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| Plenary Hall on Day 1 |
I attended the AATE/ALEA Cutting Edge conference in Hobart about two weeks ago and my head is still giddy with the pedagogical possibilities I experienced there. Each morning, I stepped out into the bracing stillness of the harbour's Southern Ocean air, looked up at the looming snow-specked rockface of Mt. Wellington, and smelt the collective woodfire of the street's chimneys.
The walk to Wrest Point Convention Centre was chilly but the scenery and ambience always made up for it.
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| View of Mt Wellington from Wrest Point |
Where does one start with a conference attended by 1100 delegates, a conference that went for four days, a conference where 260 separate teachers and educational specialists shared their knowledge and ideas with one another? Many times I felt like a kid at a music festival with multiple stages, wrestling with the agonising need to make a decision about which bands to see. Gnashing my teeth whenever I noted that two or three or even four great workshops were up against each other.
Like many other attendees, I was spoilt for choice.
Day Zero: The extended pre-conference sessions gave me a chance to engage more closely with the pedagogy of international speakers Linda Hoyt and Steven Layne, who were both such enthusiastic presenters that one couldn't help but get swept away in the positive and constructive methodology they shared. Dr Layne spoke wonderfully about using feedback and community-styled classroom environments, and modeled how this works by getting those of us who attended the session to generate creative writing pieces and accompanying feedback.
Day One: My highlight for the second day (the first day of the conference-proper) was a session in which South Australian teacher and researcher Sarah McDonald discussed the problematic stereotyping that has contributed to the timbre of boy-focused literacy initiatives in Western education. Her ongoing research was both useful and thought-provoking. Another highlight for the day was the keynote from American high school reading specialist Cris Tovani, who turned the focus back onto the teachers in the room by asking them to consider what it is that makes learning compelling for them, and then showed the lecture theatre some useful strategies to get students interrogating the texts they read for greater depth of understanding - alluding to Super Six-styled skills of connecting, monitoring, questioning, etc.
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| Cutting Edge talk on the 100 Story Building |
Day Two: Wayne Sawyer started the day with his inspiring delivery of the Garth Boomer address on 'Low SES contexts - What could they mean for 'English'". Among the many insightful points made, Professor Sawyer highlighted the concentrations of disadvantage in those of low socio-economic status, asserting that deficiencies in performance within the subject of English are always about class. I'm not going to do justice to his keynote address in the space of a paragraph, however, the inclusion of the Motivation engagement Education (MeE) framework - and it's 'Fair Go' principles - provided a lot of intellectual grist for the audience. Later in the day, I was also fortunate to attend a session on the Seven Steps to Writing Success presented by its creator, Jen McVeity, and in the space of just 35 minutes she managed to convey enough material for several lessons' worth of creative writing instruction. It was fantastic.
Day Three: The last day of the conference was another big one, with Israeli educator Dr. Adam Lefstein sharing his research on classroom practice. Dr Lefstein made the case for repositioning Professional Learning as something that should happen on the job rather than outside it, and spoke illuminatingly about the way discourse shapes our thinking as teachers, as well as the need for educators to focus on positive practice when observing each other (rather than the usual things in the classroom that can go wrong). Dr Lefstein lectured about a lot that really spoke to me, and I can see myself blogging more about him more extensively in the future. The final day of the conference was also the one in which my colleague Kira Bryant collaborated with me on presenting our own materials on teaching explicit creative writing skills in the classroom. I enjoyed it a lot.
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| Presenting on Creative Writing strategies |
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| I had to take this photo - I couldn't help myself! |
I met so many great teachers at Cutting Edge and learnt a lot of great stuff. I'd like to once again thank the Copyright Agency for granting me a 2017 Scholarship to attend the Cutting Edge conference. I blogged a few times about it, and the links can be found here:
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| That's Wrest Point on the right |
Some links of interest related to some of the presenters can be found here as well:
Linda Hoyt - Excellence in Literacy InstructionSteven L. Layne - Passionate about Reading
Cris Tovani - Reading Comprehension Specialist
Elizabeth Birr Moje - Dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan
100 Story Building - Creativity and Literacy for Young People
Wayne Sawyer and Larissa McLean Davies - Investigating Literary Knowledge in English Teachers
Angela Meyer - Flash Fiction
Jen McVeity - Seven Steps to Writing Steps
Rosie Kerin - Write Me: Workshops on English and Literacy
Adam Lefstein - Some useful articles on his research around classroom management and professional learning
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