CMAE member Amanda Camacho, a CMS middle-grades Spanish teacher who served on the planning committee, opened the Summit by describing the event series as "a way to help early-career educators to network, and to learn from meaningful professional development."
NCAE and its BTOP organizing committees across the state will host trainings, socials, and special events through the year, she said.
Camacho urged Summit participants to consider participating in early-career labs, "a support system offered through virtual learning labs," she said. These labs "pair an early-career teacher with virtual coaches to work on a selected problem for nine weeks."
"During those nine weeks, you'll meet online with people across the nation for one hour weekly," she explained. "At the end of that period, you can continue past nine weeks on the same problem if you choose, or you choose a new problem to address collaboratively."
Sessions offered at the first BTOP Summit included Teacher Evaluations, Trauma-Informed Strategies, Classroom Management, Understanding Equity, and True Colors.
CMS Teacher of the Year Kim Tuttle delivered the keynote session, a presentation titled "Educating the Whole Child: Learning Beyond the Classroom in an Urban School District."
A native of Blacksburg, Virginia, Tuttle said she has chosen to teach in school environments that serve challenged and disadvantaged student populations, where she has "built relationships with students, and built community, which illustrates the power of words."
"When you have relationships, you can do anything," she explained. "Teaching is hard work but it's also 'heart work'. You can create the best lesson plans possible, but without relationships with your students, all of that work can go out the window."
Tuttle described the first two weeks of a school year in her classrooms, when "the curriculum guide goes on the side."
"My classroom is a home, so I build that home environment first. When my kids have a buy-in and they know that I care for them, they're motivated to do everything possible," she said. "First, they do it for me. But then they do it for themselves, because no one wants to be the outlier that isn't succeeding."
Tuttle also emphasized a teacher's need to understand their purpose for being in the classroom and the profession. Her parents instilled in her the values of goal-setting, as they required her and her siblings to draft an annual letter at the beginning of the school year. In the letter, the children would identify five goals they intended to achieve during that year.
"Even later, when I was college, my dad would take me to lunch and ask what goals I intended to achieve," she added.
Tuttle revealed that her first year of teaching was a challenge, saying, "I failed. I did what no teacher should ever do. I cried."
She explained that a class of high school sophomores "broke me. I couldn't get them. I never really had classroom management problems but this one class did it."
Tuttle said that she left the classroom one day to cry in the bathroom. "But a student told me, 'Get up and get back in there: they're just kids!'"
"So I went back, revisited my intentions, and I finally got them."
She praised Summit participants for showing their own intentions through their attendance. "Look at us," she said, "We're here on a Saturday because we want to become better for our students and for ourselves."
Explaining how she approaches the challenge of teaching disadvantaged students, Tuttle said she uses the "Morgan-Danielle approach -- which is named for my daughters, Morgan and Danielle."
"Those are somebody's kids," she explained. "I look at what I'm doing with every child in my classroom as if each one is my daughter or my son."
Addressing the theme of her presentation, Tuttle detailed what she means by "educating a student beyond a classroom."
"It means that if you build the relationships with your students, you don't have to leave the classroom but you can bring the world into your classroom, and see your students' minds growing there."
Noting that her classroom is "a trailer, with no library, no cafeteria," Tuttle said, "we make the most of what we have."
Sharing an example of a time when her students were assigned to read a book whose action was set at a beach, she realized that many of her students had never been to a beach.
"So I went to the store and bought sand, and I put it in the microwave to warm it up," she declared. "I made my students take off their shoes and socks, and stand in it, so they understood what the characters meant when they described the sensations of walking on the beach."
"Educating students beyond the classroom means filling those gaps," she said. "As teachers, we bridge the gap because we do what we've got to do."
It also means often using your own resources to meet needs. "We have a lot on our plates, and we wear lots of hats. Our paycheck doesn't compensate for that. I'm thankful for that paycheck but I would like for it to represent all the work that I do," she added.
Completing her presentation, Tuttle described the annual travels she has led with her students to Rome, Ireland, and elsewhere, and watching her students intervene in teaching to other tour groups the content from her classroom.
"You know you've done your job well when your students can model you, replicate you, and teach others what you've taught them," she said. "So we've experienced the world, we've brought the world into our classroom, and we've taken my students out of the classroom and into the world."
"You never know the power of your words, and where your words will lead your students," she told the Summit attendees. "If we don't give up on them, they won't give up on themselves."
I could listen to her talk all day. Her students are lucky to have her.
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