Foot: Virginia Hamilton and OSEA Conferences

      I wanted to share about two conferences that I attended this weekend. The first conference was held at Kent State and it was the Virginia Hamilton Conference. I am part of an Intergenerational Mentoring group that is sponsored by the Ohio Education Association. Each future teacher that signs up is paired with a retired teacher to help and share materials throughout college. I was blessed to be paired with a retired librarian, Kay, in Ravenna. Kay has brought so much to my attention that I would otherwise not know of. One of those things is the Virginia Hamilton Conference. This is a conference that many author's come to, tp share ideas and have a book signing. I was only able to attend on Thursday evening because my other conference started on Friday. Each year there is a main speaker and this year it was Nikki Giovanni. She is an author and poet that shared a phenomenal story about getting student's work involved in our country. Giovanni wants to see art and stories displayed and emphasized like we do the showing of athletes. Student's from a performing arts school even recited some of their own poems. The students were in elementary and middle school and have to audition to attend, and that definitely showed in their performances. The evening ended with a book signing. There were probably seven to ten other authors there to sign books. The new books I purchased and got signed are: Ego-Tripping by Nikki Giovanni, Names Will Never Hurt Me by Jaime Adoff and Chameleon by Charles R. Smith Jr.. Unfortunately these books will have to wait until the summer to get read.

         The second conference was the Ohio Student Education Association Conference. This was held in Worthington, Ohio. Friday evening we got to hear from three speakers. The outstanding one that stuck in my mind was Aimee Young, a teacher from Loudonville, Ohio. She went through her teaching story with us. It went something along the lines of her becoming a teacher and going back to school to get a pay raise and falling in love with the story of the Holocaust. She was so infatuated that she indulged in all of the information that she could get on it. That led to her teaching a class on it. This teacher is an integrated language arts teacher like we all will be, not a history one. She used her knowledge of the Holocaust to have students create projects and write papers and in turn won many awards. She even took them to Aushwitz for a tour. A very long and challenging story, she related how angry people in her community were with her because of her interest in the Holocaust. Some parents didn't want their children learning about it and others thought that Mrs. Young was a horrible teacher for teaching about something that happened outside of the United States. She fought this battle for at least seven years. Young was so stressed with work and a family that she had a heart attack when she was forty something. That was not the worst part. She was driving home with her daughter and friends one evening and got hit in the driver side door, more towards the front wheel of it by a boy who was under the influence. Mrs. Young had many shattered body parts, and did not get out of the hospital for around four months. She returned to school this past January. Out of the whole thing she wanted us to remember that we have to have a passion for teaching. At first she didn't want to go back to school, but now she says those kids are what keep her going. She has come extremely far, as she walks and talks like she didn't have metal plates put in her arms and legs less than a year ago.

       The next day we went to West High School for an outreach to teach project. This school was huge and has thousands of high schoolers mingling in it every day. Some of us worked on painting murals on the walls, others worked on bulletin boards and posting signs, and the rest organized donated books. For the afternoon we had different sessions. My first one was called "What Will Your Impact Be?" Joseph Hayberger conducted this one and had so much information to pass along that we did not even get to cover it all. He suggested many books, but one that I currently have sitting in my dorm is The Essential 55. My mom actually picked this book up a long time ago and she mentioned it to me during a discussion last time I was home. I brought it back to school with intentions to read it, but have gotten too busy with other work. It is supposed to enclose the top 55 rules you would need for your classroom. I know, that sounds like an awful lot, so I'm interested in why we need so many, and how to enforce them all! My last session was called, "Surviving Your 1st Year of Teaching". I was not enthused with this one. I probably should have chose another class because the speaker- Guy Kendall-Freas had already spoken at a KSEA (Kent Student Education Association) meeting. A lot of his ideas were very basic. One thing that he loves to promote is the member benefits of being in the OEA. There are many perks: coupons, half-price dining and discounts on vacations through the association. It's basically something you have to check daily in order to get the big deals. If you're interested, take a look at the website.