On November 15th, I attended the RITELL
conference at Rhode Island College.
I was
excited to attend this conference, education has been a passion of mine my
entire life and I am still trying to figure out exactly which direction I want
to go in my quest to become the best educator I can be.
I had
heard of RITELL in the past but had never been to any of their conferences or
read any of their materials. Before the
conference I did look at their website and read a few things about this program
and the conference. After reading that
this conference was being sponsored by Lee and Low Books and that it would
showcase books for multicultural learning, I could not wait to go. One of my strongest beliefs in education is
that all children should be taught to read and have access to books that
pertain to who they are as individuals, this includes different cultures,
religions, ethnicity, home life, and even sexuality.
Unfortunately
for me, the conference was not exactly what I thought it would be about. My first impressions of RITELL were not
exactly great. After waiting in line to
obtain my registration materials, I was shuffled between two different people,
I was finally given a name badge and sent on my way. I walked into the conference room and
instantly felt lost. There was no one to
great new members or to show you were to go.
Once we figured out were to sit and the conference began, it did not get
much better.
Being a
new member of a “professional group”, I expected the president or secretary to
introduce RITELL to the new members, or at least explain in some detail what it
was and what they do. It seemed like
they expected you to be familiar with who and what they were all about, and I
was a little surprised they did not at any point mention new members. Any conferences I have been to in the past
would make a general statement to welcome the new members and offer to answer
any questions they may have at the end of the conference, this was never done
at the RITELL conference.
The
disorganization continued with computer glitches, missing material, and
presenters that just read the power point slides that were being projected onto
the screen. I know public speaking and
presenting can be intimidating and overwhelming, but if you are going to
present you should at least know your materials.
The
positive things I did take from this conference are new professional contacts
and I was able to obtain a few lists of books that will work for a
multicultural classroom. Now that my
membership is fully activated online, I have been able to access their entire
website and have found some very valuable information and resources to help me
teach children that are ELL students.
Even though I will be teaching science, I will have students that are
ELL and this information will important.
With being a member of RITELL, I can email any member of the board to
ask questions and if they can they will help with pointing me in the correct
direction or putting me in contact with someone who would be able to help me.
This
conference might not have been that great, but I know I will attend another
RITELL conference in the future.
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