A Student Perspective of this summer’s annual Curriculum Mapping Institute

by Danielle Scoli as told to Elyse Hunter
 
Each summer hundreds of educators from around the globe come away from the annual Curriculum Mapping Institute with new ideas and tools to improve teaching in their schools.
 
So what did a 19-year-old college student take away from this year’s conference?
 
“It showed (me) that education is always improving,” said Danielle Scoli. “It showed (me) how dedicated superintendents, principals and teachers are.” 
 
Scoli, a sophomore at Bryant University in Rhode Island, attended the Park City conference for the first time this summer with her mother, Kathy Scoli, Curriculum Designers general manager and director of conferences.
 
Danielle said that aside from thoroughly enjoying the presenters, she gained a new view of teachers.
 
“The whole thing was an amazing experience. It’s incredibly interesting,” she said. “As a student you know a teacher, but you don’t know their views of their job … I was mostly surprised at the amount of traveling and the depths that people will take to attend the conference.”
 
One New Jersey educator became emotional as she spoke with Scoli about her experience at the conference.
 
“I met a woman who cried talking about these people and how amazing it was,” Scoli said. “She was so excited and really put in an investment – her own money – to attend.”  “She was so excited to be at the conference and was   able to attend by funding her own way there.”
 
It was eye-opening to see how much teachers and administrators care about education and want to learn and improve, she said. One of the topics that struck her as something that would really make a difference in the classroom was technology use.
 
“If teachers are up-to-date in technology that would help a lot, because they’d relate to their students’ lives – not just in school but their daily lives,” Scoli said. "Because they can relate to students on another level, not just in the classroom."
 
For many years Scoli dreamed of being a teacher, and although she is now contemplating studying business she can see herself teaching in the future. If she does become a teacher, will she attend the annual Curriculum Designers Institute again?
 
“Absolutely. I would go every time,” she said.