Go. See. Do!

This is an overview of the conferences that will be held here in Washington this coming school year, along with links to conference descriptions and registration information. If you know of any other conferences of interest to teachers, please mention them in the comments section and I’ll update the list!

• Washington Organization for Reading Development, Spokane, October 12th and 13th. Called "Literacy Essentials", the keynote speaker for the conference is Regie Routman, author of several guides on the teaching of reading and writing.
  
• Washington Science Teachers Association, Tacoma, October 12th and 13th. Online details are a bit sketchy, but staff members from my school who have attended their conferences in the past have always spoken highly of the event.
  
• Washington State Math Council Northwest Mathematics Conference, Bellevue, October 12th and 13th. It's being held in conjunction with a Teachers Teaching Technology conference sponsored by Texas Instruments.
  
• Washington Association of Educators of Talented and Gifted, Richland, October 18th-20th. One of the speakers is set to be Margo Long, from Whitworth University in Spokane. If you've heard her talk you know what a treat it is; if you haven't had the pleasure, she's a dynamo.
  
• WEA Bargaining Conference, Sea-Tac, October 26th and 27th. This is the last year of our three-year contract in my district, so unless we put in for an extension next summer it'll be back to the table. Hopefully, this conference will be a good warm-up.
  
• WSASCD Fall Conference, Sea-Tac, November 1st-3rd. Our state chapter of the ASCD puts out a quality magazine, and I think pretty highly of Mike Dunn, their president and Superintendent of the Cheney School District.
  
• WERA Winter Conference, Sea-Tac, December 5th-7th.
  
• WERA Spring Conference, Sea-Tac, March 26th-28th (no online information available yet). I'll be a presenter at this conference, talking about what my school has done with Response to Intervention.
  
• WEA Representative Assembly, Spokane, May 15th-17th. I'll certainly be there! It's being hosted by the Spokane Education Association; the 2009 Rep Assembly belongs to WEA-EW, so I'll probably get pretty heavily involved in that one.
  

It sure seems like WORD, WSTA, and the WSMC could have put their heads together before scheduling all three of their conferences on the same weekend.

From the Association of Washington School Principals:

• The Principals’ Conference, Vancouver, October 14th-16th
  
• Assistant Principals Leadership Conference, Vancouver, February 6th-8th
• Work Less, Play More, and Still Get the Job Done in a Normal School Week, Sea-Tac, March 6th-7th

From the Washington Association of School Administrators:

• OSPI/WASA Special Education Workshop, Sea-Tac, August 8th-9th
  
• Legislative Conference, Olympia, February 10th – 11th
  
• Small Schools Conference, Yakima, March 3rd – 4th
  
• AWSP/WASA Summer Conference, Spokane, June 29th – July 1st, 2008