Uhoh! Now I Gotta CHOOSE?

Okay, so over at the GCTE website there's an overview of the conference coming up in February. I'm super-psyched about going, which is why I'm writing a blogpost instead of finishing the grading for this term or doing my planning for next term. Also because I just don't feel like it right now and this is as good an excuse as any ;)

The conference runs Thursday evening through Saturday noonish, with the bulk of the sessions on Friday (two in the morning, three in the afternoon). There's a list of sessions up at the site, except that it doesn't list anything at all for the F sessions on Saturday. Plus it's likely to change between now and then anyway.

The school is going to pay for our registration fees and our subs. We're responsible for food, lodging, and gas. Friday's lunch is provided (though we have to sit through a speech; we may choose to go out to eat instead), and Friday evening there's a "Low Country Boil." We're also looking at renting a house, so we might be able to fix meals there.

Last year's wine and cheese reception was ... interesting. The cheese was YUMMY, but ... the wine was more than a little weird. I mean, if I was there with a bunch of strangers, that'd be one thing. I'd drink as much or as little as I felt like, and NBD, yanno?

See, I don't enjoy wine all that much (beer is even worse), but hell, I'll admit it: I like being drunk! When I'm in a nonthreatening situation and I'm not worried about needing my cognitive or fine-motor faculties, it's great.

But when I'm around colleagues, all of a sudden it's like: what do my actions say about me and how is this going to affect my working environment? Maybe I'll mix up some Crown & Coke and do a bit of pre-partying! ;)

At any rate, I've already started thinking about which sessions I want to be sure to attend - follow the 'continue' link to see my color-coded list!


Concurrent Sessions A

- GALILEO: A Perfect Fit for English and Language Arts
- Secrets of the Black Box what IS this?? must find out!
- Content Literacy: Getting Your Students to Understand, Apply, and Love Your Subject as You Do
- Figure It Out!: The Questions a Writer Must Answer Before Writing
- Reading, Writing, Studying and Experiencing Joy
- Summary Writing: An Array of Strategies
- Engaging the Disengaged
- Pushing Beyond One Draft: Revision Strategies for Writers
- Storytelling for Dummies
- Books that Heal: Thematic Units that Use Critical Thinking and Literary Analysis Skills
- YA Lit 2.0: How Web 2.0 Is Reaching Teen Readers


Concurrent Sessions B

- TEST*IT: Teachers Experiencing Technology Integration for Technical Communication
- Reaching Teachers Where They Live: Building Community Inside and Outside the Classroom
- Advanced Microsoft PowerPoint in Your English Classroom
- Get Out of Grammar Jail: An Interactive Reader’s Theatre for Middle and High School Students
- New Ways to Engage and Develop Writers with a Focus on the GPS
- Students at Work: Increasing Literacy in Content Classrooms
- Who Has Time to Read Anymore? Georgia Teachers Discuss Their Personal Reading
- Only My Mom Likes My Digital Project: Helping Students Focus on Audience Impact over Authorship
- Poverty, Peace, Power, and Action: Critical Literacy Invitations in a First Grade Classroom
- We’re All in this Together!
- From Pre-Service Teacher to Trusted Adult: Using YAL Book Clubs to Negotiate Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
- Using Blogs and Wikis for Professional Development - ok, I know Dana's presentation is going to rock, but I already do this, PLUS it's a sure thing she'll put the information on her blog! ;D OTOH… it might be safer for me to go to this so that other teachers in my department DON'T – otherwise I might get outed! Yikes!


Concurrent Sessions C

- Facebook, Twitter, Wiki, Blog: Web 2.0 and the Writing Process
- Engaging Learners by Creating a Writing Community Based on the KMWP Model
- Did Someone Say “Give Kids a Choice”?: Nurturing Student-Centeredness Despite Standards and High Stakes Testing
- We Will Never Forget: Multimodal Approaches in Urban Classrooms to Holocaust Literature
- Preparing Students for College Composition
- Picturing America: Exploring Our Nation’s Stories Through Art
- Viva Le Resistance: Masculinities and Reading Resistance - oo, I should have Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys by that point! yey!
- Successful Students in ELA: Advice from Middle and High School ESOL Students
Grammar Calendar
- Integration of Middle School Literature Concepts to Students with Special Needs
- Digging Deep into Differentiated Instruction
- Metaphors of Composition: Singing Tenor in the Vehicular Classroom - okay, total HUH? here


Concurrent Sessions D

- Meeting the Needs of the 21st Century Learner through Multi-Media Literacy
- Riding the Waves of Titanic: A Multimedia Approach to Expanding Literacies again with the HUH?
- Free Money in Hard Times: How to Write a Grant and Get Stuff You Need - books please!!
- Troubling the Portfolio: Holding Students Accountable Using Standards-Based Portfolios
- When I Grow Up...Helping Students Explore Future Career Options and Develop Research Skills
- Writing as Art: Visually Representing the Writing Process
- Shakespeare Set Free: A Short Course from Folger Shakespeare Library - also depends what plays they're using; they did one last year that we went to… we'll see.
- Using Dialogue Journals as a Tool to Increase Student Writing Motivation and Achievement
- The Role of Multicultural Literature in Literacy Development
- Tools for Effective Writing in a Co-taught Middle Grades Classroom
- Culture Convergance: Pop Culture, YA Novels and Adolescent Girls
- Ride the Waves of New Literacies By Using Technology in Performance Assessments and Lessons
- Writing Scary Stories Collaboratively Using Plot Summary
- Podcasting: A Tool for Revision
- Preparing Students for the Future: Critical Thinking + Media Literacy = 21st Century Skills
- Reading, Teaching, and Writing Memoir in the Studio Classroom
- Hearing, Seeing, Reading Strategies for Promoting Reading Skills for the Educational - Development of Learners in Anambra State, Nigeria
- Preservice Teachers Examine Technology as a Strategy for Teaching the Language Arts
- Interacting with a Variety of Mentor Texts - I'm hoping they will provide a variety of mentor texts – I could use more! esp short ones!
- Semester-Long Theme Based Writing Making Research Relevant: Multigenre Research Papers


Concurrent Sessions E

- Teaching Students to Write Using Inspiration
- Research Pathfinders 2.0: Information Streams for Student Research
- Creating a Model for Standards-Based Classrooms
- Examining Technology as Text in the English Classroom
- The Demands of On Demand Writing: Teaching Students Effective Writing Skills for Testing
- Preparing for the Gifted Program Audit: Developing Curriculum for Gifted English Classes—One System’s Approach
- If You Teach Them, They Will Learn - WTF? what about the converse: "if they didn't learn, you didn't teach them"?? Grh.
- Making It Real: Variations on Literacies in College World Literature Classes
- Scaling the Essay Mountain with WritetoLearn
- I Can Teach You...Something: Josh, Digital Storytelling, & Proficiency
- Seeing Your Name in Print: How to Get Published in GCTE’s Connections

Hold the phone - is there NOTHING on here about graphic novels?! Woah. Uncool.

Okay. Red are the ones I really really want to go to myself; purple are ones I'd like to go to, particularly if there's several others going to a red session & I'd feel redundant; blue are the ones I want to make sure SOMEBODY goes to & I'll go to if nobody else feels like it.

There's seven of us going to the conference, so it should be pretty easy to make sure we get everything covered, even though the other teachers will likely have different lists from me. Hopefully there'll be some overlap.

Image thanks to http://www.secure-power.com/images/confused.jpg