Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Transportation to the Estes Park Conference Center

We are hoping we can use this blog to help coordinate travel to the Estes Park YMCA from the Denver airport. If anyone chooses to rent a car for the weekend, and would consider sharing costs/transportation enter that information in the comments for this blog post.

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Click the comment button at the bottom of this posting.

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Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Sheridan Blau and Peter Elbow: Featured Speakers

Featured Speakers' Biographical Information

PETER ELBOW's ideas about freewriting and responding to writing have shaped the way writing has been taught for the past few decades, both in the United States and in an increasing number of international settings. His perspectives on issues like academic discourse, evaluation, the nature of binaries, voice, dialect, and standard English have helped to define the theoretical concerns of the profession of Composition Studies. Elbow is the author of many books, including Writing Without Teachers, Writing With Power, Embracing Contraries: Essays in Learning and Teaching, Everyone Can Write: Essays Toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing, and others, and he is co-author of a textbook, A Community of Writers. He has also published many essays in composition and English journals, and given countless presentations and workshops all over the world. He has taught at various colleges and universities, and directed the writing programs at SUNY Stony Brook and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he is now a Professor Emeritus.

SHERIDAN BLAU teaches in the Education and English departments at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also directs the South Coast Writing Project. A past President of the National Council of Teachers of English, he has served as the senior consultant for the development of California's statewide language arts assessment, and on the panel that developed the assessment instruments and scoring procedures for certifying teachers applying for National Board Certification in the English Language Arts. He is the author of The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and their Readers.

Summer Conference 2007: The Emotional Life of Teachers

Teaching involves many feeling—passion, joy, anger, fear, shame, guilt, sadness, happiness, frustration, etc. Too often, though, and for various reasons, teachers keep their feelings separate from their work as teachers.

This conference will explore teachers’ emotions from theoretical and practical standpoints, with attention to how those feelings have conscious and unconscious influences on teaching and teachers. In addition to the featured sessions, we will have a plenary on Meditation and Yoga, and a series of concurrent sessions on various approaches to the conference topic. AEPL is an Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English; teachers at all levels and in all disciplines are welcome at this conference.

The conference will begin with dinner on Thursday, June 28, and will conclude with breakfast on Sunday, July 1. No sessions are scheduled for July 1.

AEPL—Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

The Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning (AEPL), an official assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English, is open to all those interested in exploring the boundaries of teaching and learning beyond traditional disciplines and methodologies. Areas of interest include, but are by no means limited to: aesthetic, emotional, and moral intelligence; archetypes; body wisdom; care in education; creativity; felt sense theory; healing; holistic learning; humanistic and transpersonal psychology; imaging; intuition; kinesthetic knowledge; meditation; narration as knowledge; reflective teaching; silence; spirituality; and visualization.

AEPL's purpose is:

  • to explore research on expanded perspectives on learning and its implications for and applications to English and language arts education;
    to encourage research and classroom practices that focus on new conceptions of learning;
  • to encourage publications and presentations on the subject;
  • to present programs and special projects on relevant topics;
  • to provide an open forum for theorists, researchers, and practitioners to exchange ideas on these and related subjects;
  • to integrate the efforts of those in various disciplines who have a common interest in effective teaching and learning.

    AEPL invites participation in its many events, including AEPL's annual summer conference, JAEPL (the journal for AEPL), the AEPL Newsletter, national convention workshops, panels, and special interest groups at the College Composition and Communication Conference (4Cs) and the National Council of Teachers of English Convention.