Let's Celebrate nErDcamp Michigan 2017!

It's time to CELEBRATE This Week with Ruth Ayres from Discover. Play. Build.  Every week Ruth invites us to share our celebrations from the week and link up at her blog. What a fun way to reflect on everything there is to be thankful for. 

*                  *                   *

This week I'm celebrating nErDcamp Michigan 2017!

*throws confetti*

I love nErDcamp!!! Every year it's so inspirational. I love being around so much great energy all in one place. I took tons of selfies...and still feel like I missed people! But here's my best photo recap!

Emily Arrow 

Emily Arrow kicked off nErDcamp! It was cool to hear her in person!

An amazing discussion of why it's important to have diverse books in our classrooms with Tracey Baptiste, Juana Medina, Karuna Riazi, Kathy Burnette, and Alex Gino. 

Louise Borden, who I presented with last year. She's always so smiley!

I moderated a panel on information fluency and sleuthing out alternative facts with Ruth Spiro, Ammi-Joan Paquette, Sarah Albee, and Daniel Nayeri. 

 I was surprisingly shocked to see Maria Villarreal from 826CHI, a non-profit writing and tutoring center for students in Chicago. I'll be volunteering for their middle school writing camp later this summer so it was awesome to see her.

Suzanne puts in so much work to make day one run smoothly! She's awesome. 

A bunch of friends! Jennifer Sniadecki, Kathy Burnette, Suzanne Gibbs, Crystal Brunelle, Nikki Ohs Barnes, and Kelly Vorhis. 

 I finally got to meet Marcie Flinchum Atkins! We've been writing friends for a long time so it was cool to get to hang out with her.

 Colby Sharp himself! 

Kathy Burnette and I presented on how to talk about things we don't know how to talk about...and share ideas for how to talk about race and culture with colleagues and students. Chad Everett joined us as we continued the conversation on day two. It was pretty powerful.  

 It's always wonderful to see Laurel Snyder and Debbie Kovacs. 
Look at those smiling faces!

It was so fun to see Minh Lê again!
Gae Polisner and I led a session on Teachers Write with some awesome authors. Love Teachers Write!

Alaina Sharp is such a complete rockstar! 
She works so hard to make nErDcamp happen! 

Josh Funk is so funny. I got a sneak peak of one of his upcoming books...

it's awesome. Get ready!

This guy! Noah and I became friends at nErDcamp last year 

and he's seriously super cool.

Speaking of Noah, he was one of the kids who got to join in on the awesomeness of nErDcamp Jr. I had a group of twenty soon-to-be 5th graders who got to hang out with Erica Perl, Laura Shovan, Jerzy Drozd, Laurie Keller, Ruth McNally Barnshaw, Abby Cooper. 

 

 

 

 

It was another amazing few days of learning at nErDcamp!!! 

I already can't wait for next year.

What are you celebrating this week?