Do you know why students in school district across New Jersey have a long weekend in early November? It’s so teachers can attend the annual New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) Teacher Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
“What’s so important about the teacher convention is that it gives teachers an opportunity to have a break from their daily school schedule and have a place where teachers can go and learn and grow and bring new things back to the classroom to help their students.” Erin Amicucci said. She’s a fifth-grade teacher at Patrick M. Villano School.
The convention hosts hundreds of workshops and activities to help teachers learn new skills.
“The fact that the teacher convention includes the entire teacher community is so important because it gives us the opportunity to work with other teachers and learn from other teachers and share all the wonderful strategies, tips, and tricks that are happening in education in the state of New Jersey,” Amicucci added.
According to the NJEA’s website, Malala Yousafzai was a key speaker at the convention. When she was 11, she wrote a blog without her name about life in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Yousafzai wrote about how girls were not allowed to go to school. When she was 15, she was shot for speaking by the Taliban, a group of people who have tried to control parts Afghanistan. Yousafzai went to the United Kingdom and had many surgeries to get better. After she recovered, she started the Malala Fund to help girls go to school. A year later, she won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping education and equality.
