Title Conference, December 7, 2011

    December has been a crazy whir-wind kind of month!  One of the biggest highlights that I want to remember came when my teammate and I presented at the Title I Conference in Gatlinburg.  That's Erika and me above.  I look like the pale-white zebra mammoth next to her.


   I have been to the Title conference twice before.  It's a conference where teachers from Title I Schools go for new ideas and strategies (and a much needed break from the classroom).   When the opportunity arose for us to present we jumped on it.
     We taught one hour long session titled "Reading Revived" where we showcased fun and hands-on activities that we do during our reading instruction.   I must say, it's really nice working with someone that you click with.  Erika and I do well presenting together because we can finish one another's sentences and give each other a hard time for a little humor. 

     We prepared our presentation on Prezi, which is like a glorified online power-point.   Our Prezi ended up being huge so we were praying for good internet connection (and I mean that relevantly).   At home, with a good connection, it would take about 20 minutes for the Prezi to load on my computer. 

    We knew our conference room would accommodate 100 people so we made 115 handouts and CDs with our accompanying documents. 

    We decided to go to the session that was in the same room as ours the hour before ours.  Those presenters struggled with the internet the entire session. We were beginning to sweat bullets!  About thirty minutes before the presentation we decided to pull it up on both of our personal lap-tops.  Erika couldn't get it to load at all on her computer.  I started praying and even sent texts asking for prayer.  Just a few minutes later, the whole thing loaded in less than 30 seconds.  I know the Lord touched my computer and I was able to tell the people in our session that.

    We ended up with a packed room!  We ran out of the CDs and I've made more to mail to people that requested them.  The presentation itself went so well.  We received a ton of compliments...and one lady even asked us to come and present at her school.  HA!

      The funny thing about this whole story is that Erika and I are two of the least likely people to get up and talk in front of people.  Afterwards we were definitely on an adrenaline high!