NCTE Please... Join, Connect, Grow

For the past five days, I have been attending and presenting workshops at the NCTE convention.  With a masters degree and half of a doctorate completed in education at this point in my life, I still realize that I have much that I can learn from my colleagues in the field of English education.  I think that some people have the perception that a degree makes one an expert.  Some make the assumption that they have learned all there is to know to be successful teachers, but as the common philosophy of education goes: teachers are life-long learners.  After teaching high school and college courses, I continue to revise my curricula to make it more engaging and accessible for my students.  I listen to the suggestions of my students and my colleagues year after year and revise methods and topics as necessary.  The NCTE conference provides me with another avenue for revision.  By participating in workshops created by English and writing teachers around the country, I am able to adapt some of my teaching strategies to better fit the needs of all of my students. 

On Saturday, I had the good fortune of getting to hear Kelly Gallagher speak.  He is the author of our Teaching Adolescent Writers text.   Just as he writes about in his book, he talked about the fact that we must write beside our students.  We need to write the same assignments that we assign to them whether they are essays, papers, speeches, or in class free writes.  We need to edit in front of them.  He said that when our students see us struggling with writing it can almost be more valuable to them than when they see us write with ease and eloquence.  They need to see that we do not write perfectly all the time, especially in our first drafts.  This shows our students the importance of drafting and being willing to change/ edit/ cut our work.  It also shows our own willingness to experiment with new writing strategies that could create less than perfect writing.  No writer creates perfection in the first draft, and he wants our students to become comfortable with that idea. 

At this conference I had the privilege of hearing notable authors (such as Chris Crutcher), experienced teachers, and insightful researchers speak.  Each year I continue to grow as an educator and as a student at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference, and I strongly encourage any English educators or future ELA teachers to attend to enjoy the same career-changing experience that I have been enjoying over the past five years.  Please feel free to ask me any questions you might have about joining NCTE and about the 2012 NCTE Conference in Las Vegas.