Whittney Lapham Attending a Professional Conference October 17th, 2013 Attending the MEA conference In October I attended the

three day MEA conference in Belgrade Montana. This was a very meaningful and helpful learning experience for me. It allowed me to connect with individuals from different areas of the education world and to learn about new and exciting tools to use when teaching. The first seminar that I attended was a presentation on common core being introduced to Montana. The speaker took time to lay out what the basis of common core is and why it will be beneficial to our school systems. This was very helpful to me since common core is fairly recent and I am stilling getting to know what all of the requirements are myself. He was open to many questions throughout the presentation and allowed anyone to offer their opinions and advice on common core. This was a 2 hour seminar. The second seminar that I attended was on equine therapy. This is an area that I have always been interested in. This seminar was lead by a team of ladies who are equine therapists and have a lot of experience with equine therapy. They also brought their service dog in to help in the presentation. I really enjoyed this presentation because I think that using animals for therapy is a wonderful way to get students or children to open up, especially students who have disabilities. Horses have always been a passion of mine and equine therapy is something that I would like to add on to my degree in education in the future.

The final seminars that I attended focused on teacher-student interactions and connecting with other education students from different universities. Overall this experience was perfect for building professional development and classroom management skills. I thoroughly enjoyed the time that I spent at each seminar and I feel that this experience will benefit me in my career as a future educator.