KATE conference: A really tought post to write.

I've left this post down to the wire, not because I am procrastinating, but because I'm not sure where to start. I feel as though I've been suffering from conference overload in a way that is at once frightening and good. As I was commenting to a fellow student in my PST course, I've gone over and over my semester plan assignment updating it to incorporate some of the awesome and "head-slappingly" good lessons and strategies shared by the presenters.



But, of course, I must start with how extremely awesome it was for me as an aspiring writer and future educator to hear both Newbury Award Winner, Claire Vanderpool, and Bestselling author, Jay Asher, speak on the first day of the conference.


Ms. Vanderpool affirmed my suspicion that I should push Moon Over Manifest up higher on my re-reading list, and brought to life some of the great issues faced by writers when undertaking a project. Mr. Asher was a humorous speaker who engaged his audience in a way I found inspiring. Likewise, I was thrilled to learn he holds The Monster At the End of This Book in as high esteem as I do. I now want to dig through my boxes and boxes of old children's books to find my copy starring lovable Grover to incorporate in a lesson about a writer working to build suspense while driving the reader on to a satisfying conclusion.


But those were just the keynote speakers...


I received marvelous advice and extremely helpful handouts on surviving a first year as a teacher. I learned how to incorporate fun and engaging writing activities that are challenging and incorporate thinking skills that serve the development of Voice, Word Choice, and Ideas & Content. Dr. Mason, gave a great talk on LGBTQ literature in the classroom and again, I found myself wishing I still had spare time to just devour more than just a few chapters from textbooks each week.


One of the more challenging and admittedly scary realizations that came out of this conference was the lack of emphasis placed on non-fiction writing and literature. I was moribund for a good two hours when I went home Thrusday night to find I had not used one single non-fiction text in my semester plan. A complete tool to fiction and poetry, I have scoured my memory for engaging, age-appropriate content that serves common core standards and might serve as a spring board for a spring-semester research project.


Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, might be an interesting non-fiction graphic novel that serves my over-reaching questions about conformity and rebellion in society. The two books are written from the point of view of a girl who was in her early teens during the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s.

I've begun toying with using another small unit centered around Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and the letter from the clergymen calling for him to tone down his non-violent protests could also help to stress organization and sentence fluency as well as word choice and ideas and content. This lesson could immediately follow the first half of the creative writing project I've devised in response to Pam Bachorz's Candor. Dr. King's letter of rebuttal could then help to inspire the second half of the creative project that calls for students to make an underground video or tape recording for broadcast to the fictional citizens of Candor.


Finally--and I'm not saying there wasn't a tone more I learned and still need to digest--I learned that I have been committing the repeated mistake of introducing the texts I teach instead of simply letting the students dive right in and digest the text. A worthwhile text is perfectly capable of speaking for itself without a teacher's lecture taking time to turn kids off with a long boring lecture at the very beginning of reading. 

I need to be mindful of the fact that the most vital minutes of class are the earliest 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes. If I waste time talking, my students will be more likely to tune out and turn off before we've even begun reading. (I know, duh, right?)


Anyway, I'm holding my head over the now 12 pages of legal sheets filled with my scrawled notes revising my semester hand. Brewing the coffee, preparing to go at it all with a sledge-hammer and a chainsaw.


I'm glad I attended KATE, and hope to have more opportunities to mingle and mix with such helpful and innovative teachers from surrounding communities.


Hope everyone else had as much fun as I did. I've snagged a lot of handouts, so I'm willing to copy anybody anything I have that they find they might be able to use in their own placements.