At last, the conference project is over and done with! Well, that is, for now. Tony and I still plan on trying to turn this into a workbook or manual for teachers, seeing if maybe we can get it published sometime in the near future, but we&#039re taking a break from it for now because we both need to catch up on sleep and our other responsibilities (e.g., work, homework, taking out the trash, washing dishes, etc.). My next big project other than catching up on schoolwork and grading is to write a proposal for my thesis which I hope to write next semester (or the semester after that, depending upon a LOT of variables). But, enough about the future, let&#039s get back to the past so you can hear about the conference yesterday.

After practicing the presentation in front of Miller, Lushbaugh, and Ian late late Friday evening and bombing it (bad timing, losing our places, mixing up the transparencies, etc.), when Tony picked me up Saturday morning at seven, we weren&#039t really scoring very high in either confidence or alertness. He&#039s been semi-sick the past couple days anyway due to changes in medication (allergies, I think), so he wasn&#039t feeling very up to snuff, and I just haven&#039t been sleeping well at all because I&#039ve still had my own homework and three jobs to worry about in addition to this project. On the way to Indy, we worked on getting the transparencies back in order and had to rewrite the script (because we left the original in his office, oops!) for Bryan Macke, one of the local high school French teachers who was to preside over our presentation and introduce us. I had also forgotten to bring my pencil sharpener to sharpen the box of pencils we had gotten to pass out to the audience for the last part of our presentation. Well, we&#039d just have to find one there then.

Once at the Airport Holiday Inn where the IFLTA conference was being held, we registered and got laynards which read PRENTIC HALL and tote bags which read HOLT RINEHART WINSTON in all caps like that. I got a smiley sticker (It&#039s orange, yuck.) on my badge because it was my first year there, and we both got blue ribbons to affix to our badges to show that we were both presenters. After rearranging our stuff a bit and going through the folder of information they gave us, we went in search of the coffee bar that was promised in the leaflets. We needed caffeine!

We found it in the room with all the vendors, and we wandered around looking at all the free samples of fund raiser foods as well as all the books, ties, pins, stickers, posters, maps, workbooks, pencils, pens, CDs, DVDs, and textbooks that you could buy to supplement the class. It was mostly geared toward high school students (probably because it was mostly high school teachers there), and I was more interested in my tea and juggling my three bags (purse, satchel and new tote) than buying anything. Tony picked up some stickers or pens or something, and we left in search of the first set of presentations.

There were about ten at once, and since it&#039s really hard to be in two or more places at a time (I know; I&#039ve tried.), we had to settle on one. Since I was carrying far too much to stand there and rifle through my bags, he flipped through the program and came across a presenter from Loogootee. Loogootee! I nearly spilled my tea on him as I tried to see over his arm to look at the name. Ann Marie G. Gunter. The teacher Sarah had her third year of French, the woman who took over after Mme. Seib retired! Hey, that sounded cool! I had never met her before, so I insisted we go there. Mme. Gunter&#039s presentation was called, &#034Innovative Project Ideas for the World Language Classroom.&#034 We found the room and sat down to listen to Mme. Gunter go over a lot of the projects she has been doing with the students there at LHS, and I was thrilled to see at least last names I recognized (because these kids are WAY younger than me and weren&#039t in high school when I attended!). It was a great presentation, and afterwards, I got up and introduced myself as Erin Doyle, formerly Erin Ringwald, Sarah Ringwald&#039s older sister. Upon hearing Sarah&#039s name, she lit up and was really excited to have another Loogootian in the room. We talked for about twenty minutes about how Sarah and Steve were in the same French class together and how she could tell they would make a cute couple even back then, and we talked about what I&#039m doing now. She asked that I e-mail her with my syllabus from SMWC so she can show it around the high school to tell everyone what I&#039m up to. It was really cool talking to her; she&#039s really nice.

Tony had wandered off while me and Mme. Gunter were getting our Loogootee rambling on, and I found him talking to a professor from Purdue (where he got his Masters and Ph.D.) in the vendor room. After talking to him a while, we dumped some of our stuff in the trunk of his car (which made my load lighter) and then wandered around trying to find something to do. We ended up plopping on chairs and playing a game where we tried to stump each other with French grammar/spelling questions such as &#034In the sentence &#039Elle s&#039est brossé les dents,&#034 if &#034les&#034 is used as a pronoun before the verb, which pronoun does the past participle take its agreement from?&#034 and shit like that. It was fun for a while, but then I got hungry and we finally ate in the Holiday Inn&#039s restaurant (He paid because I had edited some of his cover letters to other universities for him and this was his way of paying me back.). After that, we had to find a pencil sharpener, and we found one in the AV office where two helpful guys tried to get their ancient electric sharpener to work for us. That done, we went to find our room.

Ahem, and by &#034our room,&#034 I mean the room we were presenting in. We had already made the &#034get a room&#034 crack a few times that day because we were in a hotel and were exhausted, needing to sleep, and having typed that, it reminded me of it. At any rate, in the conference room, we found Bryan who was reading a newspaper. We gave him the script and chit-chatted a bit, eventually talking to some insanely chatty woman who, though she said she couldn&#039t stay for the presentation, wanted the hand-out and didn&#039t leave until five minutes before we began! There were ten people there (not including us three), so that was much more relaxing right off. Bryan introduced us, and I began by explaining where the project originated. Tony then went into the pedagogical reasoning for using comics in the classroom, and after him, I went into the resources a teacher would need or could use to create this project on his/her own. We then went into sample lesson plans, making the audience our classroom, and Tony was thrown off guard completely when we started practing the [y] sound (a high front rounded vowel which does not exist in Standard English) and all the teachers in the audience said it correctly meaning he couldn&#039t do the &#034correction&#034 step which came next. So he told them to start screwing up so we could play pretend more. They thought that was funny.

Next was my turn to demonstrate a lesson using a comic that I drew which targeted the [y] sound. The audience played along dutifully, and everything was going great! We were getting the transparencies up in the right order, not mixing them up at all, we were seamlessly moving from one to the other, and the audience was enjoying it! When we got to the last activity where the audience members were supposed to get into groups to draw their own comics, they were so hyped up and having so much fun that they jumped right up when we asked them to put their own comics on the overhead projector to read to the group. One woman had a comic with a girl who had been cooking rice in bed (somehow), and when her mother scolded her, she peed on the bed. Three comics had to do with mice, and the last dealt with a visit to Paris and a scary taxi ride. It was awesome! They had lots of fun doing the activities, and they even thought it was fun to sing &#034Jingle Bells&#034 replacing all the words with the sound [y]! Woot! My very first conference, my very first presentation, and it was a hit! Afterwards, many of the teachers came up for more information or to tell us how much they enjoyed it. I told several of them that if they wanted more information, they could contact either of us as we could help them out. Needless to say, that was really exciting, and now that it&#039s over, I&#039m glad that I spent forever and a day working on it. All those long hours in Tony&#039s office or grueling over comics or ideas paid off. It was great! I&#039ll have to put the hand-out up on-line as soon as I get Tony to send it to me.

After our presentation, we got our things together to go. There was one more session after ours, but we were tired and Tony still had to hit the store to get cornichons and raclette cheese for the dinner he was attending yesterday night with two of the other LLL teachers at ISU. After hitting two Marsh stores, we finally came back to the Haute where I took a nap until nearly nine then played DnD with the boys across the street until midnight. I didn&#039t get up until noon today, so I think the sleeping part is coming back to me, at last. Right now, I&#039m going to go grocery shopping, so I&#039ll catch you all later. Yay, it&#039s over!

Posted: November 7, 2004 at about half past one.