NCTE Day 2 notes, unedited

There is a distinct shortage of Y-chromosomes around here. My first thought was "what a shame," but upon reflection it's kind of neat. Here we are, a group of passionate, motivated... dare I say ambitious? ... group of individuals, and we're not a bunch of old dudes.

Also incredibly white. But still more diverse than in my district.

Another point. The ballrooms are FREEZING. Who knows, though, they may keep the temperatures low so that when they fill up with a bunch of bodies the room isn't too hot.

I showed up at the A-sessions an hour early... I really thought they started at 8:30 and I was just so, so wrong. Oh well. It's after 9 now so I may go ahead and see if I can get a seat in my session's room.

I peeked in and asked and they said I could! And I got the FIRST seat. Middle-front, on the aisle. Nice spot. They're playing a slideshow of recent(ish) YA novels (I'm at a YA lit session) and it's pretty cool that most of them I've either read or at least picked up and tried. Very encouraging, that! There are, however, a few I haven't heard of.

And then there are some that I feel back because they didn't grab me and I put them back. Sometimes several times. Book Thief is one... Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I don't know what it is with me and "literature." I'd rather read something sweet and fun and true, with characters that are lovably quirky, rather than something that is artful yet realistic. And there is just SOOO MUCH to read that I kind of feel it's a good excuse not to spend my time struggling to get through something that takes me forever because I'm only reading it because I feel like I ought to. :P

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OOOO, that makes me so mad. I just checked to see if this room was one of the ones that had wireless internet provided and what do I see under my wireless menu but "Free Public Wifi." Hooray! I think to myself. So I select that, and then just in case it doesn't work properly, I pull up another tab in Firefox and try to load my blog.

WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENED, friends? Guess. No, really, guess. I bet you can guess. My blog did NOT load.

O! the inhumanity! ... hahaha, as though to further underscore my hyperbole, my Sansa Clip just started playing the theme from Schindler's List.

Bit of a cheap trick, though. :P

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A lot of this is techniques you can use in literature circles... which is good with YA lit but really would work with any other text as well.

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Yay! This room has NCTE wireless... but it is soooo slow. Kind of crappy if you ask me. :P

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Wooo! Michael and Bill would HATE this session; it's about reading as experience/transaction/pleasure rather than studying literary devices and author's intent and whatnot.

What did the text say vs, How can students demonstrate their understanding

Process-oriented yay .... but a process that results in no product may very well be a waste of effort.

I'm not entirely happy because ... well, part of it is the exclusivity of the presentation. She keeps talking about one versus the other or one instead of the other and I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. "a reading classroom instead of a straight-on literature classroom." And the title of the session was teaching reading THROUGH teaching literature.

We're supposed to write impressions of someone; I chose the woman in front of me. What's an impression, anyway? I think she is careful, given her smooth and simple hairstyle. I think she is conservative and well-spoken but not aggressive, based on her earrings (gold, big and strong but not flashy) and her barrette - again simple, but not plain.

More later; there are a bunch of things that I wrote down rather than dragging out the computer.