Warning: I’m reflecting over my day/working on my day 3 blog post. There will be a few tweets here in the next few minutes. #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
(On the way to dinner tonight–in my first ever Uber car–Tracy and Julia and I discussed the formatting of this blog post. Today (day 2, day 1) I wanted to focus on things tweetable because I knew that my schedule included some people who say lots of things that are tweetable. So should I compile actual Tweets for this, mine and others? Or should I just write in the style of tweeting? I opted for the actual tweets because it’s their location in the midst of the Twittersphere that makes them so powerful. I began by collecting tweets from people I knew were tweeting in the same sessions I went to and then tweeting out more tidbits from my notes. Jay might mark me partially proficient in tweeting today because I did not tweet live in the sessions themselves, but I know that interacting with my phone distracts my attention more than taking notes in my writer’s notebook. Hence the tweets came all at once at the end of the day rather than while the sessions were actually going on. My apologies if I ended up bombing your Twitter feed.)
“I teach two different species, 9th grade and 12th grade.” @KellyGToGo#NCTE15
— Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
(Me too, Kelly Gallagher. Me too. First year in 10 years that I have 9th grade. And though they pulled off whole-class productions of Romeo and Juliet last week, I’m just not yet seeing the community that I want to see in both of my freshman classes. They aren’t yet in the mindset that they are all in it together as readers, as writers, as human beings.)
(The day’s first session was G.01, “Becoming Critical Educators: Responsibly Navigating Creativity and Critical Commitments in Early Career Praxis.” Four of my former methods students–Chelsea Hernandez, Kaela Lind, Greg Payne, and Hannah Tegt presented with their former instructor/now professor, Michael Dominguez. The young teachers told powerful stories about their first years teaching. And they showed us “In Lak’ech.”)

(Then it was off to H.15, “Expert to Expert on the Joy and Power of Reading: A Panel Discussion” with Kwame Alexander, Pam Allyn, and Ernest Morrell and moderated by Kylene Beers.)
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” @KyleneBeers#NCTE15
— Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“Reading isn’t something you do. Being a reader is something you are.” @ernestmorrell #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
Kwame Alexander: “Books are like amusement parks, sometimes you have to let the kids choose the rides” #NCTE15 — Tracy Brennan (@TracyBrennan15) November 21, 2015
“The white space on the page [of poetry] is the space for the spiritual journey.” @kwamealexander #NCTE15 — Julia E. Torres (@juliaerin80) November 21, 2015
“There is a love gap, and a money gap in the way we look at education in this country.” @ernestmorrell#ncte15 — Julia E. Torres (@juliaerin80) November 21, 2015
(Penny Kittle was sitting a few rows in front of us, and we noticed her tweeting out the things that struck her from the panelists’ responses to Kylene.)
“Change the language that we use to identify students. A deficit framework is dangerous to the development of young people.” @kwamealexander — penny kittle (@pennykittle) November 21, 2015
“If you tell a child they are marginalized, then that is what you are going to get.” @kwamealexander#NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“We are at war with the corporate media for the lives and souls of our babies.” @ernestmorrell #NCTE15 — penny kittle (@pennykittle) November 21, 2015
“Independent reading is what everything else is built around. It should be the center of our classroom, not a supplement.” @pamallyn #NCTE15 — penny kittle (@pennykittle) November 21, 2015
“Here at NCTE, everything you say people are like ‘YEAH!’ It’s not like that out in the world.” @pamallyn #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“What matters most is what really matters to the child.” @pamallyn #NCTE15
— Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“Reading is not a lonely thing. It’s being a part of a community. You are welcome here.” @pamallyn #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“You can’t have a movement without movers.” @KyleneBeers quoting @ernestmorrell #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
(It seemed like just about every sentence uttered in this session was tweetable.)
“English endures because we bring a rigorous reading to texts and we must embrace bringing that to media texts.” @ernestmorrell #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“We’re not just creating test takers but people who can read the word and the world.” @ernestmorrell #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“Louise Rosenblatt said she wrote Literature as Exploration in defense of democracy.” @KyleneBeers #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“Reading is just a pastime? Will you please turn to the person next to you and respond to that idiocy.” @KyleneBeers #NCTE15
— Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“Reading is like breathing or eating. Intellectual reading. Soul reading.” @ernestmorrell #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“We have to do better if we want our students to do better.” @kwamealexander #NCTE15 — penny kittle (@pennykittle) November 21, 2015
(Next was L.19, “Drop That Red Pen and Enjoy Teaching Writing: How Doing Less Work Will Make Your Students Better Writers” with Christine Pacyk and Laura Wagner from Wheeling High School outside of Chicago).
“Only grade them on what you taught them.” Laura Wagner #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
(This session was very interesting to me. The room was PACKED–clearly people are wanting to find alternatives to business as usual with grading. It seemed that in this session, the term grading referred both to the act of getting through a stack–or mountain–of student writing AND affixing a grade on each piece of writing. These are not the same thing. One is just the act of doing the work, as in, “UGH! I have too many papers to grade!” and the other is evaluating said work, as in, “This one gets an A-.” There seemed to be an assumption that the end game for all the suggestions they were giving was to end up with a letter on each piece of writing, whether that happened through a grading competition of through student self-grading. I’d like to shift that conversation to whether or not we need put a letter grade–or points or whatever–on anything at all. I don’t think we have to or should.)
Laura Wagner asks “is our job to teach them how to write? Or is it our job to grade?” #NCTE15 — Tracy Brennan (@TracyBrennan15) November 21, 2015
(Anticipating that we might encounter standing room only in the next session we wanted to see, we left a few minutes early to head back to Auditorium 1 for “The Art of Teaching: Crafting Classrooms that Inspire” with Penny Kittle, Kelly Gallagher, and Donna Santman.)

“We want our students to be independent and empowered readers, writers, listeners, and speakers in the world.” @pennykittle #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“We craft our teaching from our passion and our habits of mind.” @pennykittle #NCTE15
— Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“A writer’s notebook needs to be as individual as the writer.” @pennykittle #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
This will help me to figure out what to STOP doing in my classroom. @pennykittle #NCTE15 pic.twitter.com/gsIuTuwZhu — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
.@KellyGToGo‘s grandfather said, “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“Motivating writers starts with giving students interesting things to read and write about.” @KellyGToGo #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“The best teacher in the world hasn’t put a grade on an essay for four years.” @KellyGToGo on Nancie Atwell #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
(Edit: woke up this morning to a tweet from Gallagher.) (Had to fix my tweet!)
“Let us not confuse grading and assessing.” @KellyGToGo #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“It’s only when we interrupt and lift our eyes off the page that sentences of response begin to happen.” @dsantman #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
(Who else noticed that while Donna was talking, both Penny and Kelly were madly taking notes in their writer’s notebooks? That tells me I need to seek out more of Donna’s work!)

(Dinner break at Travail Kitchen and Amusements. We were one vegetarian, one person allergic to shellfish, and one person who avoids dairy, gluten, and soy. This kind of thing is normal where we come from–and the restaurant did an amazing job accommodating our food issues. The meal was AMAZING! And we made it back to the convention center in time to see Dave Eggers.)
Let’s give it up for #daveeggers @mcsweenys and the insanely talented sign language interpreter! #ncte15 A photo posted by Julia Torres (@msjuliat) on
A heartfelt thanks to Dave Eggers for speaking to our hearts tonight: thought provoking, inspiring, funny, and heartbreaking. #NCTE15
— Erica J Rewey (@ejrewey) November 22, 2015
“English teachers are the guardians of empathy.” Dave Eggers #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
Dave Eggers to the ASL interpreter: “Is there a sign for Morrissey?” #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
(Eggers left us with some thoughts about writing that I sorely need right now. I’ve got a big writing project in the works. And as excited as I am about it, I’m also nervous and worried and wondering how I’ll pull it off. There are days the writing feels like slogging. And there are days I’m plagued with feelings of inadequacy and a nagging fear that I’m just an imposter at all of this. Eggers’s bits here about writing will keep me going through that). (and full disclosure–that blog link I just put in goes to my husband’s blog)
“Writing is not always fun, as you know. But you get there one way or another.” Dave Eggers #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
“It’s often more pleasurable to have written than to write.” Dave Eggers #NCTE15 — Sarah M. Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) November 22, 2015
Tomorrow afternoon we go back to Colorado. But before I get on the plane (if I can), I’ll write my last post: my top 10 (or maybe more or less) takeaways from NCTE 2015. Maybe it will be interesting for you to read. But more importantly, it will help me to write it. The things swirling, swirling, swirling in my thinking due to the conversations and presentations over the last few days–I hope to settle them and focus them with some writing.