San Francisco: NCTM Conference

Thursday morning we were all up bright and early for the NCTM math conferences. The night before I planned my day and selected the different conferences I wanted to attend. There were so many math teachers in attendance from all over the country. It was such a great learning experience to be with other educators and share what works, what doesn't work, and how we can always improve on our math instruction. If you know me, then you know that I'm new to teaching fourth grade math. Most of my teaching background is in the first grade. Let me tell you, there's a lot of ground to cover between math in first grade and math in fourth grade. Whew! I enjoyed the two days of conferences and I came away with a lot of good information that I can't wait to share with my coworkers. Plus, walking around the city of San Francisco on my way to the different conference rooms was so nice. The weather alone put me in a great mood every single day. 

After a full day of conferences, it was nice to unwind each night with some chips and dip and a Dr. Pepper at the restaurant at the top of our hotel. The view was incredible! 

Thursday night we had a great dinner beside the bay and spent the evening discussing what we'd learned from all of our conferences that day and since we had a teacher from the elementary, middle, and high school on this trip we were all able to share a different perspective on all of our conferences. We were all learning so many new things to help make our teaching more engaging for our students. We ended our night with some yummy ice cream and headed to bed.

Friday was basically a repeat of Thursday. We each had conferences from 8:00 until about 5:00 that evening. Our brains were swimming with math information overload at this point :) We ended our last night in San Francisco with dinner at a really neat restaurant called The Stinking Rose, an Italian restaurant that was known for its insane amounts of garlic it served with each dish. We were all reeking of garlic when we left but it was a fun experience! We walked back to our hotel and on the way ate some more ice cream because vacation :) What a fun trip this had been! We were able to see and visit so many new places, eat incredible food, ride the historic cable cars, and engage with such a wonderful group of educators. The NCTM conference was such a wonderful learning opportunity for me and I hope I can attend another one in the future.