First of all, I traveled with my three colleagues. Yep, the entire math department from my little school was in attendance. I didn't think it was a big deal until person after person commented along the lines of "You brought people with you?! How did you do that? I mention twitter math camp and I just get an eye roll." I don't have a good answer. Full disclosure, it was only a four hour drive and our school covered expenses . . . but still. My co-workers gave up five days of summer to go to this "crazy nerd camp", and they all left saying it was the best conference ever. I am excited for all the in-house conversations that will result from this shared experience.
See what a good little MTBoS evangelist I am?
Presenting! This being my second year to attend TMC, I felt like I wanted to contribute by helping with/leading a session. TMC can't exist without people chipping in, right? Problem: I didn't feel like I had anything to share that I haven't learned from others in attendance. I ended up teaming with Jasmine Walker to share about coding projects we'd done in our classrooms, inspired by a "my favorite" she'd shared at TMC13. We spent a lot of time prepping for that session and it felt good to contribute, even in a small way.
Another advantage to this (again, my second) TMC is that there were more familiar faces. The feeling was family-reunion-y, in the best way possible. There were also people I knew but I'd never met. We were oddly half-friends and half-strangers. Now full-friends.
I met a few people who recognized me and thanked me for something I'd shared on my blog. (WHAT?!) They might as well have handed me a million bucks. Appreciation is currency around here. I want to remember to be more generous in saying my thank yous to the many who share so freely.
All this and I haven't even talked about the sessions and how they will affect my teaching this year. There are so many things to write about! And here I just talked about the experience, because that's what first came to mind.
What we have here is unique, for sure.