Language is power, to teach language is to empower.

On October 5th, 2007, I attended the MCTE Fall Conference in Lansing. I found some of the things I learned there to be somewhat beneficial, but other things didn’t seem to apply to me. Overall I am glad that I went. I started out with strong doubts when the welcome speech began with a hearty “Are you ready to RUMBLE!” (reminiscent of the ever so annoying Michael Scott style from the Office). This welcome was followed by the sound keynote address delivered by Kathleen Blake Yancey. The heart of this keynote was changes in technology and how they have impacted literacy and how we write. I found this to be quite appropriate as it brought the focus of the conference not only onto technology as it is now but also technology of the future. This theme wasn’t exactly carried on in my breakout sessions, but I still thought it a good thing to focus on and thus a good way to begin the conference.

My first breakout session was titled “Hanging on by your Fingernails until you gain a Toehold: Advice for Future Teachers from New Teachers.” This session was quite applicable to me, being a future teacher, and I enjoyed it. The information seemed like it would be beneficial, especially the advice about finding a second year teacher as a mentor. This seems to me to be sound advice. Though the information given was pertinent, it’ll be a while before I can actually use it. I only hope that I will be able to find my notes from this session at that time. Judging by my abysmal organization skills, that scenario isn’t likely.

The other breakout session I attended was “Preparing and Inviting Teachers into Leadership and Scholarship.” I found this title to be misleading. I suppose I was hoping to learn more about leadership, but what they meant by leadership was leading the field through publishing in English journals. Being a German major with hopes to attain a masters in Linguistics, I’m not really worried about being published in English journals yet. Or maybe even ever. Not that it wouldn’t be neat, but I think it would take up a lot of time that I’d rather spend on other things. The session also had new teachers discussing their experiences presenting at conferences. I found this interesting, but I’ve always enjoyed public speaking and didn’t exactly find the information to be exceedingly beneficial.

Overall I enjoyed the conference, but I would have preferred something more along the linguistic or foreign language lines. For an English minor, such as myself, it wasn’t quite as beneficial as it would have been for a major.