Ok. It's been more than a week since my feet came back down to the ground after the end of NCTE.
Why so long until this reflection?
Well, I've actually started three separate "creative"
reflections.
An NCTE acrostic, an NCTE recipe and “How the week after NCTE is
like the day after Thanksgiving.”
Here are those beginnings.
NCTE Acrostic:
N:
Newbery Award-Winning Books
and Authors
Nationally Recognized
Speakers
New books to be signed by
authors
Nerdy Book Club gatherings
Nervously approaching
numerous teacher/author heroes
Navigating my way through
the skyway system
C:
Caldecott Award-Winning
authors
Cameras full of “once in a
lifetime” photos of authors, books and educator friends
Capacity-filled
auditoriums, anxiously awaiting awesomeness
Catching book fever!
Celebrating the acquisition
of an abundance of ARCs
Collapsing each night from exhaustion
(and with a smile on my face)
Community-building with
fellow book nerds
Confirming why I love
teaching English
T:
Talking with people I’ve
only ever tweeted with
Tirelessly (and happily)
lugging my bulging bags of books
Traversing the Minneapolis
Convention Center to attend the many excellent sessions
Targeting sessions that
either meet my fan girl needs or my teaching needs (or both)
E:
Enjoying dinner with Kelly Gallagher
& new friends, and hors d’oeuvres with Nerdy Book Club members
Educating myself on how to
get the best out of NCTE
Emotional connections with
Edu-heroes
Engaging in book
conversations while waiting in author-signing lines
Escaping the “real world”
by immersing myself in this fantasy
Exceeding my wildest
expectations
Exercise for the body, the
mind and the soul
Recipe for NCTE 2015
Ingredients:
Book-Loving Educators
Famous/published Children's
and YA authors
Media Specialists
Budding writers
Administration interested
in expanding their staff’s mindsets (and classroom libraries)
Lots and lots of new and
well-loved books and series
Advanced Reader Copies
(ARCs)
Invite all ingredients to
the Minneapolis Convention Center for three engaging days and three eventful
nights, November 19-22, 2015. Let the ingredients stir themselves up however
they want. Watch the magic happen. Repeat in 2016.
How the week after NCTE is like the day after Thanksgiving
Both leave you stuffed
(full of ideas).
Both cause you to feel exhausted
from all of the visiting and talking (about books).
Both generate lots of
leftovers (books for book talks and for passing along to students).
Both lead to happiness
because of the wonderful time you had.
Both leave you wanting to do
it all over again, although realizing that we need to focus on the rest of
the holiday season (school year).
Both create new (teacher
and author) friendships.
Both lead to slight
frustration when looking at other attendees’ pictures. Despite what you experienced,
there's someone who had a dish (connected with an author) you did not, leaving
you slightly envious.
Both make you wish that Thanksgiving
(and NCTE) could happen more than once per year.
In my case, both made me happy
that my drive there and back was close.
I'm not really happy with any of those ideas because I was trying too
hard to capture the magic of NCTE with some type of gimmick or cute idea.
That was my mistake. There’s no need for gimmicks or cute ideas.
NCTE needs none of that.
NCTE is amazing, plain and simple.
No need for name dropping...my PicCollages say it all.
No need for recaps of each session. Look at those pictures and
you’ll know they were incredible.
No need for rationale supporting how NCTE reignites an English
teacher's passion for teaching, reading, writing and speaking. Ask anyone who
was there. Read their blogs...their tweets...their FB posts.
No need for an explanation about NCTE's impact on my students.
The excited looks on their faces as they tore into books with wild abandonment was
enough for me. They reap the benefits of having a connected teacher.
No need for any more words to describe my first NCTE experience.
Words don't do it justice.
Thanks to my principal and district for supporting my NCTE
attendance, and celebrating my first time presenting (with the wonderful Erik
Palmer and Dave Stuart, Jr.). Thanks to the many incredible Twitter and
Facebook educator friends I met face to face. Thanks to my family (especially
my son, who turned 18 the Saturday of NCTE) since they carried on without me for four
days while I lived out my dream. Thanks to my home state of Minnesota for
hosting NCTE...my commute couldn't have been easier.
Thanks, NCTE 2015!
