TESOLing

What happens when 200+ people show up at a workshop you feel certain will attract 50? You have four times more fun!  Lori (Howard) and I had a great time working with teachers, teacher-educators, students and other equally-important-but-unidentified participants at our Paired Reading session today. At one point- which I so wish I had on film--everyone in the room demonstrated the positive nature of "leaning forward" because I asked them to. (With great power comes great responsibility...)

The day got even sweeter. After doing a run through of the OPDi at the Oxford Booth for an exhausted but enthusiastic instructor from Indiana, I met an instructor from Russia who told me that she was using the OPD to teach Russian gas company executives.  "Bosses are using your book," she said with a laugh. I think I'm going to have to adopt that as my new catch phrase. "You want to know why you should use this book with your learners? Bosses are using it--that's why!"

She promised to send me a photo of the learners with the books and I promised to write them a letter. We finished up this swell collegial encounter with a photo op in front of the sparse yet elegant display at the Oxford booth. All in all-- a day well spent!

Onward!
j/me

TESOL LOOMS LARGE!

Tomorrow the skies of the southwest (and the airline that bears their name) will transport me to TESOL 2013 in Dallas.  I am looking forward to the flight because:
1) I leave from our quiet, local airport in Burbank;
2) there's a short layover in Las Vegas, where the possibility of winning a small fortune at the video poker slots always lurks in the back of my mind; and
3) althought the total travel time is the same as going direct to NYC (6 hrs!), the time difference once I'm there is two hours rather than three.

I am anticipating that TESOL will feel quite different this year. The economic woes facing adult education across the US have made many publishers downsize their adult ESOL offerings and, unfortunately, this is the first year that many of the people I look forward to catching up with at the conference will not be there, (op. cit. economic woes).*  

Of course, every TESOL has an element of surprise. Last year, Pearson's booth-without-books was quite the controversy! Maybe this year Nat-Geo (National Geographic-Heinle Cengage) will do something special, green and cool.

I'll be ready! (And I am excited to see the colleagues who will there. This is often my first opportunity to meet my international students f2f!) 


Despite the pervasive E.W.s (see above) I firmly believe that we are soon going to have an immigration reform bill that will help reopen schools and inspire new programs-- but the big question for learners, instructors, and program administrators alike is "Who will be in charge?"  (I would have said it was the $64,000.00 question--but that number is far too low.) TESOL will be a place to hear more about this very issue--and I promise to share what I hear!


My plane flight will most likely be spent reviewing the slides for my academic sessions on Friday at 11 a.m. (Paired Reading with Lori Howard)  and Saturday at 10 a.m.  (Challenges of Online Teacher Education with Radmila Popovic). God help me, I love to tinker with a presentation that should be finished.  How many times do you think I changed the color scheme on this one?

In case you are interested in any of the materials from these sessions, they will go up on the Tools and Tips page of the website. And, in addition, I promise to scout out as many exciting, engaging and practical ideas as I can and put them up too!

And this year, instead of doing a full-fledged publisher-sponsored session, I'll be doing a walk through of the Oxford Picture Dictionary digital materials at the OUP booth (Thurs. and Fri at 1:15.) Those kinds of presentations are always a bit tricky:  will there be people there, or will I look as though I'm trying to sell Oxi-Clean to the passing throngs?

As a lark, I thought I would try my hand at tweeting during the conference.  If you want to follow me, just click https://twitter.com/lthrtdlrng.

And of course, if you see me at the conference and have read this blog--do come up and say hi! It would be lovely to meet my reader. :

Onward!
j/me
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*Yes, I do know this is not the correct usage of op. cit. but I just don't have that many opportunities to use it--and I love the way it sounds. Sort of the researcher's ipso facto, which is also quite lovely. And ibid--can't forget ibid!

A NEW WEBSITE! LightheartedLearning.com

I know it's absurd, but I feel like running around distributing politically incorrect chocolate cigars to complete strangers. (Bwhahahaha....My chance to give candy to strangers!)





Absurd or not, there's a real sense of joy (and relief) at having a website up and running. I should probably knock wood as I type that.  For those of you who are not familiar with the Yiddish verbal equivalent of knocking wood ---no, not spitting, if that were a verbal equivalent it would have to be the cartoon exclamation of TsuTsu-- I'm speaking of the expression, KENOHORA...which one uses to ward off the evil eye. E.g. Look your souffle is so puffy and high. Kenohora!  (The omission of kenohora would mean that once the complimentary statement left the speaker's lips---the souffle would be doomed.) Upon re-reading that last example, I'm not so sure that souffle and Yiddish create a collocative concept. Excuse me while I step over to another browser window to check. [time passes]

Okay--we're good. There were plenty of hits for "Jewish souffle" (However the souffles shown were all pretty flat...guess somebody forgot his or her kenohoras...)

Embryonic Elephant

But back to the website. The gestation process has been what one would expect-- not in elephant terms, of course--but in terms of the average pregnancy.




Proof of Reasoning
Elephant from start to finish: 22 months.
Website from start to finish: 9 months

Ryan Sebring

Thank goodness I worked with a VERY patient and gifted web designer, Ryan Sebring (Sebring Creative). It's probably been at least three years since I said to him, over some chocolate rugelach, "Oh, you do web design? I'd really like to get a lighthearted learning site up and running."  He should have started running...and screaming from the room. But instead, in June of 2012, we found ourselves talking about banners and sub-banners; assets and anchors, and the scroll of death. (We did try to avoid the latter.) Ryan really had no idea what he was getting into, but he was an excellent sport throughout my crazy travel schedule and various changes of heart (and design.) 



Of course,  Ryan wasn't the only patient person during this process. My best friend and LOML, Gary, endured my numerous interruptions to a) solicit advice, b) ask for help, and c) whine.  What do you think my beloved replied when I said, "The hummingbird looks a little snarky. Could you fix his eye?"?  He fixed the eye of course, and then turned his own heavenward and sighed deeply.  
 

Hummingbird, less snarky

And speaking of eyes; my daughter's took on catching every inconsistency in phrasing, punctuation, and spacing. Emily made my life SO much easier at a time when 3,8 and 5; i and l and (.) and (,) look pretty much identical to moi. And then Ed, (best B.I.L. ever), did a round of edits that ameliorated the typos and cut and paste ghosts that can haunt an educational website forever!


Setting a March deadline was probably the best thing we could have done...it  has to be done when you set a deadline. (Or so my editors have always said.) The deadline meant that when I fly away to TESOL in mid-March I will not have to look at my shoes and make snuffling noises in response to the website question. (Nor, since the conference is in Dallas, will I have to hear, "Well, bless your heart, you'll get it done some day." )

This year for TESOL, I've set a goal of having business cards with the website address and my email and no typos. (Not like the year when, much to my chagrin, I discovered I had printed out cards with an extra digit in my phone number. Of course, I'm sure I appeared very editorial as I scrawled the delete mark each time I handed out a card. But I digress....)

I have a new website. You can find it here: lightheartedlearning.com (kenohora)  Do drop by! (And for those of you already here and reading this on the site...WELCOME!)