Down To Work

Ok, so lest those of you who read yesterday's post think that I'm simply taking a four-day weekend, today's blog should prove you wrong!

The first thing you need to know is that last night we had some heavy winds, and today the temperature didn't get out of the mid-50s. Sure, it's still warmer than what we have back home in Northwest Indiana, but it should make you all happy that I'm not going to enjoy summer weather!

Today's events began at 9:30 with the National Writing Project's Annual Meeting. This is when all of the sites of the NWP gather and hear from the President, Board of Directors, and the Inverness research people who study the NWP about what has happened in the past year and where we are going. This is my second year attending, but it feels like a big pep rally. For instance, the Inverness people, whom you would think would be boring and give stat after stat, put it all in economic terms. Turns out educators are capitalists in education because we make investments in our students. So then he had us look at the various kinds of capital we develop. Very interesting.

After he spoke, the President of the National Writing Project's President, Sharon Washington, spoke about how writing and learning are connected. Her memorable anecdote involved her being the only black person at a small dinner gathering, and one of the other adults' child asked her if she was as colored all over as she was on her face! She used it as an example of how we sometimes stifle inquiry as we get older, and writing should be a way to change that trend.

The final speaker was Delores Perez, who spoke about living near the Texas-Mexico border all of her life and realizing in her first year that her ability to communicate in two languages was hampered by the status quo at the time. What has stuck with (and I'm paraphrasing here, so Ms. Perez, forgive me if I'm wrong--leave a comment if you read this!) is that students should learn English, but never at the expense of their home language, their first language, or their culture.

I felt very uplifted as an educator after that meeting. Though I only teach a couple of courses where writing is a core component, it made me realize that what I do in all of my classes is based on the premise that writing is thinking on paper, and therefore, I naturally incorporate writing.

After the meeting, I had about an hour and a half before going to a workshop. I spent that time taking some pictures of the Alamo and the local area. I will post some pictures later on tonight. The Alamo is an interesting artifact, especially since it lies in the middle of the city!

This afternoon I attended a workshop on making a writing project site's presence on the web be a tool for recruitment. Not only was it very informative, but as always, it spurred several ideas for future work with the Northwest Indiana Writing Project.

I then spent the next hour and a half browsing the exhibitor's stations in the main convention hall. About 100 publishers and other educational companies come and showcase their wares. I picked up some free items (nothing too spectacular, but things that might help down the line), and talked with some people who truly care about education (as well as making a dollar).

This post is being written in the little bit of down time that I have before going to the annual Talkie Dinner. I'll be dining with several people on a listserv for English teachers, and the NCTE conference is a way for us to all meet up face to face for a meal. The crowd will be smaller this year due to the economy, but the spirit will surely be alive. I will have pictures of that later on tonight or tomorrow.

Tomorrow is another full day, starting at 8 AM. Hopefully, though, I'll be done by 5 PM, and then I can spend a little bit of time relaxing before the trek home on Sunday. I'm thinking of attending Mass at this old Catholic church around the corner.

Pictures to come tonight!