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Feb. 21st, 2009 12:02 pm
CATE 2009 Diary
CATE 2009 Diary
Friday, 8.30am.
This is CATE, the California Association of Teachers of English. Every year they put on this conference, which switches between northern, southern, and central California each year. Last year it was in Fresno, this year is Santa Clara, next year is Los Angeles.
There are 7 sessions, spread across Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, that last about 90 minutes, each taught by a practicing teacher, mostly high school with some professors. There are also vendors of textbooks here (one convinced me yesterday that her company is where I want to get our new novels from; excellent prices + lifetime guarantee on the binding – worries about students destroying paperbacks = WIN), as well as things like pithy teacher t-shirts (I want the one with a giant badge that says “Grammar Police,” if only to make [Bad username or site: ”jimbo_the_gecko” @ livejournal.com] happy) and various crap we don’t really need, but many teachers want.
Anyway, for each session, there are something like 20 choices, organized into various strands, from Writing, to Graphic Novels, to GLBT student concerns, to professional theory. You choose the session you want to go to and have fun (hopefully).
My first workshop is presented by Angus Dunstan, my old mentor at CSUS and the CATE Capitol council. The title is “Responding to Student Writing: Better, not Faster!”
The focus seems to be on teaching students to give better Peer feedback, which is something I struggle with—too often, students give each others’ papers a cursory glance and fill out their peer feedback forms with trite and often incorrect statements such as “The thesis is good.” Useless!
I’m actually stupidly excited to be here; I have workshops lined up that will really help me become a better teacher. Also, I’ve run into a couple of colleagues from CSUS; we’re going to have dinner tonight and talk about our first 2.5 years in the profession—and, of course, gossip our brains out, as teachers do even though we pretend to be better than that.
1.5 hours later…
First workshop went great.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jimbo_the_gecko, sorry about that call; my phone went wacko. Had to turn it off. You’ll forgive me, or I won’t like you anymore. Ok, I'll still like you. Friends like you (who weirdly either refuse to see my faults, or find them just part of why they like me) are hard to come by. If I haven't said it recently, I'm really glad you came back to the area and looked me up.
Friday, 9:51am
Session 2: “Teaching to Write the Write Way!” A seminar on a writing curriculum that shows a good deal of success. Side benefit: Free CD with all the lessons and handouts. You can tell I’m a teacher, because Free Teaching Stuff=WOOHOO!
Good workshop—I’ve got stuff I can use immediately.
Friday, 2:16pm
This workshop (begins @2.30) is on using mythical archetypes to study literature, which according to the presenter is better than using the traditional textual methods when teaching urban, at-risk kids. We’ll see.
I am tired as all hell. See, Wednesday night was murder; Tegan apparently has an ear infection, which we didn’t know until today, and so was fussy and never managed to sleep, which means we didn’t manage to sleep until she finally passed out from sheer exhaustion. Thursday night was just as bad, so I only really got about four hours of sleep, and that was on top of already-existing sleep-dep. Then I had to get up at 4am to drive to Santa Clara for this conference. I managed to take a cat-nap of about 45 minutes between lunch and this session (thank the Nine I read the schedule wrong and found a free hour there!), but I’m still pretty dead on my feet. I plan to pass out when I’m done with the day’s workshops.
I did indeed pass out. Did not have dinner with friends; they flaked. Oh well. I decided to have dinner on my own; the nearby restaurant was FULL, so I decided to find something else. I got terribly lost and ended up FAR away from where I was aiming for, but finally found a landmark and knew how to get back to my hotel from there. Yeesh. I hate Santa Clara's roads. Too many bypasses and expressways.
I had to spend money I didn't want to spend today. I somehow forgot to bring my power cable (must have left it at work), which I didn't discover until I was here. I NEED my computer, as I'm working on stuff that has to be done and turned in Monday morning, and I won't get home until early afternoon Sunday and I can't make my family wait for me to work for hours and hours. So I went to the Apple store at Valley Fair and bought a new power supply. I figure I'll use some of the proceeds from some stuff on ebay I'm selling to put that money back in the account; fortunately we can spare it for a little while, though it's not the brightest thing I could have done. If I hadn't had to get this stupid work done while I'm here, I wouldn't have bothered.
Friday, 8.30am.
This is CATE, the California Association of Teachers of English. Every year they put on this conference, which switches between northern, southern, and central California each year. Last year it was in Fresno, this year is Santa Clara, next year is Los Angeles.
There are 7 sessions, spread across Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, that last about 90 minutes, each taught by a practicing teacher, mostly high school with some professors. There are also vendors of textbooks here (one convinced me yesterday that her company is where I want to get our new novels from; excellent prices + lifetime guarantee on the binding – worries about students destroying paperbacks = WIN), as well as things like pithy teacher t-shirts (I want the one with a giant badge that says “Grammar Police,” if only to make [Bad username or site: ”jimbo_the_gecko” @ livejournal.com] happy) and various crap we don’t really need, but many teachers want.
Anyway, for each session, there are something like 20 choices, organized into various strands, from Writing, to Graphic Novels, to GLBT student concerns, to professional theory. You choose the session you want to go to and have fun (hopefully).
My first workshop is presented by Angus Dunstan, my old mentor at CSUS and the CATE Capitol council. The title is “Responding to Student Writing: Better, not Faster!”
The focus seems to be on teaching students to give better Peer feedback, which is something I struggle with—too often, students give each others’ papers a cursory glance and fill out their peer feedback forms with trite and often incorrect statements such as “The thesis is good.” Useless!
I’m actually stupidly excited to be here; I have workshops lined up that will really help me become a better teacher. Also, I’ve run into a couple of colleagues from CSUS; we’re going to have dinner tonight and talk about our first 2.5 years in the profession—and, of course, gossip our brains out, as teachers do even though we pretend to be better than that.
1.5 hours later…
First workshop went great.
jimbo_the_gecko, sorry about that call; my phone went wacko. Had to turn it off. You’ll forgive me, or I won’t like you anymore. Ok, I'll still like you. Friends like you (who weirdly either refuse to see my faults, or find them just part of why they like me) are hard to come by. If I haven't said it recently, I'm really glad you came back to the area and looked me up. Friday, 9:51am
Session 2: “Teaching to Write the Write Way!” A seminar on a writing curriculum that shows a good deal of success. Side benefit: Free CD with all the lessons and handouts. You can tell I’m a teacher, because Free Teaching Stuff=WOOHOO!
Good workshop—I’ve got stuff I can use immediately.
Friday, 2:16pm
This workshop (begins @2.30) is on using mythical archetypes to study literature, which according to the presenter is better than using the traditional textual methods when teaching urban, at-risk kids. We’ll see.
I am tired as all hell. See, Wednesday night was murder; Tegan apparently has an ear infection, which we didn’t know until today, and so was fussy and never managed to sleep, which means we didn’t manage to sleep until she finally passed out from sheer exhaustion. Thursday night was just as bad, so I only really got about four hours of sleep, and that was on top of already-existing sleep-dep. Then I had to get up at 4am to drive to Santa Clara for this conference. I managed to take a cat-nap of about 45 minutes between lunch and this session (thank the Nine I read the schedule wrong and found a free hour there!), but I’m still pretty dead on my feet. I plan to pass out when I’m done with the day’s workshops.
I did indeed pass out. Did not have dinner with friends; they flaked. Oh well. I decided to have dinner on my own; the nearby restaurant was FULL, so I decided to find something else. I got terribly lost and ended up FAR away from where I was aiming for, but finally found a landmark and knew how to get back to my hotel from there. Yeesh. I hate Santa Clara's roads. Too many bypasses and expressways.
I had to spend money I didn't want to spend today. I somehow forgot to bring my power cable (must have left it at work), which I didn't discover until I was here. I NEED my computer, as I'm working on stuff that has to be done and turned in Monday morning, and I won't get home until early afternoon Sunday and I can't make my family wait for me to work for hours and hours. So I went to the Apple store at Valley Fair and bought a new power supply. I figure I'll use some of the proceeds from some stuff on ebay I'm selling to put that money back in the account; fortunately we can spare it for a little while, though it's not the brightest thing I could have done. If I hadn't had to get this stupid work done while I'm here, I wouldn't have bothered.