National Conference for Teachers of English in El Salvador

For months we'd been planning the 10th National Conference for Teachers of English (NCTE) and of course the week it happens is the week I would get sick! Like having a party and not being able to enjoy it (missing talking to A LOT of people I wanted to meet or catch up with, missed the reception, missed ALL of the concurrent sessions that I really did want to see). I spent most of Tuesday in a blur...mc'd for a while and sounded like a frog...went to lunch with Kay where I don't think we actually talked about my projects, but didn't need to anyways...bought more artesanias that I'm not sure how I'm going to get home. I also didn't get any good pictures, so I'm going to have to see if I can borrow some from someone else. I did get to hear the ambassador speak for the first time since he got here and caught two good plenaries from Jodi Crandall and Joan Shin.

This was the last "official" project for me as an ELF at the Centro Cultural Salvadoreño Americano and I'm happy to say that it went well. There was a little over 200 teachers in attendance not including the 49 presenters and 39 people on the control committee, and would have been more if not for the ministry. Quite a few people came from UMBC to present and help out, which has been great for me as well since I can pelt them with questions about the doctoral program I'm interested in there. I'm sure I'll be back in El Salvador in the future, but I'm a bit sad to be done.

We also had four post-conference institutes. I had 15 people in mine on Strategies for Integrating Technology in Language Learning, where we had 10 hours of learning how to find resources online and develop activities and lessons using technology. One of the students even won an iPod shuffle while we were talking about podcasting! I've heard excellent comments from the participants in Jodi Crandall and Joan Shin's institutes as well. I was able to sponsor 20 teachers to attend the conference and one post-conference institute with my activities allowance and another 20 were sponsored by the embassy.