To say I love Bureau of Education & Research Seminars is an understatement. Of course, it is always refreshing to take a day away from work and analyze what you're doing and how you're doing it. When I first came to my job, I was told that Carrie and I needed to see Peggy Sharp. She was outstanding! Amazing! One of a kind!
All those things are certainly true. More often than not, though, the consensus about Ms. Sharp is that everyone leaves her seminar overwhelmed. After we saw her, we definitely were! She gave us so many great ideas for books, activities, and decor, but we were at a loss of where to start or even if we could start. Now Ms. Sharp is retired and Judy Freeman has taken over the reigns of presenting the material to north Texas. I left anything but overwhelmed...more like super encouraged.
Being overwhelmed by information is not a good thing, in my opinion. Yes, you can cover 100 books in 6-7 hours. Will everyone retain everything? I certainly couldn't. I remember being warned to bring my highlighters in an assortment of colors, as well as sticky notes and pens and bookmarks. PHEW. Did I feel proud once I survived and we gleaned information from her? Yes. There's a HUGE but here. Even though I was presented with a million books, a million ways to use them, and even more ways to get kids interested in them, I reached the saturation point pretty quickly.
That being said, I greatly appreciate and respect what Ms. Sharp taught me and showed us. I think she did amazing things and helped a lot of people! There are some things we do now and still want to implement because of her. However, Ms. Freedman's approach was much more fun and way less stressful!
She is such a gift musician that I felt silly even singing along to some of the songs she performed. They were great! It was an inspiring day for sure. We covered all the major subject areas (math, science, social studies, and language) and even how to connect various texts within the session. The handbook she gave to us is particularly useful, as we are able to use some of the reader's theatre stories (and make our own with her super helpful directions), craft activities, and all kinds of ideas on how to use these texts!
I appreciated her talking about graphic novels, especially El Deafo and the importance of a graphic novel winning the Newbery award. Its important for the genre to prove that what little text it may or may not have is powerful enough to matter.
It was a wonderful experience and I recommend anyone with an interested in children and what they read to attend--especially administration and reading specialists. It would be great for them to see how various genres and books truly can help the kids and teachers with important skills. I know Carrie and I have talked already and found some great things we are going to do.
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