Vegas!

I had the amazing opportunity to go to the Teachers Pay Teachers Conference in Vegas this year. I'm a fairly new seller with a small store and going to the conference alone was WAY outside my comfort zone. 

I'm linking up with The Elementary Entourage to share my top 5 take aways from the conference. 

Teachers Pay Teachers is made up a team of good people who put education first. I was amazed to find out that every TPT staff member spends several full days a year in classrooms helping teachers. This site is truly about transforming education across the world. Here's my "birthday buddy" Amy from TPT. I found out we share the same birthday!

The successful sellers on TPT work really hard to be successful. I was in awe at how willing they are to pay it forward. This is not a "get rich quick" scheme. The successful sellers are successful because they put long hours in creating high quality products that help teachers. I was excited to meet the infamous Deanna Jump who was incredibly sweet and took the time to meet all the "star-struck" teachers. 

Collaboration is key. Whether you're thinking about it from the perspective of a teacher-author on TPT or as a teacher in the classroom, we really do go further when we work together. I loved meeting teachers from all over the country and swapping ideas. Hearing other teachers' ideas always gets me fired up for my own classroom. 

It's good to get out of your comfort zone. I've been a seller on TPT for less than a year and my store is teeny tiny. I'm an outgoing introvert. I can be outgoing once I get to know you, but putting me in a room full of strangers makes my insides shaky. So how about a room full of 1,000 strangers? Talk about being outside of my comfort zone! It felt really good to conquer that fear and come out on the other side with new friendships and a lot of new knowledge. Here's a picture from the giant blogger meet-up. 

I've had a serious George Clooney crush since the ER days. It's a long running joke with my husband that George is my other dream man. So when I toured Madame Toussaud's with some new TPT friends, I had to share this picture with the hubby. Turns out wax George Clooney is almost as good as the real thing : )

Head on over to Elementary Entourage to check out some other teachers' Vegas experiences.