WACA Words November

​Hello everyone,
I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.  I love the family getting together and having the amazing meal.  But… I also love the left-overs.  The turkey casseroles, the turkey and cranberry sandwiches, the stuffing waffles,… (yep, that’s right, stuffing waffles!)
 
Well, as you begin your march toward the end of the calendar year, and you usher in the holidays, I have a few more WACA items to send your way:
 
1) Don’t forget!  If you want to nominate someone for the WACA Hall of Fame, you need to do so by December 1st.

• The nomination form can be found on our website, wacaonline.org.
• The nomination pool is pretty low right now; we could use your great suggestion for a person to recognize for their leading role in activities in our state.

 
2)Our program coordinator, Tammy Caldwell, just sent the board a reminder message:   start thinking about presenters for the WACA Conference in March!

• Each year, we have several rounds of 50-minute presentations.  We also have a couple of rounds of 10-minute Meet the Pros.  The 50 minute sessions allow us to go into depth on a topic or program or activity.  The Meet the Pros sessions are usually a nice summary, or a “snapshot” of our topic. 
• The Presenter applications are available on the website, wacaonline.org.
• Our conference theme this year is Come One, Come All to the Greatest Show on Earth.  As we think about the activities at our school, they seem to fall into the categories of Personal Growth, Event Planning, and Culture Building… kind of a three ring circus of activities!  What do you do at school that fits into one or more of these three rings?  Present it!
• What do you do at your school that you are proud of?  Present it!
• Many of us are familiar with TPEP evaluations.  How does your activity match up with one or more of the 8 TPEP elements?  Your WACA colleagues would be interested (… and so would your administrators).  Present it!
• It doesn’t need to seem earth-shaking!  For example, I’ve done leadership camp for a couple of decades.  But in the last few years, I have been intrigued by infusing more camp strategies into my non-leadership courses, and using these strategies to support school-wide initiatives like Character Strong.  So I presented a session on ways to use webbing loops in my freshman science classes for ice-breaking, team-building, and lab procedures.  I presented a session on how to use “manipulatives” like “thumball”, scrabble tiles, webbing loops, and Jenga games to generate class discussions and reviews.  Again, nothing earth-shaking; but if a few people leave my sessions with an idea or two they want to use, then the session is a success!  Give it a try, won’t you?
• As always, if you have an idea or question that you want to discuss, please email me, and we’ll chat.  ;-)

 
All right, that’s enough for now.  I’ll send some more information after our January Board Meeting.  Until then, have a wonderful holiday, my friends.  May health and happiness, love and laughter be yours.
jb