CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Teachers who have just completed their first year in the classroom are invited to attend the annual Beginning Teacher Conference on July 17-18 at the University of Illinois. Now in its eighth year, the conference will be held at the I Hotel and Conference Center, 1900 S. First St., Champaign.
Hosted by the College of Education and the Illinois New Teacher Collaborative, the conference is geared toward pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade educators statewide, regardless of where they earned their degrees or the content area they teach. The conference provides beginning teachers with practical strategies to use in their classrooms.
Educators who attend the conference can earn hours to satisfy their annual professional development requirements.
A focus of the 2017 conference will be community engagement. Presenters will include Sarah Livesay, who will talk about student citizen science programs; and Teresa Kruger and Emily Chamber, who will present on building community through service learning.
Keynote speaker will be Ricardo Castro, the 2017 Illinois Teacher of the Year and an educator at Elk Grove High School. He will discuss the essential role teachers play in local communities and society.
“I truly believe that our jobs as educators should be to prepare students socially and academically to thrive in a democratic society,” Castro said.
Other speakers will present on topics such as assessment, classroom management, educator self-care and differentiation.
For the first time, INTC is inviting conference attendees to participate in a special post-conference session during which they will learn about community engagement from experts in Champaign, Urbana and Chicago. Participants will travel to Prosperity Gardens and downtown Champaign to learn about enhancing classroom instruction through local community and family expertise.
Registration is available online. The conference fee of $75 will include one night’s hotel accommodations for participants who register and pay by July 6. Late registration, which will run July 7-12, will cost the same, but hotel accommodations are not included.
Last-minute registration will be July 13 through 5 p.m. July 14, but the registration fee increases to $100 and does not include a hotel room.
More information, including downloadable files of past speakers’ presentation materials, is available on the conference website.
INTC is a statewide partnership of individuals and groups interested in attracting and retaining new teachers and enhancing their abilities to promote student learning.
Sponsors of this year’s conference include the State Farm Companies Foundation, the Meemic Foundation and the Network to Transform Teaching.
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