Teaching Challenging Students Conference

I had the immense pleasure of attending my 1st Whole Brain Teaching Conference today.  It was awesome.  Although most of the topics covered are already well-underway in my classroom, I took great satisfaction in seeing a large group of fellow nerds who don't mind giving up a Saturday educators who are also interested in growing as a whole brain educator.

I will be posting about this wealth of knowledge over the next few days.

I attended the conference with another awesome teacher from my school.

Here we are with THE Chris Biffle himself.  

He was our presenter for the day.  Why learn from the rest when you can learn from the best?!

I feel very excited to walk in to school on Monday and whole-brain-teach-my-little-heart-out!

For many of you, you probably have a variety of behavior management systems in place - I know I do (see my Gold Tags post from before).  I want to review this idea in my own room, and suggest you take a look at your own as well.  Coach B. tells us this great anecdote: when you're teaching, its like fishing in a pond.  You're fishing for kids who are paying attention and engaged.  What motivators are you using for gaining their engagement?  He related like this -

There's a pond over here, and the motivator is 'making your parents proud'.  Guess what?  No fish!  How about this pond over here, the motivator is 'you'll make more money one day'....  aaaannnddd.... NO FISH!  But this pond over here, the one marked: "less homework" and the other one marked "more recess"..... now THOSE are ponds are well-stocked with the fish!  Be sure you're dangling the right carrot in front of them!