According to the convention program, the first meeting was a one and a half day affair attended by 65 teachers from twelve states. There were two meeting rooms, one shared meal, and the annual dues were $2. The charge for the banquet at the meeting was $1.50. A photo in the aktivitas shows just slightly more male members than female members.
This week, including the meetings of subsidiary groups within NCTE, the meeting spans a full week, fills two of Chicago’s largest hotels, and involves tens of thousands of teachers—the vast majority of them women. One of the most notable things to me when I walked into the headquarters hotel was the large number of teachers sprawled across the floor, on the stairs, and in every conceivable nook and cranny of the hotel. It reminded me of an infestation of ladybugs. There were teachers everywhere! I once had an acquaintance tell me that there is nothing more frightening than a high school English teacher (she clearly had some bad ones), and I kept imagining her reaction had she been here to see thousands of English and Language Arts teachers just swarming the place. I pictured her face looking something like Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
For me, the first day was all Writing Project related functions and panels. And sadly, or frustratingly, we talked very little about teaching but mostly about fund raising, federal legislation, corporate giving, foundations, endowments, and advocacy. Necessary, but nothing that really stirs the passions. All I can say is that we at the CWP are fortunate to be such a long-standing, well established and well funded site. Many sites have already disappeared, and many more will struggle to sustain themselves through next year till various new sources of federal, private, and corporate funds become available to replace what was lost.
Today I would have liked to have spent the day in NCTE sessions, but mostly I worked on stuff from UConn, such as getting ready to take over and run a conference Monday for a colleague who had a heart attack. He’s all right, but of course unavailable for Monday, so I will fly in from Chicago Sunday evening, get the kids from my mother’s, unpack, lie down, get up, and go run a conference!
Tomorrow will be my day to attend sessions. I’m planning to attend panels on new research in the teaching of literacy, MA programs in English for educators, teacher-research, high school-college collaboration on college-level writing instruction, teaching literary criticism in high schools, and teaching creative writing in high schools. All of these in some way deal with collaborative efforts between high schools and colleges, which is perfect for me and informs me in my instruction of my undergraduate, pre-teaching and teaching majors.
I’ve seen several colleagues here, both from the school of education as well as from the composition aktivitas within the English department, and I brought three teachers with me, which is always cool. I love being able to provide this kind of professional opportunity to teachers (though I worry there might not be sufficient funds to do so next year). I was disappointed that I didn’t feel I could afford to bring any of the graduate students this year. I have brought two each of the last two years, and that’s always been great, to give them such a terrific professional opportunity at the start of their career and to see them interact with the veteran teachers who come. The students and the veterans always get so mutually energized by the shared experience.
And as much fun as the panels and workshops and roundtables are, it is at least as much fun to go out and socialize with different groups of teachers. We have a few drinks and a lot of fun, and we meet a lot of new people, teachers from other parts of the state and country, from other levels and other areas of the fields of English, Language Arts, and Rhetoric and Composition. And we also share ideas and hatch collaborative plans, pick each others’ brains, share successes, commiserate, and build or strengthen both personal and professional relationships.
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