The Way to San Jose

Last weekend was my first time attending a professional conference, and I also gave a speech about my research on the Irish poet Yeats. It was awesome just to get out of town for a couple days, I don't think I've gone out of the valley all year! San Jose is cool, relaxing and the weather is cool and there are tons of interesting people walking around.

The conference was cool too. I was stressed out waiting to speak because there were a lot of professors there from universities in Ireland and some famous artists. Everyone had an important sounding introduction, but I was just a middle school teacher from Delano :) But, everyone was really friendly so I relaxed. They all told jokes during their speeches and didn't try to act like they were better than anyone else. They just like meeting people that share their interests and talking about it. The only bummer was that a pretty famous Irish playwright, Bisi Adigun, gave a performance at the same time as my speech so only 7 people attended! (they usually had about 18 people). I hoped everyone would hear me. It turned out ok though, because I spoke well and one Irish professor (Peter Denman) that listened gave me some good feedback that is really going to help me to continue my research. So you never know, it only takes 1 good listener to be a good audience.

I also heard some great speeches about Irish history, James Joyce, and even the youtube sensation of hand dancing (you might have seen it in a mcdonald's commercial). It has a much more complicated backstory than you might think! I went to nice dinners at 2 restaurants and hung out with Matt, Bradford, and Meghara. I even got to talk to Bisi, and he's a really nice guy so I was happy that so many people went to his performance. I'm glad I went and now I hope I can go to the big national event in New Orleans next spring (if I can come up with new research!) peace.

Workaholic?

I'm on the fourth day of the fall holiday that both teachers and students were very much looking forward to. Why have I done school work everyday? I guess with the end-of-quarter crush some grade updating was unavoidable, but I seem to be unable to just do nothing. I remember a time when I actually stayed in my bed for  an entire day, now I keep looking for projects. I must love to be busy (and anyone that has known we for a long time just fainted with shock).

The first extra project I just took on is pretty cool though, I am going to teach a university literature course. The school is California Miramar University, an on-line school out of San Diego that a ESL teaching friend of mine works for. The class will be an on-line survey of American colonial literature, from the early explorers to the 19th century. It's no secret that I would eventually like to teach university, so I'm psyched for this opportunity to try it out. So I'm partly spending my week looking over the textbook and sorting out my syllabus.

Then there's my Yeats presentation at the American Conference of Irish Studies on the 22nd to prepare for. I'll spend most of this week making sure I have my 15-minute speech ironed out. I've never been to such an event, let alone be a speaker, so the nightmares that I will look foolish in a room full of Yeats experts is growing fast. It is exciting though. Yep, I'm a workaholic (and possibly a nerd).

Note to teachers: my biggest revelation of the first 2 months of teaching has been "start simple." If you check out my website and course overview (sites.google.com/site/scottraymoure) you will see I have a ton going on. Computer lab segment, grammar work, journal days, vocabulary notebooks, and service opportunities, not to mention the actual unit topics (laden with way too many texts to survey). My second quarter motto is "streamline." Maybe it's the early developmental stages of 8th graders, but it takes a lot of time to introduce and master a concept as simple as a pronoun, not to mention discussion the effects of the Information Age on culture or dig to the deep message of, and answer to the title question of Soto's essay, "Why I Became a Writer." Baby, baby steps. then retrace the baby steps.

Happy holidays

County Fair

Even though Grace had to go up to Sacramento, this was a great weekend of fun, family outdoor action. On Saturday we hung out at Liberty Park for Dazzlyn's soccer game and pictures. A tough game with a good team that went down to the wire (they couldn't pull it out despite a great effort). Then on Sunday Daz and I went to the county fair. We rode the Ferris Wheel, and she went crazy for the games for prizes (she took home 3 stuffed animals). We saw a good little 2-man circus and a cool show with some old hippies giving a blacksmith exhibition. It was like being at a Shakespeare festival. This is the crazy truck they travel around in, it has a working blacksmith shop inside.


The only downside was that the animals were all gone since it is the last day of the fair :(
Oh well, off to Magic Mountain next week!
Peace