This past Thursday, I attended my first ever KATE conference. Not being an early bird, I planned on arriving shortly before Clare Vanderpool was scheduled to begin her keynote so I could grab what was left of the continental breakfast they provided and find myself a seat. Well, since I have never driven to the hotel that it was held at on my own before, I got sufficiently lost on my way there and didn't get there until later than expected. Luckily, I snatched up some fruit and a yogurt cup right before one of the hotel workers took it all away. Grabbing a seat from along the wall, I squeezed in between two of my fellow PSTs. Shortly after, Mrs. Vanderpool began her keynote speech.
While I found her speech to be both funny and educating, it also caused me to realize that her book Moon Over Manifest focuses a great deal on historical things. I really do not like history, so my chances of ever reading this book are slim. Well, at least right now they are. That could always change. After she was finished with her speech, I headed to the breakout session that I think just about every other PST did: "Survivalism 101: Navigating the Jungle of an Unfamiliar School and Making it Through the Critical First 5 Years of Teaching."
As I entered the room along with Mr. Whitman and Ms. Elena, we were all handed a leaf to write on. On one side, we were to write why we were entering the profession of teaching; on the other, we were supposed to write three positive things about our (future) career. My three positives were so cliché that Ms. Elena said I should have written "A Lesson on Clichés" in the top corner of my leaf. Haha. Anyway, these two presenters from a high school located in a nearby town were very helpful and also enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge with us. We were provided with several templates, including one we can use to prepare for unexpected absences where we'll need a substitute! One of them also recommended something I probably would have done on my own anyway: color-coding everything. And I mean everything. Make assignments for one unit blue, ones for another green, etc. It seems insane, but I think it could work. We'll see if it works out for me.
Once we were finished with our survival unit, Mr. Whitman and I walked across the hall to our next session: "Poetry Out Loud." After sitting down for maybe a minute, a fellow PST came in and said there were cookies down the hall. This led to almost all of us leaving the session's room for cookies, which made us late, but it worked out because our presenter was still working on some technological issues when we returned anyway. While certain parts of this presentation gave me goosebumps because I now have a way to possibly get my students interested in poetry, it was mostly promoting a national poetry competition. I would like for some of my future students to participate in this competition, but I am unsure if I will have the opportunity to help them along if they do.
Lunch time! Off to sit with Dr. Mason, Mrs. Hart, Ms. Hollas and a couple of Dr. Mason's friends. While Dr. Mason chatted with her two colleagues, Mrs. Hart, Ms. Hollas and I chatted about the sessions we had attended and showed each other our free stuff we'd gotten from them. I learned that a session that Ms. Hollas went to was awesome and I plan on looking into the program (Write Source®) that was discussed in the session. Hooray for technology helping us teach students writing and grammar skills! As most of us finished eating, Jay Asher began his keynote after being introduced.
Jay Asher gave one of the most hilarious speeches I've heard in my life. I'm not even kidding, guys. This man made me laugh so much, but he also made me realize something. I kept telling myself I didn't want to read Thirteen Reasons Why anytime soon. Guess what? Now I do. And it's all thanks to Jay's speech and how he gave so much context about the book out to us. For example, he told us about the girl he knew that tried to commit suicide, the one that I believe inspired him to write this book in the first place. Once I get paid, I think I'm going to see if I can find the book somewhere online, or I might just go to the library and check it out. It's been a long time since I've checked out a book. I should do that.
Unfortunately, I missed the last part of Mr. Asher's keynote because I had to leave around 2:00PM to get to work. Anyone care to tell me what I missed? Also, any information that you're willing to share about Thursday's afternoon sessions and Friday's sessions would be appreciated as well!
Sam, I don't think you're going to have to worry about whether or not you are competent enough to judge a student for Poetry Out Loud. The program is collaborative, and, since it is a speaking competition, it will be rather obvious who is a great orator when it comes to poetry. The part you have to pull is simple: be excited! And, I know you have no problem doing that. If you're excited, your students will be excited about poetry.
ReplyDeleteAsher was fantastic! I loved when he compared the rejection process to dating. Overall, I agree with your sentiments and ideas!
PS: You should link to my blog where you mention me, and then I'll link back to yours.
Haha, I feel the exact same way about historical books -- boring! Probably why I suck so bad at history. :p I'm checking out her book only because I really liked her and her speech. If you can't find a cheap Thirteen Reasons Why copy, you can borrow mine. I've already read it and won't need it for awhile.
ReplyDeleteSam - your clichés were so great! :P
ReplyDeleteBut really, although quite a bit of what we say about teaching sounds cliché, I think that is because we all have a common core to our reasons for teaching (pun intended).
Aside from just shared standards, I think we are all in the profession, on some level, for similar reasons: all the ones you wrote on your leaf. And although they sound cliché because we all say them, they really are true for all of us, or else we wouldn't be going into this. :)
~Elena Nightingale
I did not get to go to ANY of the sessions that you attended which makes me very sad. However, I am excited by the "Poetry Out Loud" packet that I received and I plan to work it into my future classroom.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear that you had such a wonderful experience.
Sam,
ReplyDeleteI attended one on how to use smartphones effectively in the classroom, and then I attended Mason's presentation about how to get LGTBQ texts into the classroom. Mason's was really great because we got into a great discussion about how to teach 9/11. It's weird because by the time we are teachers, the kids will have no memory of what happened. But she did introduce some good strategies for talking about LGTBQ texts without people getting into fits of the giggles. The first session sounds awesome and I'm sad I missed it!
As for what you missed of Jay Asher's talk, he went on to show us different book covers from different countries, notes from his readers, and also pictures of his parents reactions when he sold his book. You should definitely read the book though, I promise it won't be cliché if you do :)
I attended one on using short short stories to teach the importance of word choice, ideas and content, and sentence fluency. It was fun fun fun.
ReplyDeleteBut, I'm very angry that nobody told me about the cookies. GRR!
I thought both keynotes were fun little treats to make the medicine go down. Talking with my CT about my experience today, I was finally able to depressurize. A lot of good advice in large doses can overload you.
As I've mentioned on my blog, I snagged a few extra handouts that I'll bring to class tomorrow for people to copy.