RIWP reflections

                To be honest I wasn’t particularly excited about going to this conference. I’ve been to a few of them by now and have only had the pleasure of enjoying one of them, the others ended up being two back to back 50 minute power points which didn’t catch my attention. That being said I actually enjoyed myself this year. Maybe it’s because it was a different organization than the others I’ve attended (which were mostly promising practices) or maybe it was just the luck that I picked two interesting seminars to go to, I’m not sure, but I liked it.

                First there was Newkirk’s speech was interesting and thought provoking: narrative at the core of life. I’m not sure I buy into it as completely as he did but I think the beauty of spreading ideas is that we get to take it  with us and add a little bit of our selves to the idea and maybe that’s what he’s getting at. I’m not really sure, but it’s an idea that I’ve been mulling over in my head for a while. Life/education/people we’re the story but we’re also the narrators and I’m not sure if that makes sense but I think that’s what I got out of his speech.

                I think my favorite part of the day was the first seminar though. It was called “poetry speed dating” and it was so much fun! I love writing poetry and by the end of it I wrote something like eight new poems, I joked with Matt that in 50 minutes we managed get three weeks ahead in our poetry writing class. It was such a cool idea too! I’m not sure how I could integrate it into a lit class by itself but honestly one of my dreams is to teach a creative writing class and I would absolutely love to do this in my class. That being said I think this was a great way to charge up the creative juices. When I got home I felt like I had to write even more and ended up starting something with that motivation. I think this could work to get students active and engaged before a lit class, albeit the exercise would have to be shortened to only two or so poems for time management.

                The last seminar was called “Dizzy drama”. This one was pretty good too, though not nearly as enjoyable as the poetry one. This one consisted of using student made characters to act out scenes. I was a bit confused at how the intro section, having us create a voice for a particularly troublesome student we’ve had (which was difficult since I haven’t had any students) and react to an assignment that I hate, had anything to do with the second more creative assignment. Not that the first was bad or anything, I just wish I could have gotten more out of it. It was a fun assignment and with the right group of students I think it would be fun to do something like this in a classroom. It could be a fun assignment to do after reading a novel or play to get the students to think about the character more, or it could be a cool start to a creative writing assignment.

                Over all I had a surprisingly fun time at the conference and would definitely attend again. I’m glad I got to see all my teachouse peeps (or should I say fellow cookies?) and I look forward to the next meeting.