NCTE conference

I was able to attend the NCTE conference in Chicago on Nov. 19.  It was really a very interesting place! I was able to attend a few really great sessions, but unfortunately I was unable to see any that directly pertained to TESOL.  The first one I attended was on how to get LGBT authors into your classroom for free to talk to your students. It's a great resource, and I heard a lot of ideas from current teachers on how to best use this resource in the classroom. I'm really glad I went to that session because it gave me some ideas for my own class. The second session I attended was on blogging (I was inspired to go to it from my experiences from this class) but was rather disappointed. I am happy to say I have learned more about blogging in this class than what the presenters were discussing in their panel, and I really did not think it was a worthwhile session. The last session I went to was about the use of film as text in the classroom. As a preservice English teacher (with some experience in TESOL) I hope to be able to use different means of textual representation in the classroom and the session really helped me to better understand ways to incorporate film as literature in the classroom. All in all, NCTE was a great experience, and I was very glad I was able to attend.