiful weather and great convention facility minus the wi-fi issues. Our presentation was well received. We spoke about our journey with standards-based grading, and there were a number of people working through the same issues, but it was clear that throughout the country, many people recognize the evils of legacy grading practices that demotivate kids. After our Friday morning presentation, we were free to learn, and there were a number of great speakers. Below are some highlights and links.

Institute for Global Ethics

http://www.globalethics.org/

This session outlined the importance of building a common set of ethics and values in a school. It was a different slant on character education and PBIS, but the key seemed to be infusing the ethics into teachable places in the curriculum 2 out of 5 stars

Spence Rogers

http://www.peaklearn.com/

This session providing a host of great out of the box teaching ideas. He tried to boil down the purpose of learning and give people the courage to break the "rules" for the good of kids. His teaching design ideas were brain-based and logical. 4 out of 5 stars

Ben Carson

http://carsonscholars.org/

Dr. Carson was the morning keynote on Saturday morning. He spoke passionately about his story about how education has driven his success. He also talked about his work to give back to schools. He get do a little too much talking about "the good old days" of schooling. 3.5 out of 5 stars

Rick Smith

http://www.consciousteaching.com/

This session was a repeat session for me as I had seen Rick a few years back, but he is a wonderful presenter. He shared a huge number of great ideas for shaping teaching and getting more from kids. 5 out of 5 stars

Buckhorn High School

https://www.madison.k12.al.us/Schools/bhs/default.aspx

Funny story here. I was chatting with someone on Twitter who was at the conference. She convinced me to come to her session, so I did. She was a superstar, but had a boat anchor of a presentation. Fun to feel the power of Twitter. 1 out of 5 stars

Jerry Valentine

http://www.mllc.org/

I knew that Dr. Valentine is a great research and a very traditional lecturer, but I went to the session anyway because I wanted to learn more about the Instructional Practices Inventory. Got what I wanted and got out, but it was in one of the rooms with wi-fi in the convention center. 2 out of 5 stars

Robert Marzano

http://www.solution-tree.com/Public/Main.aspx

He is self-proclaimed bad keynote, but he is brilliant and the information that he shares grows in power each time that I hear him. It was great to have him support feedback through instructional rounds. 3.5 out of 5 stars.