Your Association
Fall Conference ‘18
MEA leadership gets into the spirit of the Friday night social with a beach party theme. From left to right MEA President, Grace Leavitt, Treasurer, Beth French, VP, Jesse Hargrove and NEA Director, Amanda Cooper.
Each year the MEA holds multiple, free professional development opportunities for its members with one of the biggest events being the MEA Fall Conference. This year, session topics ranged from Understanding and Supporting Students with Trauma Histories to Living and Learning with the Challenges of Autism Spectrum Disorder. If you were not able to attend, here are some of the things you missed. Be sure to keep an eye on the new MEA website (maineea.org) for additional opportunities! Understanding and Supporting Students with Trauma Histories: Trauma experiences shape individual student behavior and can dramatically impact classroom dynamics. Attendees learned how to recognize simple and complex trauma and get a toolbox of strategies you can use to support affected students. Participants explored selfcare and school-care practices that helped create a safe classroom environment for students with trauma histories. Living and Learning with the Challenges of Autism Spectrum Disorder: Members who attended this session received the resources needed and learned about strategies and techniques for teaching and learning with Autism from a teacher and student who also happen to be mother and son. Jessica Archer and her son Connor have been dealing with ASD for more than 17 years, from pre-school to college, and offered their unique perspectives as both learner and teacher to help educators better understand this disorder. STEM education opportunities from China, Maine to … China: This workshop provided several practical STEM units for K-5 elementary classrooms, introduced STEM educators to enhanced teaching 28
Maine Educator • December 2018
opportunities during the summer in China and provided Maine STEM educators excellent networking opportunities with like-minded STEM teachers. Don’t take our word for it—(we know it’s great PD) listen to the members who attended and make sure you come next time! “Best conference I’ve been to. I gained a lot of knowledge.” “Another great PD conference with applicable stuff to take away and implement right away!” “This was my first conference and I found it very informative and enjoyed myself immensely and I plan on attending more.” “This session inspired my colleague and I to begin a place-based learning activity with our students. We have a plan that we hope will empower our students to drive change in our community!” “I got so many great ideas and learned about a lot of tech tools I had no idea I could use for formative assessment.”
