Good Lookin' Leadership

Question: How many women does it take to pull together an all day conference for early childhood educators? Answer: The more-the-merrier! I'm not sure that I've captured everyone who contributed to making this day such a success, and if I was capable at Photoshop I'd piece these two images together somehow. Here's the power-house people who have been planning for months on end to make this day an amazing success for all in attendance. There was a track for administrators led by the 'other' Debbie. The teachers had a mammoth make-it-take-it in the ballroom. Who would be brave enough to lead a MI/TI for 200 teachers in a ballroom you ask? That would be the Energizer-Bunny Lisa.

One of the greatest things about going on far-flung travels is that you get to reconnect with others who are far-flung journey makers. Today was the first time I got to see the magic Ms. Lisa in action. What joy. She arrived with three or four human-sized piles of bins worth of glue guns, felt, markers, paper plates, pom-poms, crepe paper -- well maybe you get the idea. She knows of my book, "Tall Giraffe" and told me ahead of time that she had a PERFECT craft to share with the crowd. Here she is mid-sentence in her presentation to the throngs to share a perfect 'extension' idea for my picture book. You gotta know that just as soon as I post this to my blog, I'll be 'pinning' this image to Pinterest! LOL! The paper plates are held together with pipecleaners..... could be made all the cuter by having the children paint the plates yellow before they cut the shapes for the 'brown & spotted, polka-dotted' spot-dots verse. Get out your glue sticks. Ready. Set. GLUE......

When you put a couple hundred teachers for young children in a big room with lots of art materials and give them sufficient time, you are apt to come up with new & different brilliant ideas. Lisa had all sorts of paper bag hats and puppets. She'd given her awesome plug for "Tall Giraffe" which I had already introduced in the morning keynote......... so look what one brilliantly enterprising & creative teacher created:

A paper bag giraffe head!!! And here's one final close up of Lisa's paper plate creation: