What did you Learn?

It has been a couple of weeks since the MAEA Fall 2012 Conference, and I am still sorting through bags of handouts, sample materials, and pictures that are filled with great ideas and classroom inspiration. This conference had it all - great views of Traverse City, awesome sessions with expert teachers, and loads of ideas to take back and implement into the classroom. Here are a couple of take-aways that will be helping me through this year:

1. Assessment: Claudia Burns had a great Thursday night session on Assessment where teachers were able to share how they are working with the new evaluation requirement to show student growth. Teachers gave examples of how the implement both formative and summative assessment tools as well as the resources they use to help with pre and post testing. You will notice a new tab on our blog labeled "Assessment" - Claudia will be putting resource materials on there to help you get started or advance your understanding of how this works in an art classroom.

2. Creativity: There were several sessions that had creativity at the heart of it. Adam VanHouten, September Buys, and Cindy Todd gave presentations dealing with aspects of creativity in the classroom. I enjoyed learning about various methods of instruction to help foster innovative thinking. Both Adam and September used www.prezi.com to create interactive presentations on how they apply this in their classrooms.

3. Workshops: The amount of hands-on opportunities this conference did not disappoint. Sharon Stratton gave an awesome workshop that not only gave great resources for using unusual materials like tar paper, bleach, and soap to make awesome works of art, but also included pop-rocks in her presentation (which was a sweet surprise). The vendors also did not disappoint with their samples and make-and-takes which helps when deciding if you want to purchase products on display.

4. Data: One of the best moments was the presentation by Dr. Root-Bernstein. His keynote on the link between the Arts and everything else put hard facts and figures to something we always have felt to be true: that when you invest in the Arts, you are investing in all other aspects of learning. It was a great talk and I look forward to reading his book that goes into the topic further.


Overall, this was a great conference to attend. It was full of information and moments to connect with others. Conferences like these are important for our profession. What was your favorite part of MAEA 2012? Please share links, pictures, and information below so we can archive the highlights of this year's conference.