In any profession, it is important to take part in professional development activities in order to improve your own skills and get new ideas that you can use and implement into your own profession. In physical education, the New York State Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance is an organization for teachers in New York State. This past week NYS AHPERD held a conference at Turning Stone which consisted of multiple presentation throughout the day that professionals and future professionals that were in attendance could observe and even take part in. I attended sessions on "Spicing up your warm-up", fitness assessment, Omnikin ball, and activities for elementary children to name a few. I learned a lot of new ideas from each session that I am going to use in the future when I can. Each session provided us with new games and activities along with modifications with each activity to get each student involved Learning all these new activities is going to be very beneficial since I will be student teaching in the spring semester.
This Conference was the first one that I had ever attended and I am very glad that I went. I was able to meet other professionals and I was even able to get some interviews with some of the other teachers and professionals that were there. They provided me with some good advice that I will be able to use in my future teaching endeavors.
Attending conferences, like the NYS AHPERD conference, is not only a way to learn more skills that you can use in your field in the future, it is a great way to begin networking. For a college student who is about to graduate and will be looking for a job in the very near future, this can be very important. Who knows, you could meet your future employer at conferences like these. This is why attending professional development workshops is important to not, not only as a current professional educator, but also as a future professional educator.
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