The Inspiration of Camp Inspire

Over the past few weeks I have been helping out and working with our Instructional team to put together a great collaborative event with Matt Barfield of Promethean called Camp Inspire.

The morning of the event our department showed up in our camping gear ready to start the day. With a tent at the font door we welcomed our happy campers to Camp Inspire. Day one went very smoothly with many different sessions that teachers were able to choose from to attend. We heard lots and lots of great comments from teachers that were in attendance. Not only did we hear them the host school's Principal heard the teachers talking about how great things were going during the day. Even our Asst. Superintendent who came by the camp heard many wonderful comments from the participants that were completely unsolicited. Even the surprise rain and thunderstorm did not seem to dampen the spirits of the teachers in attendance.

As the second day started we, our Instructional Department members, were running around, getting things set up and making sure that teacher computers were ready for the day of collaboration. Teachers started coming into the camp and we looked around at the participants, at each other and were excited to see that we had the same faces back for day two. As the teachers broke off into grade level groups there were members of our Instructional department available to help guide them along on their journey of collaboration which would take them through the rest of the day.

In looking back and reflecting on everything that was going on I felt really good about the whole event. I can not even think through all of the conversations that I had with people or overheard, any type of negative comments about the camp. One teacher went as far as using Twitter lingo to describe how she felt after attending Camp Inspire. "OMG, this was the best workshop that I have ever attended." I am looking forward to being a part of the next collaboration event with our teachers.