If you’re a teacher looking for useful sessions that will immediately improve your classroom, you might wonder, “Is the NAGC conference worth the cost?” (Now, I’m talking about the National Association for Gifted Children, not the other NAGCs!).
Now, I haven’t attended NAGC’s conference in years, so perhaps things have dramatically changed. But, in my experience, NAGC was strangely different from the many other conferences I attended. That’s because NAGC is an organization for academics so the conference skews towards academia – even though most attendees are teachers.
If you’re a teacher, look to a state or local conference designed by and for people like yourself. NAGC’s conference isn’t worth the cost… unless you’re into academia.
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The Leadership Doesn’t Match The Audience
According to NAGC’s stats from 2019, 79% of NAGC’s attendees worked at school districts while 12% were academics. The leadership should reflect that.
But, look at NAGC’s board and you’ll see a pretty obvious problem: it’s packed with PhDs. An organization run by academics leads to a conference for academics. You can see this in action by browsing the board’s minutes. Note how often NAGC’s academic journal is on the agenda and how rarely classroom teachers appear as a topic.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with having an organization or an event for academics! The problem is, when most of the attendees are teachers working for school districts, then the event is paid for by teachers and school districts. It should be planned for this audience.
NAGC’s Call for Proposals!
My first NAGC conference cost me well over a $1000. I expected to see the best of the best! You’d think that a national conference would pull its speakers from the smaller conferences. It would be so easy! Ask state conferences for their most popular sessions, invite those speakers, give ’em a free ticket, and, you’ve got yourself an amazing event! All the best speakers in the country at one, convenient conference!
But, because NAGC is an organization of academics, their call for proposals is biased towards academics. Now, I don’t think they do this on purpose. It’s just the consequence of such limited voices in their leadership.
Back when I used to apply, NAGC’s proposal process seemed suspiciously biased towards people who write about teaching rather than people who, you know, teach.
- Session proposals are entirely written. Yes, you write about how good your talk is going to be. This benefits people who often write about their topic – and that’s not teachers! Written proposals also hide whether someone is, you know, a good speaker or not. This leads to sessions that look impressive in the session guide, but are awful in person. I walked out of more sessions at NAGC events than any other conferences I’ve been to.
- You aren’t allowed to put your name in your session proposal! To pick good speakers, don’t you kinda need to know who will be giving the presentation? You have to say, “Oh, this person is an amazing speaker!” or “Oh heck no!! This person is always so bad!” Hiding people’s identities protects bad presenters. And that’s unfair to the attendees.
- Proposals are due in January for a conference in November. That’s ten months in advance. It’s only two months after the previous event ended. Who has well-written submissions ready so far in advance? Yep! Folks who are already spending lots of time writing about their topic. (Again, not teachers.)
- Random people choose the sessions. It’s not some elite team of experts doing the picking. It’s whoever will agree to do it! Heck, I judged submissions back in my third year of teaching! What did I know about picking sessions? I’m sure I added to the very problem I’m writing about! I’m sure I picked academics because their paragraphs sounded so very fancy.
When I’d bring this up, it all seemed fair to the people in charge. Why? Well, it mirrors how their papers are submitted to academic journals. But, an event for teachers should not be treated like an academic journal, right?
NAGC Membership
Now, I’m certainly not the only person who’s been turned off by NAGC’s focus on academia. For a national organization, its membership is tiny!! In 2021, NAGC had just 2,995 people. If you read those minutes, it appears that 2021 was a good year for membership! Yikes. For context there are 13,000 public school districts in the US alone.
NACG’s membership problem has the same cause as its lackluster conference. The benefits appeal to academics, not teachers. You get access to journals and newsletters and the right to vote for the board 😴 I was a member for one year and one year only. The membership benefits didn’t help me as a teacher.
What To Do Instead?
Honestly, I think the best way to get better at teaching is to skip the conferences and just watch great teachers at work. This is a big reason why I stopped speaking at events altogether. Listening to conference talks is just not an effective way to become a better teacher.
But, if you really want to go to a conference, look for smaller, local events that are run by folks who deal with the same problems you deal with. My favorite education event has always been the local conference that I went to as a teacher. It’s highly connected to the local community, only takes up a morning, includes lunch in the price (yes!), and is entirely run by people who work at nearby school districts. This kind of event meets the needs of its attendees.