Voluntary Saturday School...?

...Sort of.

Today another teacher and I took 6 students to the Iowa Student Learning Institute in Waukee, IA.  Mind you, this is a Saturday.  It is also almost 4 hours away from our home.  We left Postville at 6am this morning.  These students not only volunteered, but were excited to get up and come to this learning opportunity.  Once we arrived, we listened to a couple great keynote speakers, whom I now follow on Twitter.

So very true, and so un-standardized test mentality!

Pretty sweet new shirts....gotta love these kids!

After we had a quick lunch provided by Waukee High School, we spent our afternoon in smaller breakout sessions.  The first one I attended with two of our students was very interesting.  A school in Iowa presented about how they (the students) are in charge of monitoring, troubleshooting, and instructing students and teachers in their school for most computer or tech related issues.  The students are in charge of allowing downloads and monitoring usage of other students.  They spend a significant amount of time working on this and it is worth one credit toward their graduation requirements.  It's a great idea and I love the way the students take ownership of the organization.

All in all, it was a great day spent with some great students.  We had some great conversations, most of which were school and tech related.  There were a lot of selfies being taken throughout the day too.

The first of many Selfies for the day!  

I also had a chance to have some time for collaboration with my tech teacher counterpart.  We never get a chance to work together and talk about what we are planning and teaching so being stuck in a car together for 6+ hours in one day was a good thing.

Starbucks Coffee Selfies!

And Starbucks, we live an hour and a half from the nearest Starbucks.  The conversation about stopping at Starbucks started at about 7:00am and didn't actually happen until about 12 hours later, but it was great anyway.  I know what you are thinking, and yes, we did in fact let teenagers get coffee at 7:00pm, then after another hour and a half drive back home, sent them back to their parents....caffeinated.  You Are Welcome Parents!  Consider this payback for all the times I have been given students that had candy and Hot Cheetos for breakfast.  Karma...am I right?