1) Promoting growth in our profession is a must, and what better way to gather than at a conference where we can bring our best ideas and present them to others, gather feedback, and polish them.
2) It is essential to protect the integrity of our profession from state and federal lawmakers who want to regulate and make laws to serve taxpayers and voters. Often these lawmakers do so without understanding the potential impact or the implications of these regulations and laws, and it is our responsibility to stand in the gap for our students.
3) Keeping abreast of new research and development in our profession is another great benefit we receive from keynote speakers and other sessions. Also, at conferences, we gain insight into professional journals and articles that will help us keep up with the latest.
4) Networking with fellow faculty helps us to sharpen one another.
5) Sharing tips on how to engage students in the classroom is another benefit. Breakout sessions and meal time give us opportunity to do so.
6) Discovering new ways to teach curriculum is always a blessing. No one faculty member, nor no single college has ALL of the good ideas.
7) Meeting lifetime friends with fellow faculty members who have similar interests is so likely.
8) Textbook publishers bring textbooks, catalogs, software demonstrations, and offer suggestions to help bridge areas missing in curriculum.
9) Other vendors bring free book samples, guides, pens, and more.
10) The conference itself usually gives you a cool bag to carry all of your handouts, flyers, and the guide to sessions.
Okay, besides all of these reasons for attending conferences, one must agree that a change of place, good food, a nice room, and a little out of town shopping is good for the soul.
So I mentioned keynote speakers can be a bonus. At this particular conference, the speaker took me back to college days. He got up and read a report on Paulo Freire, banking vs. praxis, and a lot of other professional jargon not spoken in the community college classroom, but indeed practiced on a regular basis.
So, he reminded us, is the teacher a sage on the stage? Or a guide on the side? According to Strauss, we should always assume there is one silent student in the classroom who is smarter than we are. For me personally, believing this student is there helps me to keep myself sharp and prepared for class. Believing this student is there helps me to call upon students in the classroom with expectation that they will have something essential to share, and often they do, and then we learn from more than Mrs. Luffman. We learn from the best ideas we have in common as a classroom, and that is what education is all about. Maybe I am overstating slightly, but not by much.
Then the keynote speaker encouraged us to check out They Say, I Say, a book that presents templates to help students write various types of prose for different purposes. Students gain help discovering how to write cognitive or narrative, investigative or reflective. And then students insert self into these templates to create meaning inside correct format. Okay, so that last part is all my own interpretation of what was being said on stage.
By the way, did I mention that at this conference the sage on the stage was actually reading his paper. Yikes, I would never do that in the classroom, but apparently this gentleman felt the precision of his prose was worth the risk of losing the audience. Apparently he didn't lose me since I did take voracious notes just in case I could write something about it in my blog.
Anyway, if anyone out there actually reads this blog, please consider going to a professional conference, participating, even presenting. It goes a long way in developing who we are and preserving our profession for posterity.
Sincerely submitted.
Tina Luffman
By the way, did I mention that at this conference the sage on the stage was actually reading his paper. Yikes, I would never do that in the classroom, but apparently this gentleman felt the precision of his prose was worth the risk of losing the audience. Apparently he didn't lose me since I did take voracious notes just in case I could write something about it in my blog.
Anyway, if anyone out there actually reads this blog, please consider going to a professional conference, participating, even presenting. It goes a long way in developing who we are and preserving our profession for posterity.
Sincerely submitted.
Tina Luffman
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