To Attend the 2009 NCTE Convention?

This past weekend I attended the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) 99th Annual Convention in Philadelphia, PA. The conference ran from Thursday, 11/19 through Monday, 11/23. Four other English Secondary Education Majors and I went to Philly bright and early on Saturday morning, unaware of the majestic wonders we would find when we got off the train. I had such an intellectually stimulating time that I decided to go back by myself the following day.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the NCTE convention, the convention is basically like one giant "How-To-Teach" seminar, similar to the ones that Dr. Meixner organizes at TCNJ. There are at least twenty to thirty different presentations going on at once, given by teachers and professors from around the country. There is also a giant convention center, in which different publishers bring free materials to give to teachers, but more on the convention center later.

When the five of us first arrived, we picked up the convention program. The convention program was massive in size (it was like carrying around a 5-subject spiral notebook) and contained about 200 pages of information about the conference and its various events and presentations (see picture of program above). Our first plan of action was to decide which presentations we wanted to attend first. We decided to divide-and-conquer that way we could attend different presentations and compare notes and materials later. Each presentation ran for approximately an hour an fifteen minutes.

The first presentation I attended was about critical thinking. The speakers discussed Bloom's Taxonomy, which relates to the different levels of questioning. For example, higher-level questions on Bloom's Taxonomy involve tasks that ask students to "Evaluate" and "Create," rather than simply recall information.

At the second presentation I attended, all three of the presenters were high school teachers from the same school in Texas. They explained that they have a mandated British curriculum, which their students find difficult to relate to. They provided us with a variety of strategies to connect the students' own lives and values with writing assignments related to the various British texts.

Lastly, the third presentation I attended was about teaching graphic novels in the classroom. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I've never actually read a graphic novel, so this presentation was an excellent way of introducing me to a variety of different texts in the genre, as well as provide me with different methods for teaching these novels. For example, one 7th grade English teacher explained that his students were struggling with Yang's American Born Chinese. He discovered that the reason for this was that his students were unfamiliar with comics and graphic novels, and were therefore unable to follow the different panels and speech bubbles.

Now that I've told you about the professional development aspect of the conference, I can move onto my experiences in the convention center. Upon first walking into the convention center I was overwhelmed--seven long rows with table after table of books, textbooks, and other materials. Where to begin? Like a deer in headlights, I started moving up and down the aisles. I saw other teachers carrying bags full of books, but I had no idea where they found all these free materials.

One of the other TCNJ students and I started approaching the exhibitors from the various publishing companies, and we struck up conversations with them. They gave us advanced copies of books that aren't even set to be published until Spring 2010. I knew that my bookshelves at home were filled with Young Adult (YA) literature that was geared toward girls, but my collection was severely lacking in YA literature for boys. I knew that one of my goals needed to be to expose myself to YA texts that would appeal to boys. By the end of the first day, I had collected 22 free books and had met or seen a variety of authors, including Jerry Spinelli, Laurie Halse Anderson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Carol Lynch Williams, Elizabeth Scott, Kenneth C. David, Jeff Kinney, and David Lubar. I even got a few of these authors to autograph the free copies of their books that I picked up. Many of the publishing companies were even distributing teacher guides to help teach these books, and I gladly picked up these to store away with all my future teaching supplies. One of the free poetry resources that I received from a company called Poetry Out Loud, I used with my students at Trenton Central yesterday. (The above picture is of all the free materials I received that first day.)

On the second day of the conference when I went back to the convention center, I was able to purchase many of the books that weren't given away the previous day at a reduced price of $1-$3 for paperback copies. Again, I received many free advanced copies of books as well, and walked away the second day with another 22 books in my bag (see above picture).

The last even I attended before returning home on Sunday was Kylene Beers's "Presidential Address." For those of you who aren't familiar with Beers, she's the author of When Kids Can't Read, which is basically an English teacher's guide for different teaching methods. On my way into the Grand Ballroom where the address was to be given, I was five feet away from Beers. I desperately wanted to go over and talk to her, but she was involved in a conversation with another teacher.

Beer's presentation was entitled, "Sailing over the Edge: Navigating the Uncharted Waters of a World Gone Flat." She discussed technology and its role in schools, and she clearly challenged NCLB, which everyone applauded. At the end of the event, she passed the NCTE presidential "torch" to President-Elect, Carol Jago. (In the picture, Beers is wearing blue and Jago is wearing red.)

Next year's conference is going to be held in Orlando, Floria, so I recommend saving up now. For students, the registration fee for the convention only costs $90, instead of the $250+ registration fee for teachers. It is a great experience for professional development, and even if you aren't an Education Major you can still pick up free books with which to stock your home library.

~Kristen Casabona