The Ed Camp program has had an approximate amount of 200 Ed Camps over the last two years. It has been an educated driven program for both students and teachers. More than 30 people had attended with the majority of them being teachers, there were about 5-10 students and most of them were seniors.
Rebecca Corcoran with last year being her first year participating at Ed Camp this year she says, “it was [her] first year picking a topic based on getting marginalized or new ESL students to participate in afterschool activities such as pep rallies and sporting events. Corcoran believes that it is important to participate and from the topic she had chosen, “[there were] different inputs from others on how to get students more involved.” When it was Corcoran’s first year, she had no idea what it would be like, but once she got to experience what Ed Camp was really all about and that it included several different topics that reflected on the education of her students, she knew she would definitely come back for the upcoming years.
This year was Thomas Snarsky’s first time attending the Ed Camp program and was recommended by Abbey Dick who is in charge of running this year’s Ed Camp. Snarsky enjoyed it mainly because of the idea of going into different rooms where you can get all sorts of feedback and different perspectives from anyone participating in the room. He says that, “as an algebra teacher, [he believes] the topic [he] had more interest in talking about was engaging more students to enjoy the subject and getting them to participate more often.” Snarsky was at first a bit nervous based on the fact that all the teachers and students would be so open during the discussions. Anyone was free to write on a piece of paper, placing it on the bulletin board about anything you wished to have a discussion about. After awhile, he wasn’t as nervous anymore because people were very friendly and it was easy to just jump into the conversations at any time. Snarsky enjoyed the event very much and would love to do it again, possibly in other areas besides Malden.
