Let's Continue the Conversation

I had the pleasure of speaking to 25 or 30 educators this past weekend at the 5th annual Leading Learning Conference.

As I was setting up for the session, one of the conference organizers entered the room and asked me about my session topic. When I told him that it was about Motivating Boy Writers, his response was, "Oh, I've heard people talking about that one". My response was, "Let's hope the participants will be talking about it more after the presentation".

So this blog is what hopefully is a longer term solution to continuing the conversation.

What struck me most after the session, was that no one left right away. You know how conferences can be. Get out of one session to rush to the next. But no one left. They just sat for a bit before conversations began happening. When I mentioned this to Kathy, who had introduced me before the session began, her response was, "Yes, the topic generated an opportunity for people to reflect". Quite right.

The topic of motivating boy writers has been on many educators minds for a long time. To see the session participants talking about boy writers after the session was very satisfying. A couple of folks came up to talk to me afterward; one, to talk about the connection for kindergarten boy writers and the other to give me his contact information as this was a topic he has an interest in.

So, I'll be posting some of my thoughts and ideas here about how we motivate the boys in our charge to write. I hope you'll join the conversation.