NCTE 2013.

This year I got an amazing opportunity: Attending the 102nd Annual National Council of Teachers of English conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

It was amazing. Some highlights from the trip included: 

• Hearing singer/songwriter Natalie Merchant perform classic poetry in song form
• Learning from keynote speaker Sir Ken Robinson
• Attending a secondary teacher luncheon with acclaimed author, Sherman Alexia

Getting some time to relax in the evenings with my friend and colleague was also pretty fun. 

I attended breakout sessions on:

• preparing students for college level writing
• 21st Century Skills in the language arts classroom
• aligning and scaffolding langauge arts classes to the Common Core
• American Art and literature (hosted by the Smithsonian American Art Museum)
• standards-referenced assessment
• American rhetoric in the upper-level classroom
• teaching difficult and informational text recommended by the Common Core
• teaching Shakespeare using new methods (hosted by the Folger's Shakespeare Institute)
• "deeper reading

To collaborate with like-minded language arts instructors during an intensive three days not only challenged my methods and practices, but it challenged me to be a better teacher for my students and my colleagues. I intend to use my new learnings to continue serving as a building and department leader, and in years to come as a beginning teacher mentor and cooperating teacher for pre-service teachers.

And the view wasn't too bad either...

Kinda posh, if you ask me.

Over and out.