TakingITGlobal

I am relatively new to the teaching profession. I graduated with my degree in the spring of 2020, which some might recall was an unprecedented time. My first year of teaching was at a small rural school that did not have access to Connected North (I was unaware that such a program existed at the time). Field trips were impossible, guest presenters weren't permitted, and parents could no longer volunteer in classrooms. I spent that year trying to schedule interactive interview sessions with professionals or presenters, but the options I had for whom I could approach were limited by the scope of my connections. If they agreed to a Google Meet session with us, I was only able to compensate them with humble gratitude for their volunteer time. In contrast, my second year of teaching (now at EES) included a deluge of possible interactions. We were still following COVID-19 restrictions, but Connected North offered hands-on, interactive learning experiences from a massive catalogue of options where the professionals are compensated for their work with our classes. In addition to Connected North's professional knowledge, many of the sessions came with supplies provided meaning that I was not spending my classroom budget on supplies. It still seems too good to be true! That session with Rousseau-Nepton was not the first session I had booked with Connected North, but it was the one I most anticipated and was therefore a driving factor in my curiosity to request other sessions earlier in the school year. Within my first week of knowing about the program, I created a wish list of sessions that seemed relevant to the classes I was teaching. As the list kept getting longer and longer, I remember asking an experienced colleague, "Is there a limit on how many Connected North sessions we can book?" She giggled at me, "There is no such thing as too many sessions, in my opinion!" C o n n e c t e d N o r t h i n O u r C l a s s r o o m Ailen White - Connected North in Our Classroom 47

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