NAEA Convention Recap Part 1 -

Hi, artsy friends! It’s taken awhile for me to gather all my pictures and information from the National Art Education Association conference and compile them into a recap. At my school, if you go to a conference, you present something about your experience at one of our weekly staff meetings. So I am “killing two birds with one stone”. If you have never been to an art conference, it is really fun!

There are many, many sessions to choose from at the NAEA conventions. There are some additional paid workshops (which I did not attend), but I kind of wish I had done some hands-on learning. This year I spent a lot of time navigating and trying to figure out how to get from one place to another, so I missed a few sessions that I had planned on going to. Luckily, some of the speeches were recorded and some of the presenters provided handouts, which you can see on the NAEA website.

Here are some of the sessions I chose based on the school’s professional development goals as well as my own professional development plan goals (which is going to be involving and building community).

I learned a lot at these sessions and in my next blog post I will share with you some of the things that stuck out to me from the presentations.

I had a great time meeting new friends, seeing online friends and visiting with some of my classmates from Illinois State University. I graduated in 2001, and I think it is awesome that our school puts on an art alumni reunion at the conference every year. I also had the chance to meet some other bloggers who I follow regularly and talk to online.

And here is a group of art teachers who are wearing the “art teacher” pajamas. (I am the at the bottom, second from the right.)

Finally, if you have seen other people posting pictures online, I’m sure you know about the comic-con that was held in the same building! There were so many interesting costumes. I want to go to one of these conventions sometime.