After Bob Probst’s talk, Lisa and I dumped some heavier stuff off in the room. My room is amazingly located. In some ways, I know it’s a true disadvantage to have a room that backs up to the big banquet hall; but it’s been convenient because it’s so close to most of the sessions. I can come back between every session. It’s an unusual room with two doors: one to the hallway, the kind you normally expect in a hotel; and the other to the banquet hall which is a big open space.

None of the sessions during this time were screaming my name, so I took a mini-tour of the books exhibit. Mini-tour is about the best you could do. It was very small, but nice for a conference of this size. I picked up a number of free things—some scope and sequence books, free poster, etc. And of course, I gave in to the lure of books for sale. I bought a handful of young adult books that looked interesting:

• The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, which may be officially an adult book, but it looked interesting.
• You Remind Me of You by Eireann Corrigan, a verse novel
• Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey by Margaret Peterson Haddix, done in journal entries.

It was nice to browse a rack of YA books and know so many of them, to have read so many of them. I don’t think I could have said the same last fall.

I also bought some pedagogical books from a Heinneman reseller:

• Writing a Life: Teaching Memoir to Sharpen Insight, Shape Meaning—and Triumph Over Tests by Katherine Bomer, which I was interested in because I was thinking my bloggish things are frequently memoirs in a way. I didn’t even notice the testing bit in the title until I was typing it in. It may be too “young” for what I was thinking, but it’s probably still a good book.
• Subjects Matter: Every Teacher’s Guide to Content-Area Reading by Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman, because I have the other two Daniels and Zemelman books so I needed the third, right?
• The new 3rd Edition of Daniels, Zemelman, and Hyde’s Best Practices, which I really resisted buying because I have the 2nd edition. But I decided that since I’m quoting from it in my assignments book manuscript I needed to quote from the newer edition. I can keep the old ed in the office and the new one at home (where I’m working on the book).

Lunch was the next session, and it was nicely located right outside my door. I learned that in Decatur grilled cheese sandwiches are called “cheese toasties,” and Claire Lamonica shared a nice quote, “There are no bad papers. Only unfinished ones.” I didn’t catch the source.

Tags: English language arts |
IATE Conference