Linda Christensen Conference Write-Up

The Christensen Conference was a very unique experience and I'm very glad I attended both the talk and the workshops.

The lecture she gave was really great because we saw what Christensen was really like in person and see how close she was to how we imagined her. She reminds me a lot of Dr. Alison Baer, which is funny because they are both amazing teachers who love the written word. At times when I felt that Christensen's book was a little wishy-washy I now take those stories at face value, and as inspiring stories from her past.

I feel like she's a really genuine person who truly cares about kids and that gives her book more meaning and value in my opinion. She's someone who I'm definitely not ashamed to say I aspire to be like as a teacher.

The first workshop I went to was pretty good, I heard about a good book and also about questioning the classroom.

The second workshop I went to was really amazing and I learned so much about teaching the Holocaust in our classrooms from that workshop. It came in really handy while I was writing my Unit Plan for ED 3020 on WWII.

I emailed the presenter of this workshop, Katherine Ha, after her conference and she emailed me back her book list - many of which I included in my annotated text set for LS 3010. I could tell how knowledgeable she was, and she told us all about how she spent ten days in New York doing an extensive and intense program focusing around the Holocaust, run by a Holocaust survivor and author of The Sunflower, a novel about forgiveness.

She also promoted applying for programs such as this as a teacher, because it really enriched her class and her lessons. Much of the resources she gave us she received while in this program in New York.

She was very excited and vocal about how great of an experience it was for her and how much it impacted her classroom as well as her teaching.

All in all I was very glad I went to this conference - it was a truly interesting and helpful!