NWP/NCTE

Last week I had the chance to travel to Orlando, Florida to attend the National Writing Project conference and the National Council of Teachers of English conference. I attended sessions on digital literacies, Google Apps for Education, teaching in rural places, video gaming in the Language Arts classroom, content area literacy, social justice in the English education setting, and using Google Docs as a collaboration tool. I realize these may sound extremely dull to the average person, but they were incredible. I learned so much that I could take back to my classroom. Though I'm not a Disney World fan, it was a nice get away. Here are some photos from the trip:

Me with Cyndi and Erin Gruwell--the original Freedom Writers teacher

At Epcot--it sounds silly, but when I was a kid, I always imagined that the park was inside that big Epcot ball. For your information, the park is not inside the ball. I was a bit disappointed.

Cyndi and I enjoying a bit of sunshine before hitting the exhibits at NCTE

Cyndi with her loot---we each scored about 60 free young adult books @ the NCTE exhibits...

Last night at Disney= ranting about the commercialism of the whole experience. We were so outraged we decided to be rebellious and climb the "Mayan ruins." A few other swimsuit clad travelers decided to join us for the experience. We were promptly encouraged to climb down the ruins from a relatively kind Disney worker.

More fun with the Mayan ruins...