“Simply a wonderful conference!”

by Karen Baggiano

Photo credit: Jake McGuire.com

“It’s the most wonderful convention I have attended in my 40 years of school work.” With its 200+ sessions, 14,000 square foot exhibit hall, and keynote luncheon, the 2007 Core Knowledge National Conference is guaranteed to motivate you. You may even find yourself sharing the thoughts of the 2006 conference participant who was quoted above. But it’s always the 2,000+ participants like you who add the spark to the Core Knowledge National Conference —Eureka! It’s the energy of learning!

Photo credit: WCTC

Traveling to Washington, D.C., is convenient and affordable. Roundtrip coach airfares from Minneapolis and Denver are around $300, from Arizona and Texas less than $400, and from Georgia and Florida right around $250. Reagan National Airport is a forty-minute shuttle ride to the conference hotel. Shuttle service and cabs are available without reservations. However, if you’d like to reserve a van or mini-bus to shuttle your group between airport and hotel for arrivals and departures, please contact Capitol Services, Inc. (CSI) at 800-368-3868 or at www.csi-dc.com. They have provided Core Knowledge National Conference participants with special group rates for airport ground service. Please watch our website www.coreknowledge.org/conference for updates.

Staying in Washington, D.C., has always been expensive, with normal nightly lodging rates at three and four-star hotels averaging $229–$399. However, special conference rates at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel are $159-$219 a night. One of the best reasons to stay at the Marriott Wardman Park is that you’re only an escalator or elevator ride away from the sessions and exhibit hall! Furthermore, the Metro station is steps away from the hotel, which makes sightseeing on Capitol Hill or the Mall on Saturday afternoon easy and inexpensive. You can make lodging reservations at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel online at http://cwp.marriott.com/wasdt/coreknowledge  or by calling 800-228-9290. Please make sure you refer to the 16th Core Knowledge National Conference when making your reservations over the phone.

Here are some of the reasons why you have to find the time to attend the 16th Core Knowledge National Conference in Washington, D.C. February 22-24, 2007!

• Get involved! Thursday Workshops, sixteen in all, have been added by popular demand. These no-cost workshops will be offered 9:00-11:00 am. Descriptions are available at our website. Pre-registration is required and easy to do online.
  

• Core Knowledge implementation sessions will be offered on Thursday afternoon. Core Knowledge staff and consultants will tackle the areas of time management, state standards, student assessment, and classroom resources.
  

• Friday promises to be packed with content from across the Core Knowledge spectrum. Education experts from some museums of the Smithsonian Institution will offer sessions on art, science, and history in the morning and specially designed tours of their museums in the afternoon. Space is limited to fifty people per tour and will cost $10 per person. Transportation will be provided.
  

• It wouldn’t be a Core Knowledge National Conference without teacher presentations on Saturday! Units written and used by teachers in Core Knowledge classrooms will be offered for every grade level. We hope to have around one hundred units for you to choose from. “So many units, too little time?” Nonsense. That’s why each participant is provided with a CD that contains all the units presented at the conference!
  

• Be inspired! Rafe Esquith, author of There Are No Shortcuts and winner of the National Medal of Arts in 2003, will be the keynote speaker at the luncheon on Friday, February 23. Rafe and his fifth graders from Hobart Boulevard Elementary School in Los Angeles were featured on the PBS series P.O.V.  His dedication to teaching and learning is an inspiration to us all.
  

• Be challenged! Alex Filippenko, a world renowned astronomer, will take you on a cosmic voyage during his workshop —a new offering in our Saturday schedule. A screening of Cosmic Voyage, the IMAX film produced by the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution will open the workshop. After you’ve traveled through millions of years and witnessed the collision of galaxies, the formation of the solar system, and the birth of the planet we call home, Alex will answer your questions and provide you with ideas for creating a cosmic voyage in your classroom.
  

• Be a hero! Heroes are “the most brave, or the most kind, or the most of anything that is good.” Dennis Denenberg will return with a Thursday workshop about character education and heroes. Friday sessions offered by the Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States and the Link Institute will challenge you to find the hero within yourself and the goodness that surrounds you and your students.

The list of conference partners grows with each new conference year. Scholastic, Inc., and Delta Education have strengthened their commitment to Core Knowledge through larger conference partnerships for 2007. The “Food for Thought” roundtables and tote bags will be better than ever. Badge holders aren’t just for holding name tags! They hold key cards, business cards, money, and the name of a new partner for 2007 —Teacher’s Pet Publishing. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Great Books Foundation are first-time partners whose sponsorships will make email kiosks at Cyberspace Central a reality once again. Checking e-mail has never been easier! Thanks to all our partners for sharing our commitment to teaching and learning.

Still not convinced you should attend the 16th Core Knowledge National Conference? Our website, www.coreknowledge.org/conference is updated with new information continually. And don’t forget about the Washington Monument cut-out that can be downloaded to your computer. This one’s not as large as the one you received in the conference brochure; it’s been sized to fit on 8½” x 11” paper. Here are a few classroom activities and topics for use with the Washington Monument cutout: make a one-dimensional shape into a 3-dimensional shape; what is an obelisk?; how many shapes can you find in an obelisk?; Washington, D.C., history in a minute.

Are you ready to register for the conference?

You can save $30 by registering before December 1, 2006.  Visit www.coreknowledge.org/conference for information on how to register using our new online registration system. Multiple registrations and payments by credit card, check, and purchase order are fast and simple! You can also fax or mail your registration and payment to the Core Knowledge Foundation.

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