A this year's National Council of Teachers of English conference in Philadelphia, PA I saw three wonderful presentations and participated in many interesting conversations beyond the boundaries of the conference.

On Friday, I heard Jim Fredriksen, Anne Whitney, and Leah Zuidema talk about teachers as writers, and about what and how teachers draw on in the way of resources to be persuasive in different contexts. A powerful presentation for all of us who are advocates for teachers' voices, and I especially liked the format, which allowed the audience to participate in conversations around data excerpts shared by the presenters.

The presentation reminded me of a heuristic used by Carlin Borsheim and Kelly Merritt at Michigan State with our English teacher candidates: Form = Audience + Purpose. While this is a heuristic that I and others have found useful, it doesn't include Genre. That seems like an important omission because, without genre, the heuristic becomes individualistic, as if a writer's personal conception of audience and purpose alone led to a choice of form. Consider, though, what happens when I choose my outfit for the day: it's true that I pick my clothes based on whether I'm heading off to teach or out to hang with my friends, that I choose things that are warmer in winter and cooler in summer. But it's also true that I'm constrained by what "matches," what's "in style," or even what's available in the store. Likewise, I think writers' and teachers' choices about how to communicate are shaped by patterns we and others participate in, sometimes without realizing it. That's not to say that those patterns determine what we say and do. But they refract our sense of audience and purpose in ways beyond our control, as anyone knows who's gone shopping for clothes lately. :)

I'm often struck by how, in English ed and teacher ed courses, we encourage pre-service teachers to learn about their students in order to inform their lesson planning, etc., but we and they sometimes seem to remain vague about how one transforms information about student needs, interests, and abilities into activities. Even less is said about how a teacher might do this on the spur-of-the-moment in response to what students say and do during a lesson.

On a recent episode of the TV show "Dancing with the Stars" (yes, I'm a fan), I saw an example of HOW this transformation happens and thought the example might be accessible. In case you don't know, DWTS is a reality show in which celebrities are paired with pro ballroom dancers and compete against each other each week for judges scores and viewer votes. This season, one of the celebs was snowboarder, Louie Vito. When Louie was having trouble with a particular move, his partner, pro dancer Chelsie Hightower, showed him a video of himself snowboarding and pointed out how the move he had done on the mountain was similar to the one she was trying to teach him in the ballroom. Here's the link: http://abc.go.com/watch/dancing-with-the-stars/93512/239413/week-6-part-2.

This pop example illustrates how powerful it can be draw on a practice a student is already familiar with to teach him/her something new, not only because it can make that practice more relevant, but because it can make it more accessible--the student sees how s/he can succeed. I think it's also significant that this isn't just an example of modeling--though that, too, is a powerful technique--but one in which the person's own prior practice is recontextualized.

Discovered new program on ReadWriteWeb called PearlTrees: lets you add social bookmarks in a visual web of "pearls" which can be connected or opened to associate them into "trees." Of course a site that combines the idea of envisioning dataclouds with an aesthetic sense would have to be French.... :)