October 22-23, 2010
CLOCK TOWER INN
ROCKFORD, IL
We have some unfinished business from last year’s IATE Conference (2009), “English in Action.” One message of that conference, culminating in Kim Arndt’s closing address, “Helping the Homeless: Using the English Classroom to Inspire Community Involvement,” was the hope that an education in English can have a role in making the world better—and not only through the humanistic attitudes that the study of literature, language, and communication promote, but also through the concrete actions of our students in the world. Soon after the conference, the United States (and world) experienced the first ever National Day on Writing, an initiative spearheaded by the NCTE, in a proactive attempt to influence the often misguided national discussion on educational issues and agendas. In these and other ways, teachers are taking charge of their profession to educate not only students, but also society and its policymakers on the theories, practices, efficacies, agendas, and values of their profession.
Much has been done, much is doing, and much remains to be done. Equipped with our rich traditions and legacies on the one hand, and motivated by our new hopes for change and action on the other, we face our students, our colleagues, and our society—simultaneously, if at times uncertainly, enmeshed in our processes and products of literacy. We are standing up, speaking out, moving ahead—towards ever unfinished perfections! But, to co-opt the title of the ToddStrasser book featured in Arndt’s address, “can we get there from here?”
The good news is that no other profession is better suited to the prospect of making the most of unfinished business. The English classroom is all about the teaching of process: how to write, think, create, read, and appreciate. And it is dedicated to the purposeful recognition of products—from a formulaic five-paragraph theme to a free-flowing, Montaignesque essay, to a novel, poem, play, to a podcast or digital story, to whatever else we find ourselves producing and studying and appreciating and using.
Help us push on! Tell us, and listen to, the processes and products of our profession. Help us revise our conference titles (listed above but in draft form), and this call for proposals itself, written in third, then first—and now second—person, as we entertain the possible slogan: “Save the English teacher, save the world.” Hmm ... a slogan that’s a bit dated, and possibly trite, and definitely plagiarized from a TVshow. Okay, the work continues. Time for a peer edit. On October 22-23, 2010. Help!
