MCTE Fall 2007 Conference Review

I hope everyone enjoyed the Fall 2007 MCTE Conference as much as I did. The theme this year was "Composing Communities: Creating and Connecting in the 21st Century," and I can't imagine a much more fitting description of where my head is at in my studies and my interests in teaching. This theme is largely concerned with using new technologies in teaching, of course, but it goes beyond this to include making connections: teacher to teacher connections, teacher to parent connections, public school teacher (practitioner) to college professor (theorist) connections, and educator to general public (including the media and the government) connections. Am I forgetting any? How about teacher to student connections? So many of the problems with education today is a communications disconnect. Every party concerned with education should be working together towards a common goal. Too often the parties are duplicating efforts, or worse, going in different directions.

P.S. I love how English people play with words in titles - for instance the double meaning of "Composing Communities" where "composing" is a verb acting on "communities" and "composing" is an adjective, modifying "communities."

The keynote speaker for the conference was: Kathleen Blake Yancey. Yancey is the President-Elect of the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English). I imagine there is an art to choosing your keynote speaker. Her philosophies have to match up pretty well with the theme of the conference. Of course, speakers will gear their talk towards the theme, but an effective address sets the stage for the rest of the conference, and this would be nearly impossible if there wasn't at least some overlap.

I've heard a number of splendid keynote addresses, including one in which Alfie Kohn led a rallying cry for all Michigan educators to stand up and refuse to give standardized tests to their students. Yancey's address has to rank in my top two or three all time. If you weren't there, there were two slide shows running during the talk. This was not a typical powerpoint lecture. The slides sometimes matched, but usually did not. Although the slides had to do with what Yancey was discussing, she seldom addressed the slides specifically. Usually, they added to her address, but did not stand in for her speaking.

I usually take notes during presentations, but in a lecture sort of way, so I can go back later and glean content for the lecture I may not have internalized. I started taking notes during Yancey's address in the same way, but ended up taking "notes to self" about various projects I am working on (not all of them strictly speaking having to do with my doctoral work). What I ended up with was a virtual to do list created from ideas that struck me while Yancey spoke. Some examples:

• "Remember to include a similar side story of mine about handwriting: when I told my great aunt that I was going to be teaching writing, she couldn't believe it because my handwriting was so poor."
• "Talk to Kevin about this concept for PAKZOO!"
• "How does this all relate to student activism???????"
• "Am I a digital immigrant or a digital native?"

I am also fascinated by how true to life her talk was. While she is speaking about how technologies have changed our educational practices, I am in the audience pulling up and bookmarking websites that she is referencing. This was real time, multimodal learning.

I am anxious to hear about your experiences at the conference as well. I want to compare notes on the sessions I went to and learn about the sessions you attended that I missed. I am especially interested in hearing about the talk entitled "Bridging Science and Language Arts Through Social Justice and Science Fiction." Jennifer Everts was one of my ENGL 4790 students. It sounds like the talk was right up our alley.

In class today, I want to address specifically two sessions I went to: “Teaching Multicultural Literature Through Technology” and "Implementing the New English Language Arts Content
Expectations: High School and Meaningful Standards.” I also want to discuss any of the sessions you found interesting or relevant to what we're working on in 4800. Please bring your thoughts and notes on the conference to class with you!

I hope I will keep seeing you at these conferences as you enter your teaching career. (Remember, you don't have to be a professor to present at MCTE or NCTE .) If you bookmark the following MCTE pages, you can keep up to date on what is happening in our state.

Michigan Council of Teachers of English
MCTE Conferences Page