Thursday, September 17, 2009

I'm with the books

Sorting out my fall goings-on, I noticed a trend:
  • Kidlitosphere Crystal City VA October 17, to bask in the book blogging.
  • AASL Charlotte NC November 5-8. I'm presenting on digital storytelling in Joyce Valenza's ALA/NECC/AASL new tools for school libraries trifecta and will be tweeting and blogging as well.
  • NCTE/ALAN November 21-25. I'm presenting "Reinventing your school library to support adolescent literacy" in "Literacy as Community" Sunday morning, but I'm sticking around Philadelphia for ALAN afterwards.
So you'll glean there's no ASIST, however much I want to go to British Columbia, and probably no ALISE in January 2010. This is definitely a more bookish era for me.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling a little spoiled about taking this time off, consdering our school hasn't any money for professional development this year. It's not so much a funding issue, sine I'm not precluding any one else doing anything -- in my eight years there, I have taken a scant $150 from our pooled funds for 2005 AASL registration, and felt pangs of guilt over that ever since. It's more a sense that I can afford to contribute to my own professional knowledge -- not to mention the fact that I find it all terrific fun, practically recreational -- while not all my colleagues can do that. My feeling of being blessed at being released to go into the world and learn in turn means I never balk at presenting to my faculty or district. I just want them all to stretch the tiniest bit and become a little bit more responsible for their own professional growth.