Ink and Think... (300 Words)

Being at conferences is strange to me. I don't look like a college professor and I often don't think like one either. I sit in sessions with my tattoos and my jeans (I don't always bring climate appropriate clothing) and I pull out my laptop and I work while I'm listening. I don't sit still for long periods of time very well – and even less so during the promotion portion of the session. I need to keep my mind busy while I wait for what I came for. Ideas. Practical, hands-on things I can use the day I get back. A leadership idea for developing an online avatar for the writing center came from a conference session. My classroom research grant proposal was borne from another. A feasibility study about adopting Google Apps for Education I did a few years ago came from a conference as well. I can't buy the furniture that the college uses; I can't change online management systems; I can't adopt software easily or even afford programs for just myself. It's the ideas that matter – the feeling that other people have developed techniques I can use to do what I do better. Forget the theories and the heavy thinking. Give me toys and techniques that I can mold and manipulate to improve student success and engagement. I am a college professor with tattoos and a rather unorthodox way of approaching the classroom and the student. I intertwine my pedagogical goals in with things that are interesting to me, because let's face it: If I'm not interested, the students won't be either. What it boils down to is that conferences are about plans and paradoxes. They are energizing and exhausting, they are expensive and invaluable, they are lonely and collegiate. I am teacher and I am learner.



(PS - This is not part of the 300 words, but just a comment about the next blog – it won't be about teaching. Promise).