Promising Practices

Promising Practices was an event that I found to have some beneficial messages and some parts that tended to be boring and confusing. The two workshops that I attended were improving and empowering health for elderly people with disabilities, and studies of literature around the world. In the workshop for empowering health for people with disabilities, I learned a lot of different ways that people who have disabilities can access help to get the most out of their lives. I also learned about different elderly helping areas in Rhode Island and Southeastern Mass. For the studies of literature around the world, I got to watch videos of Karen Castagno (the director of this workshop) communicating a workshop with people from China over Skype, which to me was very powerful because it really put an emphasis on how technology can connect different areas around the country to teach a lesson or communicate a workshop.

There were some part of Promising Practices that I did not find too interesting, such as the hour long keynote on health related topics. Granted as a Health and Physical Educator, I typically find health topics to be very interesting. However, the keynote speaker lost my attention within the first five minutes, and she just read off of her powerpoint the whole time. I feel as if this keynote speech was an Delpit moment where she held all the power throughout the hour, not allowing any interaction until the powerpoint was complete. I personally feel that it would have been more beneficial if the keynote was more interactive and the power of the presentation was evenly distributed between the audience and the speaker. 

My first workshop reminded me a lot about Jerry August, in the sense of promoting safe spaces not in schools but for people in the outside world. This workshop showed many places that advocate health empowerment for elderly people with disabilities. This relates a lot to Jerry August because this workshops was promoting safety, health, and equality for all people. I found a connection with my second workshop to Oakes in the sense that this is another route for students to connect with students across the world to learn and add a new aspect on learning. Oakes advocates for "curriculum with a rich meaning", and I feel by connection with other students across the world we could learn about different cultural norms and teaching ideas for students in a class. This whole concept or ORGA can be used as a future educator to promote learning in schools in new unique ways.