The 2018 Annual REEA Conference was held in San Diego, California from June 21 to June 25. AREEA Secretary and Treasurer Alicia White and former president Chuck Robertson both attended and shared their thoughts on the annual event.  Aside from the 2018 event, Chuck has attended the Annual REA Conference in Denver in 2016 and in Miami in 2017. Alicia could be best-described as a REEA veteran. She’s been attending conferences since 2006 and has visited San Diego, Miami, Portland, San Antonio, TX, Los Vegas, NV, Lexington, KY, Ames, IA, and the UCONN Campus in Connecticut.

The conference included five general sessions that was attended by everyone: “Memory Improvement” with Ron White, “The Power of Your Voice” with Karel Murray, “Collaboratively Being Your Authentic Self” with Jared James, “Tame Your Brain Game” with Jessica Rector, “REAA Talks” and the Real Estate Commissioner’s Update Panel Session, which was chaired by Alabama’s own Ryan Adair. In this session, several regulators from different states answered questions from attendees about the state of education, testing and schools.

There were also several panels and breakout sessions.

“School Owners Panel” with various panelists. This panel discussed the process of creating, running and selling a real estate school.

“T-3 Tech Tools for Trainers” with Jman Maneiro. Jman is a tech guru that covers tech at every conference. Chuck believes he has some of the best and most up-to-date tech for the classroom and instructional prep.

“Social Media Story-Telling” with Joe Sinnona. This session covered using Youtube, Pinterest, Twitter and other forms of social media to illustrate your points in your classroom lectures.

“Creating Synergy in the Classroom” with Evan Fuchs. This session explained how to motivate students to engage and learn from each other.

“Four Reasons Why Live Online Education Will Finally Change the Marketplace” with Toby Schifsky and Melissa Kleeman-Moy. This session covered the challenges of combining live instruction with live instruction online and how to make it effective for all attendees.

“ARELLO compliant webinar” with Mike Matoush and Jill Malloy. This session discussed strategies to make webinars ARELLO compliant and what types of webinars do not require ARELLO approval.

Alicia and Chuck were asked to share their top three takeaways from the conference. What did they learn that they felt could be used immediately in the classroom?

Chuck reported that he feels tech is always helpful, but not just for tech’s sake.  He says, “The tech we learned was to help make the presentation more interesting and MEMORABLE… to make an impression on the student so that they will remember and assimilate the information.”

The idea of classroom synergy also made an impression on Chuck. “Classroom synergy, although it wasn’t entirely new, they went into much greater depth and showed how getting the students to interact with each other could improve the learning experience.”

Chuck also picked up some “Words of Wisdom” that were sprinkled throughout the presentations: “Money is scalable, time is not.” “Real is better than perfect.” “Make yourself vulnerable to put students at ease” and others.

Alica was most impressed the networking opportunities. She spent time meeting the education directors, regulators, school owners, publishers and other instructors. “Everyone in attendance is related to real estate education,” Alicia shared.

When asked what was her favorite part of attending the conference, Alicia wrote, “I liked the location. San Diego is always a good conference venue.  This year I looked forward to the keynote speakers and some specific topics. As always the networking was good as well.” Chuck shared that “The best part is interacting with other instructors during the sessions and during breaks and social events.  We would talk about what we learned, what was going on in our respective state and what is going on in the industry in general. I learned a lot and I have contacts all over the US, even in Hawaii now.”

Both were asked if he or she felt it was important for other instructors to attend the Annual REEA Conference. Chuck commented, “I would encourage any instructor who can, to go to the conference.  It will change the way you look at your instructing and give you new tools to learn to be a better teacher.”  Alicia added, “There are some pluses to attending the conference. You get to meet an understand what other instructors are doing and what works for them.  If you wish to travel and train, you get to meet education directors and regulators who can hire you for training. You also get to meet the major book publishers for real estate education and get to take home free books and training tools.”

The 2019 REEA Conference will held in Austin, Texas from June 29 – July 1, 2019 at the Hilton in Austin at 500 East 4^th Street. The rate is $179 a night at the time of this report.

In conclusion, Chuck and Alicia both feel that every Alabama instructor should attend in possible. Chuck went on the elaborate, “I have attended three conferences so far and have gained much and they were worth every penny.  If several people want to go, we may be able to do some things to cut the costs.  I would like for us to have a large group to represent AREEA next year.”