And, then, today, my session with my colleagues from Baltimore also felt pretty good. We presented about how Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has transformed our curriculum, and we shared how we teach her work in the 9th grade (The Thing Around Your Neck) and the 12th grade (Americanah). My colleague Amber Phelps, who is in her 6th year of teaching after joining our department as a TFA core member, submitted our team's proposal and coordinated the presentation, and she introduced some of our department's thinking in teaching Adichie. I went next, discussing formative and summative assessments we use in the 9th grade with The Thing Around Your Neck. Lena Tashjian, who has been my colleague for 12 or 13 years at this point, spoke about supplemental materials and videos associated with her teaching of Americanah, to videos about the politics of hair to supplemental readings like "Whitening the Resume." Finishing out was Jamie Massey, who has been my colleague for almost ten years now, and she spoke about formative and summative assessments associated with her unit surrounding Americanah. Our materials are here -- https://goo.gl/vYtySH -- if you want to check them out.
Afterwards, an audience member came up to us and asked us how our department works like it does, and it's a difficult question to answer. A lot of us were hired in the very early 2000s right out of college, and we have kind of grown up together, working alongside each other for over a decade. As others have been hired, we have done our best to bring them into the fold. We all read a lot, we all communicate a lot. We were lucky to have been blessed with really good department heads who fostered a sense of ownership of our curriculum for us. Our principals have been supportive of our efforts to continually revise our curriculum based upon what is working for our students. It's sort of a perfect confluence of a whole bunch of factors. I feel lucky all the time.Back to NCTE: I worked four sessions at the Folger Booth, and wasn't able to get away to see many sessions for myself. I learned something new from a comic book session I saw on Friday morning, and another one about world literature that I sat in for today after our session; for that one, one of the speakers spoke eloquently about the difference between ethnic literature and world literature. The Folger Flash Mob of Macbeth was a lot of fun, and I was lucky enough to be talked into attending the annual Thanksgiving dinner, which I'd never known about before.
I leave about $1000 out of pocket, which is kind of a crazy cost when you think about it -- $800 for the hotel room (split), $320 for plane ticket, $100+ for ubers and shuttles, and quite a bit for meals and a bit more for materials. I didn't pay for registration, as I was exhibiting for the Folger, but imagine how much it would have cost then -- another nearly $300 on top of that. I've been making the NCTE a yearly event, but as I head back, exhausted and without any money, I wonder about it. I love sharing things with other teachers and the energy that comes with being around a lot of other teachers who care and think a lot, and will definitely be in Atlanta next year, but I do wonder how long I can keep it up. Or maybe I'm just feeling extra exhausted and broke at the moment. I'm disappointed that NCTE doesn't have a graduated cost for admission to the conference, and more opportunities for younger teachers, and just a less expensive event; it becomes an equity issue when some districts pay while other teachers come straight out of pocket.
from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/1I7tWy1 Leaving NCTE Conference & Recapping Our Last Full Day - Entrepreneur Generations
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