I’m always bringing back a few tips, tricks, or expressions from a conferences that I want to incorporate into my own teaching. A good warmup, a good mindset, a good new way of teaching a concept.
This year, what I’m bringing back from the conference, more than anything else, is a warm glow of being with my family of music educators. They are more than friends, and instead of seeing them multiple times a year, I haven’t seen them for two or more. It filled my soul to be with them, and despite a weekend spent almost entirely putting out fires related to the Michigan All-State Jazz Choir, I left greatly uplifted.
(And here’s hoping I didn’t also leave with a new viral friend, thanks to being around more people at the conference than I’d been around in a long, long time.)