Kyla Sweet, K-12 education and curriculum specialist for the Center for Canadian-American Studies at Western Washington University, and colleagues from the other federally-funded National Resource Center on Canada participated in the annual National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) conference.
Like so many things this year, the NCSS 2020 conference was “unprecedented” and virtual. Originally slated to take place in Washington, DC, celebrating 100 years of NCSS, it instead took place online December 4-6th, 2020. Kyla Sweet, Betsy Arntzen (University of Maine) and Amy Sotherden (SUNY Plattsburgh) so missed seeing educators and colleagues in person, sharing a hug and handing out maple candies–but over 3,000 educators attended the virtual conference and the learning still continued!
The theme of the conference was “Advancing Social Justice” and the group presented eight sessions, including two from Kyla Sweet: presentations on Podcasts, Indigenous Ally-ship in your school and for the National Council Geographic Education, Western Expansion. They even had a virtual booth in the “exhibition hall” where educators could check out resources, maps and other giveaways. One benefit of the virtual event is that presentations and booths stay up for conference attendees until April 2021, so if a teacher couldn’t make a presentation, they have five months to check everything out on the conference site. Presentations and booths are available here.
Kyla and the others hope to meet again in person in Minnesota in 2021, but in the interim, NCSS 2020 was a great chance to connect and reflect on the year together.