It’s been a good day. We all met for the opening plenary session (8:30 till noon!), and plunked ourselves down at tables kind of willy-nilly. I ended up at the “kid’s” table in the back of the room… not quite sure how that happened, but we had a blast and (kind of by accident) ended up doing quite well on all the exercises together. We were in danger of being split up by the Jigsaw activity (where each of us “teaches” one of five articles to the rest of us), but it turned out that four of the five of us had read different articles, so we pretty much all stayed at our table.
In the afternoon we had part one of two or three sessions on assessment. I’ve really got to get a handle on how I can use this in my instruction. I’ve been experimenting with giving the students more control of the class period, but then I’m always worried that they aren’t learning. So these concepts should be good for me. As in the first session, the ideas weren’t really anything I hadn’t heard elsewhere, but it’s good for me to have concentrated time to reflect on my year’s teaching, evaluate what I’ve done, and figure out how to move forward from here.
The third session was AWESOME. Randy Hensley is an amazing teacher. I admit, I was skeptical. He’d been writing all sorts of crazy uber-teacherish emails to us. Like, for example, the response he wrote to my posted introduction asking me “If you could do your first year of librarianship over, what would you do differently?” Uh, I don’t know. I had a pretty unbeatable first year, as far as I’m concerned. Anyway, I was all set to be annoyed and turned off by gimmicky exercises, but it wasn’t that way at all. Hey, I even drew a picture for the guy. That’s how amazing he was. I don’t draw concepts. I just don’t. Especially not with crayons.
(In case you can’t tell, that’s me using a zipper to open myself up and let out a bunch of smiley faces and balloons, which at the time seemed like a perfectly rational picture of using tools to reveal my personality… It’d been a long day. Stop laughing. STOP IT. And don’t go telling me my picture-woman has no head. I know that. I deliberately avoided drawing a head.)
Anyway, at one point I ended up on a stack of crates (which almost fell over, but didn’t, so I’m not dead). Don’t know quite what that had to do with anything. But he invited me up, so I went.
Which brings me to the other really weird thing about Immersion. I’ve learned to become an extrovert. Seriously. People here think I’m always like this! HAH!!! And who knows, maybe I am like this now. Computers in Libraries brought it out of me a little, but now I OWN this new person I am. And I like it. I love it that I no longer avoid introducing myself to people, or shake while doing it.
There’s lots more to write (I’ve been keeping a list… yeah, I’m a librarian), but it’s 11:30 here, and morning comes EARLY in Boston. I’d best call it a night. But there are a few more photos (still without titles or descriptions, sorry) up on my flicker site.
Just two things before I turn my brain off for the night: A pox on convention centers without wireless, and boo to long personal stories that should have been short and on topic responses to the presenter’s question. Nuf said.