Call me Peter Jackson, but I have managed to turn a single day at a conference into a trilogy of blog posts. In the other two posts, I wrote at length about the different sessions I attended. Because 99.5% of my blog's audience consists of colleagues who have access to a google doc with my notes on these sessions, I will not speak at length about the other two sessions I attended. But I cannot in good conscience neglect to speak about one more session I attended.
The last session I attended at the MACUL conference was a "lightning round" of eight five-minute presentations. Despite the technological focus of the MACUL conference, the common thread was not technology but rather humanity, specifically the humanity of our students. They urged us to nurture our students' curiosity, to encourage them follow their passions, and to explore what drives them, not just what's in their textbooks.
One speaker in particular stuck out to me. Amber Fante spoke about building support networks for "Children from the Gap". These are the children who slip through the cracks, who walk through life invisible or wishing to be invisible. They could be the ones who work to help support the family and then fall asleep over their homework. They could be the ones who hope their parent will be in a better mood today because things don't go so well when they're in a bad mood. They could be the kids that teachers take one look at and think "remedial."
These kids know what you're labeling them. You might think you are hiding it, but you're not. So any time you look at a kid, who may be driving you crazy, who may have neglected to do their homework for the 20th time in a row, who may be begging you for negative attention, label them something positive, because these are the kids who need it the most. Ms. Fante drew upon the image of Charlotte the spider from Charlotte's Web spinning words like "terrific" over Wilber the pig. She said that when she felt frustrated with a student, she would imagine the word "radiant" above them.
I am not perfect. I sometimes feel frustrated with my students. I also know that they are all radiant, even if they don't all know that themselves. I also know that they can see the labels we give them as clear as Charlotte's web. And each of them should see the glittering word Brillante.
This is a lovely post, Naomi, and like you I was very impressed with Amber Fante's presentation. I may have said this to you, but I really like the fact that MACUL is making a place for a presentations like this one that focus on students and teaching (and even if they only have most tenuous connection with technology). This is a definite change for the better for MACUL, and a lot of the initiative comes from people in the MichEd group that Jim Ekdahl spoke about. I'm so happy to see that you had a good day at MACUL, Naomi, and I was delighted to hear more about Craig Steenstra's presentation, which sounds marvelous.
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