Two Chicago teachers who recently received Golden Apple Awards for their innovative teaching practices will be the keynote speakers at the 2018 Beginning Teacher Conference at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign.

Hosted by the College of Education and the Illinois New Teacher Collaborative, the conference is geared toward pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade educators statewide, regardless of where they earned their degrees or the content area they teach. Beginning teachers are provided with practical strategies they can put to use in their own classrooms.

Keynote speakers will be Fitzgerald Crame, who teaches language arts, math, science, and other subjects to fourth- through eighth-graders at the Thomas Edison Regional Gifted Center in Chicago; and Daneal Silvers, a kindergarten teacher at the same school. Crame and Silvers are the 2017 and 2018 recipients, respectively, of the Golden Apple Award.

The theme of their joint presentation, to be given over lunch on June 27, will be “Who Wants to be a Teacher?”

Educators who attend the conference, which has a theme this year of "Whole Child, Whole Teacher, Whole Community," can earn hours to satisfy their annual professional development requirements.

Learn more about the conference, including how to register online, via an Illinois News Bureau article.