Initial Reflections on the 53rd Annual CCSS Conference

 President’s Reflection on the 53^rd Annual CCSS Conference

Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.

Margaret J. Wheatley

All the statistics from the 53^rd Annual CCSS conference are not yet compiled, so my reflection is not built entirely on hard data. Like the rest of the conference goers, I listen to people as they come and go on the elevator and in the halls.  I engage them in conversation to see how things are going. I received many positive responses, including this typical elevator speech. “If there is one thing I can take back to the classroom, I am happy.”

This year I enjoyed each session I attended, which were mostly keynote sessions and special events, since it is my job to introduce them.  I always attend keynote sessions because these are speakers represent those who endured enough hardship or did enough good to change the world.  Having my time prescribed means that I miss most of the sessions in which teachers connect with teachers.  I found out by reading #CCSS2014, our Twitter hashtag that many of these sessions had standing room only.

We monitored the number of social media interactions during conference.  For the first time, we had an app for the conference program as well as a Twitter hashtag.  This year we only had about 30 users out of nearly 800 attendees using the app, and about the same number tweeting on the hashtag, but I see that changing as more and more teachers step into the social media world. 

Social media kept people informed about what was coming up at the conference.  People responded to our conference notifications.  The best response was 244 views on our FB announcement of Major General Patrick Brady.  We found out that more people viewed our posts if we included posters rather than pictures.  This year we had 11 participatory attendees.  One hundred seventy-nine people noticed Mary Beth Tinker’s poster the first time and 53 the second time compared to 29 views when we posted just her picture.  It’s unclear whether social media determined how many came to each session.  As a result our graphic designer, Frank Espinosa, designed many more posters for our speakers that we have ever had. 

California Council for the Social Studies

Posted by Marsha Ingrao · Tuesday, March 4 at 7:15pm

You will hear this fascinating story of Gen. Brady who is the only living Army veteran of Vietnam to hold both the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross, our nation's second highest award as well as many other awards. Brady was awarded a Medal of Honor, presented to him by President Richard Nixon on October 9, 1969.

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  California Council for the Social Studies There have been over total 500 views of this page between CCSS and SJVCSS fan pages! Come early to get your seat! 

  Like · Reply · March 6 at 8:12amReply

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244 people saw this post

On the other hand, simple posts received large numbers of hits as well.  The post about our leadership training drew 98 views.  Last year we had 2 people at that session. The California Task Force public meeting was packed to overflowing – about 150 persons, and yet only about 30 people viewed each of the two posts on Facebook.  We don’t have the data yet to analyze how well attended other advertised sessions were.  The bottom line is that word of mouth influences which sessions people attend more than anything.  We hope that having information to inform viewers ahead of time helped attendees talk about what was available.

Our total connections went from nearly nothing at the beginning of the 2013-2014 year to:
           1.  LinkedIn  1,252

2. Facebook Fan Page 170
3. FB Group A 264
4. FB Group B 42
5. Twitter 94

The Common Core Boot Camp 2.0 remained well attended this year.   The secondary level Boot Camp had standing room only session.  The addition of Common Core has put the subject area of history-social studies into a state of flux, which keeps teachers anxious. Teachers with whom I chatted have two main concerns:  having the time to teach, and knowing what to teach.  Our standards are now nearly 20 years old, and no longer correspond to the direction in which the Common Core standards are driving the assessment vehicle.  Common Core Boot Camp attenders learned how the C3 Framework can help them design effective lessons to meet the demands of the Common Core Standards.  The CCSS conference also gave teachers an effective place to express their opinions about changing California policies.

The conference offered more content scholarship sessions than ever before in the past.  We have not traditionally reached out to the university membership, but we broke that mold this year.  University people bring a different perspective to our typically K-12 attendees.  In addition they invite student teachers, whose membership we need to remain vibrant as an organization.  The presenting scholars are also potential contributors and reviewers to our scholarly journal and occasional papers.  This brain surge, in turn, provides higher quality resources to the K-12 members. 

The conference offers a chance for people to network across the four core disciplines as well as cross grade levels and most importantly from different areas of the state.  This makes the CCSS Annual Conference a dynamic professional development that no one district could provide on its own for social studies teachers.

My humblest and most sincere thanks goes to the hard working Conference Committee and Executive Cabinet, and Executive Secretary and on site volunteers, who worked long, often tense, hours to bring this successful conference to you, our members and friends across the state of California.  We want to see you next year in Oakland.

Marsha Ingrao

2013-2014 President, California Council for the Social Studies