Susan Fitzell’s Educational Blog

I presented an hour and fifteen minute conference session today at the 2008 Annual Education Conference in Portsmouth, NH. The session was titled, “Differentiating Instruction within Tier 1 and Tier II RTI Guidelines”. That’s a HUGE topic in and of itself yet, there’s a demand for information about the topic. Response to Intervention generates questions amongst most school district administrators with few answers available. So, I feel the need to at the least, start the dialogue about what it is and what it isn’t.

I always struggle, however, with trying to cover huge topics in very short blips of time. I was able to quickly go over the RTI process for Tier I & II and then cover some very basic, and powerful best practice strategies that participants could take back to their colleagues and classrooms. To me, if participants can leave with something concrete, that’s a good thing. The challenge is picking which strategies to cover in that hour.

I spend anywhere from 10-40 hours of prep for every hour that I present. But it seems no matter how much I prep for a one hour+ session, I never know whether participants really got anything they can USE tomorrow. The bottom line is: It’s not enough time!

I’d be interested in knowing what participants of short sessions hope to get out of them. What’s most important to you? Do you expect the session to skim the surface? Do you prefer when they cover just one thing but go deep? The risk in that is with a varied audience, if the presenter picks just one thing, it could be the wrong thing for many people. When I go to a school district to present a short session, I poll the participants with a survey ahead of time. I talk to teachers and administrators to find out what they hope to gain from the session. None of that is possible at a conference.

So, I figured I’d try this forum to ask the question: What do you hope to gain from a short conference session when you attend one?