Episode Summary
Four teachers chat up all the good stuff from the NCKP: The Piano Conference in Chicago, Illinois. As you can imagine, it was an extra special time as it was the first in-person NCKP since the pandemic.
Whether you attended the conference, lived vicariously watching the happenings online, or have never been part of an event like this and are curious to hear more, I think you’ll enjoy hearing our stories and experiences today.
Items Mentioned & Related Resources
Episode 033 – Utilizing Student Binders
Episode 059 – How to Get the Most From Your Conference Experience
Transcript
Amy: This past week, teachers from all over the world gathered in Chicago, Illinois for the 25th National Conference for Keyboard Pedagogy, also known as NCKP, the Piano Conference. As you can imagine, it was an extra special time as it was the first in-person NCKP since the pandemic. The joyous occasion was validated the moment my travel buddy and roommate, Christina Whitlock, walked into the lobby of the hotel and instantly saw teacher friends Lori Bender, Laura Harding, and Janna Williamson.
A few minutes later, we all had a good chuckle when we realized our excited chatter raised the decibel level in the hotel lobby big time. I wanted to share with you some thoughts and reflections as a way of transitioning out of the fully immersive experience and back into real life. Rather than just hearing from me, though, I thought it would be more fun and would give you a more well-rounded recap if you heard from several attendees.
Luckily, I managed to twist the arm of three teacher friends who also happen to be my formal mastermind buddies. I’ll let them introduce themselves here in a second. Whether you attended the conference, lived vicariously watching the happenings online, or have never been part of an event like this and are curious to hear more, I think you’ll enjoy hearing our stories and experiences today.
I’m Amy Chaplin, an independent piano teacher from Indiana who also loves building up and working with my piano teaching community. In my early days of teaching and running the Piano Pantry blog, I started creating assignment sheets. At least one new one every year, to be exact, as a way of keeping things fresh in my studio.
If you and your students still enjoy using written assignment sheets, you’ll have more than 20 to choose from in the free downloadable bundle on pianopantry.com. Just google Piano Pantry Assignment Sheets. Or visit the direct link in the show notes if you’re using printable assignment sheets. Be sure to listen to episode number 33 of this podcast, where I share all the ways a simple $5 office product can help organize your student materials.
All right. Thank you so much for joining me in the podcast today. Ladies, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself so everybody knows whose voice is speaking when, and just tell us a little bit about yourself and if you’re like a first-time NCKP attendee or a seasoned one. I guess I’ll go first.
Christina: I am Christina of Whitlock. I have the podcast Beyond Measure, and I pride myself in being a friend to the profession, and I have actually never been to a physical NCKP conference. This was actually my first one. I did the virtual NCKP conference the last round. But I have been so excited because everybody talks about the vibe of the NCKP conference, and it has been held.
Amy: And that was something I did not know about you, so I was totally shocked when I first learned that Kristina has never been to NCKP! What? Who knew?
Christina: Because I am a seasoned national conference attendee, but I’ve never done this one,
Amy: woo! Kate?
Kate: I’m Kate Boyd. I am a professor of piano at Butler University and I’m the creator of the Piano Prof YouTube channel and I am so happy to be here with my friends and colleagues at NCKP.This is my first ever NCKP conference as well.
Amy: You too?
Kate: Because I always had conflicts with it in the summer. Okay. And so it’s been such a treat to come and see me. People that I would normally only ever see at the MTNA National Conference and to see how it is similar to and different from those conferences.
Amy: And I should mention that all three of us are from Indiana.
Kate: That’s right.
Amy: We’re all Hoosiers. We’re all Hoosier colleagues. Janna
Janna: I’m Janna Williamson and I have an independent paneo studio. In my home in the western suburbs of Chicago, which means that I have the immense privilege of living 20 minutes down the road from the NCKP conference. This is not my first one. I should also just say I have a YouTube channel and a blog as well. They’re all under my name, Janna Williamson. I have been, I honestly can’t remember how many I’ve been to. I did not come in 2019. I think I came for one day in 2017, and might have come for the full thing in 20 I honestly can’t remember, but I have been before, and there are a lot of Illinois people hanging around at this conference since it is close by. As well as a lot of people from all over the country and in fact the world,
Amy: yeah, you guys are definitely lucky not to have to travel so far.
Janna: Yes, but I did have to tell my family, though. I’m not at home for these three days, even though I was sleeping in my own bed.
Amy: I bet that is really tricky. Yes. I’m actually really surprised at how many people I’ve met here that are first time attendees, actually. As you guys said, a lot of people have attended MT& A but not NCKP, for whatever reasons. Is there anything in particular that you feel that has really made this conference extra special or unique?
Janna: I actually had a different conference experience this time because I have never been part of an exhibitor booth before, but Katie Fisher from Piano Safari invited me a few months ago, knowing that I live locally and that I might be an easy ask. She invited me to work in the booth, and so I, I helped in the booth and helped with their showcase this time, and that was a totally different and really fun conference experience. I got to talk to a lot of people who just came to the booth and asked questions and since it wasn’t my own product that I was selling, I felt very free to talk about how awesome they were, and I gotta say it’s much easier to sell for someone else than it is for yourself and I do, I love the Pianos for A curriculum.
Katie and I went to undergrad together. It was really great to talk with her and everybody else who was working at the booth. I went to fewer sessions than I normally would. And I, it’s interesting. I think if we talk about takeaways, I think I ended up in at least 50 percent of the sessions had to do with mental health. So maybe that says more about me in this particular moment, and I was not listening to as much about straight piano repertoire or pedagogy this time around. So, that must be my own personal mental state.
Amy: That’s a good thing. Maybe it was a nice little bit of a change of pace on what you normally do with the piano world.
Christina: I think that the programming was balanced for this conference. There was a lot, we all know actually it was a huge challenge to make choices every time block at this conference, but there was such a wealth of Every perspective I would want to hear, so there was a heavy emphasis on mental health, and there was some, obviously great repertoire, a great group lesson, content, and all of the things. I just really thought that the committee did a great job assembling a wide variety, so there’s really something for everyone.
I think because I have this whole podcast that’s built around being a friend to the profession, I really enjoyed just actually getting to meet my people here at the conference. It’s so crazy to I genuinely feel like I’m friends with all these people that I’ve never met or spoken to, and yet I actually got to share physical space with them this week, and that to walk around and be recognized more and more is just, it’s really special and very humbling.
Kate: This week, I was reflecting on what makes NCKP a different kind of conference than MTNA since I’ve been to MTNA several times and have never been to NCKP once. And I’ve heard people rave about NCKP and many people have called it MTNA on steroids. And I think that one obvious difference is that NCKP is specifically for piano and keyboard, and MTNA is an organization that has a lot of pianists and piano teachers in it, but it also is inclusive of all musicians, all music teachers of all disciplines.
And so when you are at a conference that is entirely focused on piano teaching keyboard, then you’re going to have a lot more of a feeling of community within just this component of music teaching and I’ve really enjoyed that and I really, I felt that the programming seemed to reflect that there were a lot of panels and a lot of co-presentations. There seemed to me to be fewer individual presentations, and the presentations tended to be somewhat shorter, and so there was a lot more opportunity.
And I also had the feeling that there were or I had the impression that there was a focus on storytelling and a focus on personal experience, and I noticed that the tracks they have a wonderful app that’s very interactive and so people were messaging each other, and there was a photo contest, and somehow by some fluke and also a certain amount of Personal lobbying, I won. And so it was a picture of Esther and me eating cake. So, of course, like, why, that’s super fun. And it just seemed it just seemed like people were really happy to be together, of course, in person after the last ones being online, but also just to talk about our experiences as pianists and piano teachers And sharing that.
Amy: Yeah. I agree with all those things said. I think Kate nailed it on the head that MTNA and NCKP are both fantastic conferences. They’re just a little bit different from each other. And NCKP definitely feels a little bit more intimate because there’s less people. And the space even that we’re in at the Westin here it’s all right here. MTNA is fun in that you sometimes get to travel to different locations and special spots. But we’re all together here, so we feel very yeah, just like we’re all friends. You’re constantly passing people in the hallway.
I’m a big proponent of less is more in conference land, which basically meaning you don’t have to do it all. You can maybe sit out some sessions and just really focus on the takeaways that you really want to take away from the conference and not feel overwhelmed. Is there any one or two things that you guys could just articulate? I just really want to remember this. I want to have this influence my teaching or maybe just a mindset change. Maybe it’s a new product or just an overall life-giving moment that you’ve had.
Christina: Sure. So, there are a few things I am trying to adapt to Amy’s mindset of less is more. That’s a concept I struggle with in most areas of life. But it’s so true because there is a real you have this propelling sense to make sure you do everything and see everything and hear everything and talk to everyone and not to miss a thing because you never know when the next life-changing session is going to appear, in front of you.
But at the same time. It’s really about the people, right? And I’ve been telling people this week it’s so funny because my husband’s been telling my kids Oh, mommy’s gonna go have fun with her teacher friends. And I’ve been very adamant that I’m going to work. This is for work. I’m presenting, and I’m, this is work, and yet I’m really having a lot of fun with my friends because, honestly, this is like plugging into your energy source so that we can go do the work.
And I was in this fantastic session about trying to identify your professional role in your professional desires, and it was brought up that, obviously we have direct influence. Those who are in our circle but our influence passes through passes through those people into the people in their circles of influence and on and on it goes we show up as our most authentic selves, it has this amazing ripple effect. In that same session, the presenters gave many examples. Of the fact that, like their teachers, they had seen a little part of them that they didn’t even realize was a part of them yet. And then later in life, they’ve been able to look back, and they were so thankful that their professors and their teachers had seen them for more than just a pianist. And that is something that means a lot to me. And it was so great to hear that again through this other lens of making sure. That our students just know that we that we see more than what they practice or don’t practice. So I’ll go with that.
Kate: And that is a really good tie-in to one of the things that I most appreciated about this conference, and that was the PEDx talks. They have, and that’s something that it makes it really different from MTNA. And the PEDx talks, obviously that’s a play on words from TEDx, and they are, Plenary sessions, right? There’s nothing that goes that’s scheduled against them. And for each session, there are four 20 minute talks and somebody goes up on stage for each of those and tells a story from their lives with slides without notes and TEDx style. And I found those. I found them really very moving, and I found them informative and engaging, and those are the stories that are going to stay with me after I go home, and combined with that are the many concerts that there were that the participants and colleagues of us performed. And so there were many opportunities to hear either very new music premiere type music that’s been written in the last. 10 years. Or works by underrepresented composers underplayed works by famous composers, and to have that performed by our colleagues. And not by some special guest who was like bust in and then played from the mountaintop down to us, and so it was just really, those were the two aspects of it that really made me.
Amy: The first night the piano stories live like I love having multiple people sharing music.
Kate: Yeah. And then they had 12, they had noontime concerts, and then they had 4 p. m. concerts as well. So they were scattered throughout the whole conference, which was pretty awesome.
Janna: I’ll just throw out that Vanessa Cornett may be the best presenter I’ve ever heard, especially her talk. She did masterfully in 25 minutes on the art of rest and ideas around rest and cultural implications was. It’s just so well crafted and so convicting, and if you see Vanessa Cornett’s name on anything, you get your body in that room, sit down, and listen to what she has to say. That’s my opinion.
Amy: I 100 percent agree. And Christina is dying over here because she is 100 percent agreeing.
Christina: You guys have to know that like Vanessa Cornett is my long time I don’t know. Piano teacher hero. I don’t know. That’s not really even it. My, but I, Janna’s right. If her name is attached to something, you go, you don’t miss it. And she’s just so thoughtful. She has this terrific book that I’ve talked about on my podcast called The Mindful Musician. It’s a really important book that we should all be familiar with. And she talked in her session. About like your unresumed self and, like all the things like we’re really good in our world about saying Oh, my degrees are from here and, my, I’ve done this role in this role and taught at this university and whatever. But those, those are like our resumed identities. And yet, it actually says very little about us. And really what makes us is all the stuff that, Yeah. Is not listed on paper.
Amy: Yeah, I felt very convicted, too, on that. As an Enneagram 3, who is, likes to achieve things and do things, it’s not so much for me about resumes, like listing what I’ve done and accomplished. I just enjoy doing and creating and, that idea of there are things to appreciate in life that aren’t so much about the things that you do or that you create.
Christina: Yeah, there was a lot of emphasis on the problems with self-care culture, and this is something that I talk about a lot, but I never have the right verbiage. What is wrong with self-care? But she had talked about the fact that she even Googled the phrase, why is my self-care not working, just to see what would happen. And the answers were like. You aren’t prioritizing your own self-care, and you need to assemble a self-care kit, and it just pushed more Weight back on us, and it’s, oh, I’m doing self-care wrong. I’m a broken person, and oh my goodness, It’s so awful. So anyway, she’s great.
Amy: Okay, so is there anything particularly surprising or unexpected that occurred this week in your experience
Kate: I have a personal story that I found surprising, and that was that this is the first conference I’ve gone to. Where I made arrangements to practice in the mornings, and then, so I skipped the morning part of the conference, thanks to my friend Janna, found a local place to practice, and so my Morning routine was relatively unbroken coming to the conference because one great irony of Piano conferences is that there really isn’t a place for people to practice Unless they’re about to perform and then they get a little bit of warm-up time But you know for us that’s an important part of our routine and I you know Personally, I’m in the middle of it’s not like I have a concert coming up, but I’m in the middle of working on stuff, and I didn’t want to lose the momentum that I’ve had to come to a piano conference and sit and listen to people talk about practicing. And it was, and so that for me was a validating experience, and it was surprising how big of a, Transformation that was for my whole experience at the conference, because although I was skipping out on many of the morning sessions, I was able to go and practice and take care of my own needs and that was like money in the bank. Then, I engaged with music in a way that was meaningful to me. Then, I was able to come and be fully present for the people that I was running into in the hall. Then, I attended the sessions and concerts. And so that really enhanced the whole experience for me.
Christina: One surprise of any large conference that’s always built-in is who’s going to be in the elevator when that door opens, and I actually had a really good round of elevator meetups this conference. So, let me see if I can remember. In addition to lots and lots of just Wonderful people and you can strike up just incredible conversations in those like 30 seconds you spend together in the elevators; it’s a gift of teachers, I think, that we could get to know each other very quickly. I also got to meet Jeremy Siskind in the elevator and got to have a lovely chat with him. I had a lovely chat with Marvin Blickenstaff coming down the elevator. I got to ride the elevator with Olga Kern last night we did not really have a conversation, , but I was, nose to nose with her, basically. So that was fun. And just, you never know. That’s the best part about being in physical presence with all of these people that you know and love and whose work you appreciate and use, and they’re real people. They’re just here.
Kate: And it gives a new meaning to the term elevator pitch.
Christina: Yes, it does.
Kate: You literally had many elevator rides to try out various. Yes. Conversation starters.
Christina: That’s exactly right. I’ve gotten really good at describing my podcast more succinctly, finally, which is something I’ve always struggled to do. In this conference, I think I finally started to figure it out.
Amy: If you guys had to do the whole thing over again, is there anything that you would go about differently?
Kate: I would probably Try not to eat so much. Because I ate dinners, everyone’s let’s go eat. That’s the big thing. And there are so many places to eat right around here. And then everybody would get their own thing. And then there was like twice as much. And people would then take it back. And so I think next time I would split things.
Amy: Yeah, I have two sets of leftovers that I brought out of our refrigerator.
Kate: I’m carrying around Greek food with me. Yeah, exactly. I’m like, okay, I’m gonna eat it cold for lunch, yeah.
Christina: That’s really funny. I’ll tell you something I may regret later is the fact that I went to the exhibit hall and on this last day and they Faber was clearing out all of their physical stock for 50 percent off and I wasn’t going to buy anything at the conference this year.
I was trying to put myself on a little spending freeze, but I was going to purchase a lot of music next week once my fall registration materials fees were paid by my students. And so then favors they’re giving things away for 50 percent off and I didn’t have my inventory with me, so I don’t even know if I bought the right things or not. It was definitely impulse buying that I try not to do but it’s very tempting, everyone. So I fell into the trap, but I’ll use it. I know. It’s fine.
Amy: So speaking of exhibit haul, is there a special way that you do exhibit hall? Are you like an in-and-out kind of person in ten minutes multiple times, or are you like a do-it-all-at-once kind of person?
Christina: Kate and I got to play a rousing game of what nimble, was it nimble fingers? What is it called? It’s one of Nicola Canton’s card games at Vibrant Music Teaching and we played a really competitive game of it. It was on Instagram. It’s quite entertaining. Kate beat me, by the way. Oh, man. But just barely, I will say.
Amy: She’s the piano prof.
Christina: She is. She is, guys. She knows her intervals. Let me tell you.
Kate: It was an interval game. It was a close game, though. It was a squeaker. It was a squeaker.
Christina: I was really sweating. I really was. No. If you’ve never been to a national conference, you can’t fully appreciate how great the exhibit hall is and even though this year’s was a little slow. Smaller than it has been in the past. It was still just full of some of my very favorite people. So I end up having to be very careful how many times I set foot in the exhibit hall doors because I tend to get really caught up talking to people and looking at all their cool stuff.
Amy: I kept getting a chuckle from her. I’m like, where have you been? Are you talking to people?
Christina: Amy would text me, and she’d ask if she was in the exhibit hall again.
Amy: I thought you were meeting me in this session. Where are you?
Christina: But as it’s so true that your conference experience is often like most strongly influenced by these conversations that you have with people. And Janna mentioned earlier that it’s so much easier to sell other people’s stuff. Like I. I just love seeing what people have created and seeing where the passions of their heart have led them and what they have invested in to produce for our profession. There’s something about that I just love, and I really enjoy talking to people about the work they’re passionate about and why they think this stuff needs to exist in the world. So it’s really fun.
Janna: So to get a little practical, I will just I have to say that I did not have a lot of spending money at my disposal, so I literally, I have never done this before, I have thought about things ahead of time, but I literally printed off a list of each of my students for this fall, and I wrote down anything that I might need, and then I put X’s by people who did not need anything, or that I could, I have a huge library at home. So I took time to organize my library and make the list up, and I’m proud to say, with the exception of maybe two or three books, I stuck to it. To the list.
All: Congratulations!
Janna: But I would have loved to have spent a lot more money.
Kate: What I like about the Exhibit Hall, you asked about if we go for one long time, and I tend to feel a little overwhelmed at the Exhibit Hall. So I’ll go in, 10 minutes, walk around, do one or 2 things, then I’ll leave and then another day I’ll go again. But what I enjoyed was getting to know the Piano Marvel app and really working with the people on that. Then I was at the RCM booth, and I got to know their new app, which was really cool. It’s also a sight-reading app. I’m currently looking at sight-reading resources for a video, so I was especially interested in that.
And then I tried this new Yamaha piano. Did you try that? It’s a Yamaha piano, that is. It’s a digital piano, but it hasn’t an acoustic keyboard. And it’s actually like a baby grand piano that’s been like. Cut off with a guillotine and it has wireless headphones that you can use or you can. Play it out loud. And it was so cool. And I sat there, and I played a little bit with the headphones on, and it was just really different from a regular digital piano. And it was quite similar to an acoustic piano, although it and the Yamaha did not pay me for this little spot. But I was just any way; you can cut all that out if you want. But yeah, I just enjoyed playing that and seeing, of course, Nicola’s games. Those were cool. And all the library of resources available.
Can I go back to something I would have done differently? It occurred to me when you were talking, Christina, about the importance of seeing people.
And I think that if I were doing this conference differently, my advice to people considering coming to conferences is mentally prepare myself for the fact that I’m going to be around people for basically the whole time and open myself up to that because it’s tiring and sometimes you feel the need to withdraw or retreat and so I think that if I were going to do it all over again, I would have spent more time between things sitting in the lobby rather than taking a nap in my room or something because then there would have been more, even more chance encounters because there is definitely the thing where you’re on your way somewhere, and you go 10 feet, and you taught you run into six people and that is a gift and to really embrace that.
Christina: Yeah, that’s really good. We all hit this point on Friday night where like I was trying to arrange dinner plans and everybody I talked to was like, Oh, my social batteries a little low. I might just lay low and I was definitely feeling it too. People don’t think I get this way, but I really do. I was pretty worn out, but I was also like, Guys, it’s our last night. Let’s rally right and push through that. You can sleep at home. But it is hard, and it’s okay, like I know so many people who took nice long naps during this week, and that’s part of it, too. It goes into Amy’s philosophy: less is more. You don’t have to be doing something every moment of the day. It’s okay. You’re still going to bring home a lot.
Kate: And there’s no right or wrong way to do it.
Christina: Yes.
Amy: I had a closing question, and it was to ask if there was any bit of advice. That would give to anyone on the fence, but I feel like everything that we have said today is exactly what would be something that would convince someone to come and attend. So, I hope the listeners have gleaned encouragement or just enjoyed hearing our breakout at this conference. Do you guys have any final words that you would like to share with the listeners today on your experience?
Christina: I would just say it’s really easy to feel like. Sometimes, you do not have the financial resources to do it, and that is just the truth. And we’ve all been in those positions. And so it sounds really fun that we’re all, here and having a great time. I know it’s hard when you’re not. But at the same time, think down the road. See what possibilities lie ahead. Don’t be so quick to dismiss the idea of putting aside money to come because it is a huge reinvestment in what we do and it’s, we talk a lot about how much fun we have, but it is incredibly enriching for the actual work that we do as well.
Amy: I think I was energized after the very first day. I was like, I could have gone home. That was good. I’d already gotten so much interaction and Enjoyment from that.
Kate: And I think if you’re on the fence about coming, and one of the reasons you’re on the fence is because maybe you’re feeling burned out or tired, and you don’t imagine that you want to take free time and go to a piano conference, I would recommend coming, sign up, come, and even if you’re feeling burned out, that there is so much here for you to recover and find that connection and then connect with the reason you’re doing it in the first place and find people who might even feel similarly to you and you can find support and refill your batteries and take it with you to your students at home.
Janna: 100%. Yeah, I’ll just echo those sentiments that what Christina said: there are literal finances, literal dollars in the account, and you should be wise with your spending and all of that, but I’m I think sometimes teachers don’t prioritize both professional development as well as things like instrument investment and those kinds of things. And it’s really important to remember that having the experiences and good quality materials actually enriches you to a point where that allows your job to be easier and more fulfilling and allows you to make more money, those kinds of things. It is worthwhile for your own investment to come to these things. And I think that’s a really important piece when you have the ability to do
Kate: and can I just say one additional thing? If you really aren’t able to come to a national conference, there are opportunities at the local level in many parts of the country. And so if you feel like you want a kind of mini version of a national conference, find your local teacher group, get involved, see if you can get involved in a virtual group. If you have nothing. Physically available and make those connections because it really is all about community. It’s about connection. It’s about Finding the love for our craft and sharing it with our students.
Janna: I would echo that 100 percent. So, if anybody is listening and doesn’t know where to start, they should just contact Amy because I’m sure she can help them find someone to contact for their local area, and if you just want to go to mtna.org or any or even NCKP look up things online. There are people around you, I am sure of it.
Amy: Yes, absolutely. I love knowing all the resources that are out there and connecting people to them. Absolutely, send me an email.
This has been so much fun, you guys. Yay! Thank you for being here with me.
And yeah, it’s time to go home. So sad. Yeah.
All: Thank you, Amy. Amy. That was fun. We love you.
Amy: Can you believe we got through that whole conversation with me sharing a little of my own thoughts? I actually didn’t even realize it in the moment, but on the way home, I looked at my driving buddy, Christina, and was like, wait a minute. I just realized that I was so focused during our recording on directing the conversation. I didn’t really share much of my own. I’m tacking on a few comments here at the end.
First of all, this was not my first time attending. I couldn’t remember for sure, so I enlisted the amazing search skills of my Google Photos app. By typing in the location Lombard, Illinois, I was able to recall every photo I’ve ever taken at NCKP. Apparently, it’s been three times. The first was in 2015, followed by 2019, and then 2023. Memories from 2015 include rooming with Joy Morin and her friend Susan Holcher. That was the event where the idea for the Piano Pantry blog was actually born.
That was also the year that the fire alarm went off at 5 am and we had to all evacuate outside. Does anyone else remember that? In 2019, a fun memory included a body gymnastics photo recreating the acronym NCKP with friends Joy, Susan, Janna Olson, and Melody Dean while waiting for a dinner table at Flat Top Grill.
If the photo contests were going on back in 2019, I think I would have had a good chance of winning with that one. 2019 was also the year I got to meet Nicola Canton for the first time of the Colorful Keys blog and, not soon after, Vibrant Music Teaching.
The biggest highlight for me this year was, hands down, the people. The blog and podcast, of course, have helped me get to know so many more of you. Christina and I were humbled by the amazing showing at our informal meetup. It’s one thing to say hello in passing in the hallways, but another to have even just a few moments to connect verbally and put online faces and names with voices and a human connection.
I took every opportunity I could to get snuggles with my friend Joy’s little girls, who conferenced really well with Mama, thanks to an amazing dad who came along and helped make that happen. Thank you, Paul. You rock.
The big takeaway that I also found particularly surprising and unexpected was how I took in the information. After years attending conferences, I really refined how I was capturing information almost to an art form. I even shared about it in episode 59 of the podcast.
While I learned a lot and took in a lot of amazing sessions, I was shocked when I realized how few notes I was actually taking. I really felt like I’ve hit a huge turning point in my career where I now have a beautiful overview and big picture of all that our profession encompasses.
I’m consuming in a way that confirms and reinforces what I already know. Don’t get me wrong, this is not saying that I have nothing to learn or know it all. It’s more of just this feeling of coming into yourself and having confidence in what you’re doing. It’s a really beautiful feeling. I could say so much more, but I’ve already kept you longer than normal today. So I’ll just say thank you, teachers, for all you give, not only to our students, but to each other. Let’s keep that going.
Today’s tiny tip was inspired by a teacher friend, Emily Susco, who, as she was stuffing her lunch receipt into a wallet following a lunch meal together at NCKP, told me I should do a thing on how to organize all of our conference receipts. The reality is, I said, as I mirrored her receipt stuffing action into my own wallet, I’m not sure I have a magic solution for that one.
Except as Amy can always come up with a bit of organizational advice. So here goes. I’ve shared here that I actually do keep hard-copy receipts of things for tax purposes. One thing that could be very helpful is to bring either a manila folder, recipe card holder or plastic envelope of some kind with you to a conference and unload your wallet of all the receipts at the end of the day.
This is something I do a lot when I’m on vacation, but the practice would work here as well. That way, they don’t continue to pile up day after day in that semi-folded state. If you’re more of a digital receipt person, following that same practice, at the end of the day, pull out all of your receipts and scan them using an app like Genius Scan. Designate a location in your digital workspace labeled with a tax year, whether it’s a folder in Google Drive or using a tagging system in Evernote to save that receipt. Be sure and be consistent with how you name the digital receipt file. I recommend starting with the year followed by the month, then what it was for, such as NCKP, or sorry, I should say such as 2023 07 for the month, underscore NCKP dinner number one, or something along those lines.
So I hope this gives you a little bit of an idea of how you might be able to keep track of all of your receipts at a conference without having a big pile at the end.
