Bud the Teacher

    Almost forgot to tell you one thing about my conference experience.  During one of my sessions, I was talking about how great it was to have a discussion board as a place where students could go to talk about literature.  I said something like "I think that we need to create more opportunities for students to talk to one another." 
    With that, I just explained why I’m so fascinated by educational technologies right now.  They’re not about geekiness (although some of my teacher friends are beginning to consider that I am, or have been for quite some time, a geek).  They’re about opportunity.  A place to think and learn together.  Something much more fun than learning alone.  And, a great deal more authentic than writing for a teacher. 
    Anyway, just a reminder to myself that I like that line of thinking — I’m not covering content, I’m creating opportunities for interaction.      

    Jim is a kind and faithful reader, and he works to provide blogs to teachers in his area.  (Check out what he’s doing here.)  To my recent mention of attending the CLAS Conference, he comments:

I’d be interested in hearing what you think is a successful
conference for you. I think if I find one new thing I can use in my
professional life and can use it for several years, the conference is
successful. The second thing I look for is did I meet someone I can
work with or partner with in the future. The third is did someone make
me think about what I do in a new way. So networking, concepts, and
practical use are three things that make a conference successful for me.

 

Your opinion? I’ll be interested to see what you write when you get back.

Jim’s list of what makes a conference successful is a list that I can agree with.  I’d add one more.  His comment is a great way to kick off my report on what I learned and was thinking about this weekend.  The conference was a successful one — here are the highlights:
 
    I attended a session on art in the classroom conducted by a colleague of mine from the writing project.  Her session reminded me of the power of drawing and painting in the language arts classroom.  So many of my students respond to the world through their artwork — and I can barely scribble a stick figure.  Her session was helpful as a way to think about some ways to put artwork back into my classes. 
    Another session I attended was by Brannon Hertel and Ed Walsh, two teachers who are team planning for multiple reasons.  Their session was about some strategies that you can use to help maximize time efficiency, something that I could certainly use help with.  One tool that they use in their classroom is SchoolNotes.com, a free resource that they use to share lesson plans with their students and parents.  That’s a handy tool, and I like that they are planning a week out so that their students know that if they miss class, there’s somewhere they can go to begin catching up (or, in some cases, to get ahead.)  Their work shows another advantage of being more transparent in our practice, as I’ve been reading about here in the blogosphere.
    Transparency in practice seems more and more important to me, and it can be as simple as placing some lesson plans on the Internet.  (Of course, putting grades out there is an entirely different issue — one worth discussing later.) 
    Both of my sessions went well.  Both dealt with collaboration, which seemed to be a theme of this year’s conference for me.  The session on my work with a middle school teacher and the collaboration between our students in an online discussion board went exceptionally well.  The attendees were very interested in what we were doing and, more importantly, had some good suggestions and feedback for us.  At the end of the session, I mentioned blogging and I could see the increase in interest.  I think next year I’ll do a session on blogging — I don’t feel like I have that much knowledge yet — but I can help folks get started.
    The conference was definitely a success for me.  I did learn a thing or two, discovered some avenues for future partnerships, and reaffirmed that my current collaborations should continue.  Most importantly, I left excited about what it is that I do — teaching.    I feel inspired and excited to return to my school and hunker down for the last quarter of the year.  That might be the main reason for attending a spring conference — to be inspired and recharged.
    Barry Lane, a writer in Vermont, was one of the keynote speakers.  He spoke about needing humor in the classroom, and how real humor is humor that doesn’t tear people down.  One thing he said, and I don’t know if it was his idea or not, was that one "does not need to blow out others’ candles to make their own shine brighter."  I liked that approach very much.    I also liked a song that he performed about a teacher that made a difference for him — there’s a video of him performing it here.  I won’t lie — he made me cry.  But it also fired me up to get back to work. 
    So, too, did my attendance at the Celebration of Young Writers, an event held to honor the winners of various writing contests affiliated with CLAS.  I helped with this year’s High School Writing Contest, and it was a joy and an honor to hear the work of the amazing young writers in attendance. 
    Inspiration is what our students need.  But we need it, too.  That’s why I attend conferences — to learn, to collaborate, to discover, and to be inspired.  Jim, did I answer your question?