Report from Orlando

Kathleen Burke, director of ASCD's Annual Conference, reported from Orlando this morning that the 2,000 Pre-Conference Institute attendees are enjoying beautiful weather, with temperatures expected to reach 85 degrees today.

That's more than warm enough for those waiting to watch the ducks at the Peabody Hotel take their daily promenade from their room to the fountain, but more about the ducks later.

Kathleen also had

• helpful tips for those staying at the Rosen Plaza Hotel
• updates on conference preparations
• information about where to get reports, updates, and news
• more about those ducks

For Those Staying at the Rosen Plaza Hotel
Kathleen wants to make sure that those of you staying at the Rosen Plaza Hotel, which is across the street from one end of the convention center, know that conference registration center is located at the opposite end of the convention center, across from the Rosen Centre Hotel.

Registration, Exhibits, Party with a Purpose
Kathleen reported that ASCD staff is busy setting up the registration center and information kiosks, in anticipation of your arrival at conference. At the same time, exhibitors are arriving and setting up today and tomorrow. Make sure that you use our enhanced online exhibitor guide to quickly find the exhibitors you are interested in. Preparations will also be underway soon for the ASCD service event that is a party with a purpose—the Books and Fun in the Sun Bash.

Stay Tuned
Kathleen wanted to remind everyone that during conference we will post notices and reports from ASCD staff about conference sessions, special events, and news on this blog. You can comment on any posting on this blog by using the comment link at the bottom of any post.

After conference we will continue to update the blog. Look for reports from sessions that you weren't able to attend, audio highlights from key sessions (similar to our Speaker Spotlight audio conference preview), and comments from fellow participants.

About Those Ducks
Kathleen reports that people stake out spots and settle into their folding chairs early in the morning to ensure a good view of the Peabody Hotel ducks. With over 600 conference sessions to choose from, you might not have the time to see the ducks promenade, but you can find out more about the ducks.

Read the full post . . .

Session Update-Letter from John Goodlad

One of education's most revered sages, John Goodlad, was to present one of the sessions in our Distinguished Lecturer series at conference. However, he is undergoing treatment for an ongoing illness, which will prevent him from joining us at conference.

Reflecting on his illness, and a conversation with his son, have led Goodlad to understand that his current personal experiences mirror his prescriptions for education. He explains that in this letter, addressed to all conference participants.

Please feel free to comment on the letter, respond to Goodlad, or send him a note using the comments link at the bottom of the post. We will pass all of your comments to him.

Illness as a Learning Experience

John I. Goodlad

For the past five months, regaining my health has dominated my daily life. The accompanying hours of contemplation have had a profound impact on my thinking. This has not changed my ecology of belief, but it has made elements of it much clearer: We will not have the nation of our rhetorical expectations—the American Dream—until equity and justice for all are at the heart of school mission, public policy, and our daily behavior. This is the argument of the book written with colleague Corinne Mantle-Bromley and son Stephen John Goodlad, published last year, Education for Everyone: Agenda for Education in a Democracy. My ill health seems to mirror that of the nation.

On our way to the clinic one day, I railed to Stephen about the dehumanization accompanying serious illness. He took exception, claiming quite the reverse—that I am going through a very humanizing journey of actually experiencing the downside of being human. I was sharply reminded of my own teaching: reading, thinking, and talking about the shortcomings of my social and political democracy fall far short of addressing them.

Reflecting on Stephen's remark brought me into the parallel between the inequities and injustices in our care of the disabled and the education of the young. Because of the education I was fortunate to get from my little-schooled parents and from our schools, I am now getting the best of health care. (See my Romances with Schools: A Life of Education, published in 2004). But millions of children are deprived of the education that provides a pathway into the resources they need to live productive, satisfying lives and to ensure such for their children.

Day after day during these five months, I have listened to the conversations of people young and old who not only suffer life-threatening illnesses but also contemplate years of accompanying indebtedness that will deprive them of what the more fortunate take for granted, I among them.

As we go about our work each day, how often do we ever think about the relationship between the education we seek to provide and the well-being of both our democracy and the diverse array of human beings in its care? Are those we elect to care for this democracy aware that those test scores they seek to raise correlate not at all with the dispositions of honesty, integrity, good judgment, dependability, compassion, good workmanship, and the like that we expect of our citizens and that we expect our schools to develop in the young?

We do not need more education summits and commissioned reports to tell us what is wrong and what to do. But we do need lay leaders who sit in the equivalent of those clinic waiting rooms, participating with the advantaged and disadvantaged in conversations of our cultural infrastructure. And we do need educators—positional leaders or not—who hurry home from conferences such as this to work with their colleagues, students, and parents in taking inventory of the inequities and injustices embedded in their schools and pursuing an agenda of renewal. Even with our disabilities, we are fortunate to be doing the work we do with the personal abilities our circumstances have enabled us to develop.

Stephen was right. Although my daily curriculum would not be of my choosing, it is enriching my readiness for work awaiting me. I look forward to having the time to use well what I am learning. I very much regret, however, that I will not be able to bring to what I do a couple of months from now what I would have learned from attending the 2005 ASCD Annual Conference.

John I. Goodlad is president of the Institute for Educational Inquiry and a founder of the Center for Educational Renewal at the University of Washington. He is the author of over thirty books on education, including the highly acclaimed A Place Called School (McGraw-Hill, 1984), Teachers for Our Nation's Schools (Jossey-Bass, 1990), and In Praise of Education (Teachers College Press, 1997).

Read the full post . . .

Who's Exhibiting in Orlando?

Maximize your free time in the conference exhibit hall. Decide which booths are first on your list after reviewing the 400+ companies ready to wow you at this year's Exhibit Show.

Be sure to check out our online tool that makes it easy to find where exhibitors will be in the exhibit hall, with an interactive map of the hall. First, check the complete list of exhibitors, and then head over to our enhanced online exhibitor listing.

If you are an exhibitor, you will find all the information you need on our exhibitors page.

Read the full post . . .

ASCD Networks Receive Awards

Are you interested in

• . . . rural schools?
• . . . mentoring?
• . . . new teachers?
• . . . character education?

If so, you might be interested in the three award-winning ASCD networks on these topics.

Award Winners

On Saturday, April 2, three ASCD networks will be recognized with a Network Publication Award at the annual Network Facilitators Meeting at our Annual Conference. The award-winning networks are the

• Rural Schools Network for the ASCD Rural Schools Network Newsletter;
• Mentoring Leadership and Resource Network for Whose Job Is It Anyway? A Resource Guide for Mentors and New Teachers; and
• Character Education Network for Character, 15th Anniversary Edition.

What Are Networks?

ASCD networks are member-initiated groups designed to unite people around a common area of interest in the field of education. Network members can

• exchange ideas
• share information
• identify and solve problems
• grow professionally
• establish collegial relationships

Because members can be widespread, communication via newsletters, journals, and other publications is the most important link for many network members. As the networks program has grown, network publications have developed into important vehicles for sharing, learning, and growing.

Outstanding Achievement

The Network Publication Award recognizes outstanding achievement in editorial and graphic content. Editorial content is evaluated on the basis of

• relevance of topic to the intended audience
• reflection of constituent needs, problems, solutions
• innovation of approach or interpretation of topic
• appropriateness of style, length, etc. for topic
• excellence in quality of writing
• availability of space for member’s articles

Graphic content is considered as one element in the evaluation of each entry on the basis of

• appropriate use
• enhancement of editorial content
• creativity
• extent to which design and layout convey network image

Read the full post . . .

What Do You Think of This Blog?

This blog is the result of feedback from our members and Education Update readers, who told us that they found our Annual Conference coverage useful, but wished that it was more timely.

We strive to make make our Web pages informative, interesting, and user friendly, and we want to hear from you if we are succeeding.

You can provide feedback on our blog by using the comment link at the bottom of any post.

Questions or Concerns?

If you have a question or concern about Annual Conference, you may find the answer to your question in our frequently asked questions. If you don't find the answer to your question there, please contact our exhibits manager or director of annual conference.

Exhibits Questions

Teola Jones
Exhibits Manager
tjones@ascd.org

Conference Program Questions

Kathleen Burke
Director of Annual Conference
kburke@ascd.org

Conference Registration Questions

ASCD Service Center
1-800-933-2723, then press 2
member@ascd.org

Read the full post . . .

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, psychologist, interviewed

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, our closing general session speaker, is one of the world's leading authorities on the psychology of creativity. He will explain his work on "flow," a state of consciousness that entails a passionate involvement with life, and propose a model of how flow can be used to bring about more positive experiences in classrooms.

Listen to the interview.

Starting January 18, and continuing each week until the Annual Conference begins, Kathleen Burke, director of ASCD Annual Conference, will conduct a series of interviews with key conference presenters, highlighting issues and themes that attendees will discuss in Orlando. Visit Speaker Spotlight to listen to each interview in streaming audio or read a transcript.

Read the full post . . .

Yvette Jackson, executive director of the National Urban Alliance, interviewed

Successful strategies for reversing the underachievement in urban students will be the focus of Yvette Jackson's presentation at this year's ASCD Annual Conference. Jackson, executive director of the National Urban Alliance, speaks about the ideas she plans to share with her session attendees.

Listen to the interview.

Starting January 18, and continuing each week until the Annual Conference begins, Kathleen Burke, director of ASCD Annual Conference, will conduct a series of interviews with key conference presenters, highlighting issues and themes that attendees will discuss in Orlando. Visit Speaker Spotlight to listen to each interview in streaming audio or read a transcript.

Read the full post . . .

Tom Houlihan, executive director of CCSSO, interviewed

Tom Houlihan, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), talks about what attendees will learn in his session, entitled "NCLB: Current Strengths, Challenges, and Future Direction."

Listen to the interview.

Starting January 18, and continuing each week until the Annual Conference begins, Kathleen Burke, director of ASCD Annual Conference, will conduct a series of interviews with key conference presenters, highlighting issues and themes that attendees will discuss in Orlando. Visit Speaker Spotlight to listen to each interview in streaming audio or read a transcript.

Read the full post . . .

Valerie Collins, ASCD author, interviewed

Valerie Collins, coauthor of the ASCD book Literacy Leadership for Grades 5–12 and president of VL Collins Consulting Professionals, previews her interactive forum on Improving Achievement for Students in Poverty.

Listen to the interview.

Starting January 18, and continuing each week until the Annual Conference begins, Kathleen Burke, director of ASCD Annual Conference, will conduct a series of interviews with key conference presenters, highlighting issues and themes that attendees will discuss in Orlando. Visit Speaker Spotlight to listen to each interview in streaming audio or read a transcript.

Read the full post . . .