On The Road Again

Hmm, it feels like I'm never here anymore.  Last week I went to the TESOL conference in Denver.  It was really a very good conference.  As well as being quite big.  I think what I enjoyed most about it was that it was an unusual cross-section of academic and practitioner.  Usually conferences are one or the other, this one had both with the added benefit of actually thinking about policy at the same time.  It was sort of nice for folks like me who actually enjoyed taking classes at college and who sort of miss talking about theory and the big picture, as opposed to just getting some strategies to use in the classroom on Monday.  I also loved that it had social justice issues right at the forefront, which is sort of an unusual thing at a literacy-related conferences, where social justice issues might be present, but usually shunted off to the side.   It being more front and center here  is probably because of it's international focus, which was another thing I liked about it.  Oh yeah, and there was a blizzard too.   

This week I'm off to another conference, presenting and exhibiting (that sounds so wrong), but this time I'm going to Southern Missouri, specifically the Lake of the Ozarks.  I'm not really a fan, although, most of Missouri seems to think that it's the cats pajamas.  We are, of course at the Tan Tar A, which is where just about every Missouri conference having to do with Education ever is held, unless one of the two cities convinces the rest of the state to come their direction.  It is an odd place.  Like a southern shotgun house that someone just kept adding on to, the Tan Tar A has labyrinth of buildings that only sort of connect, elevators  that don't stop at every floor,  and passageways that dead end making you exit and run around the building to resume your course.  I dread going there, but then again, I sort of like the place's oddness juxtaposed with it's unrelenting marketing that they are all about FUN and FAMILY.  I won't being doing the water park, or the golf, or the spa  and to the outlet mall (well, maybe),although that's what children, men and women are supposed to do at resorts, or maybe just this resort - in that order - check out the billboards. The irony of it being a FUN, FAMILY VACATION, where none of you actually spend time with each other or even see each other, is sort of lost on Tan Tar A.   In any case, I will be sans family,  stuck in a big exhibit hall talking about parental involvement and why it's more than asking the parents of the "good kids" to come in and decorate the bulletin board, to a potentially hostile audience. Good times.  Let's hope spring is back to stay, because I really want to get home on Saturday evening.