TESOL and CATESOL conferences are as overwhelming as they are exhilarating**. You won’t be able to read the notes you scribble hastily during the sessions, and you’ll never find time to go through all the handouts you collect.
At tonight’s opening plenary in New York City, Suresh Canagarajah ended a great presentation with these tips on getting the most out of these jam-packed conferences. They are actually more ways to think and listen to the dozens of presentations you'll hear every day.
• Contextualize – the information to see what the source is
• Deconstruct – the presentation to determine the underlying values and assumptions
• Translate – the information into ideas that will work for you in your teaching
• Represent – yourself and your school
• Imagine – new worlds, new techniques
• Reflect – on where you fit into this community of practice
Of course, as he talked I was madly scribbling notes which I already can't quite read. I’ll hope Kim listened more, scribbled less, and can straighten these out.
**TESOL 2008 has sessions beginning at 6 am and others ending at 9:45 pm.
There are up to 60 concurrent sessions at various times on Thursday and Friday.
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