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A conference resembles the relationship of a glacier to a mountain. A glacier starts as a simple handful of snow, but as weight is added, it begins to move slowly by tearing itself out of the frozen ruts of its first formation, or in the case of the teacher--information. The exposure to new weight from added snows, or ideas, forces outer edges to crack and reunite or fold over and over again until the mass begins to pack into a dense bulk, or philosophy, that grows as each new piece of weight is added. The glacier increases simultaneously on the right side, the left side, the top and bottom, and then twists to cover diagonals. While the shape grows horizontally and vertically, its weight pushes deeper into its channel, and even though its edges are still subject to the pressures of the environment, the center mass seals definite recognizable layers deep inside. Then, when it finally reaches the bottom of the mountain, its cylindral form displays superiority to all the surrounding drifts in the snow-covered fields, and undoubtedly its density will allow it to outlive them all. When the last of its accumulation flows away as melt, the run-off leaves trails around boulders and soil deposits which give a new shape, or meaning, to the terrain. Glacial flows and their moraines are easily identified landforms because they have such distinct markings. A good conference leaves the same distinctive markings in its field with its groundwork of exploration and presentation. Just as a glacier deposits the matter that will shape the contemporary landscape, the conference discusses what matters in shaping the future of the profession. The WRC was such a conference.
I am glad I was a participant at this conference. I felt excitement in the flurry of updated information, new materials, and intellectual interchange with fellow professionals at this conference. New ideas fell like snowflakes on my ears to become the head of my writing flow. I viewed Rod Keller's challenge to be the writer's of our own books a "bullseye." In the earliest stages, my college assignment to develop a course for beginner writers seemed simple. I thought I could water down regular composition class lesson plans and feed the same information a little more slowly. It didn't take me long to discover what an inadequate approach that is. My shelves are now lined with books that attempt to address the beginner writer problem, which collectively hold a reservoir of ideas, but have yet to house a single book adequate to use by itself. I echoed approval of Rod's challenge to write our own texts based on our own experiences. I am grateful for the step by step instructions which outlined the feasibility of pulling my flow from the ruts of tradition and move toward such a challenge.
The next speaker caught my attention with his message of the workload of the Junior college. My recent review of world demands in the 21st century and this country's role of leadership revealed that the high demand for communication and technology influence institutions in their choice of offered curriculum. The landmark experience for this pressure, the launching of Sputnik, brought scrutiny to the United States education system. Because we had fallen behind in communication and technology, the result was a clear message nationally to produce a higher level thinker at graduation--thus, increased standards at the top. Simultaneously, the rapidly changing ethnic background of the United States as well as new federal recognition for underachievers-by philosophical belief in equality-became a charge to accommodate previously underrepresented segments of society--thus, the decrease of standards at the bottom. Addressing such a mixed message has become a frustration of educational institutions throughout our nation and has produced a unified trend toward the two year college. No wonder 70% of the workload of freshman writing classes falls on the Junior college--and a high percentage of that on the part time teacher. I am part of this workload and involved in this breaking, reuniting, folding and bending to make programs fit the demands of the changing edges in our environment.
As a part time teacher, I am often an isolated teacher. I often arrive on campus, complete my teaching, and return to my home without seeing another teacher. I do not have full days where lunch with peers or minute conversations when leaving restrooms are normal. At the conference, I enjoyed bonding time with my fellow colleagues and others not from my institution, around the luncheon table. I felt motivated by their enthusiasm and energy. The luncheon speaker pulled me back onto the mountain with my glacier. I caught a glimpse of rocks and dirt being dragged along with the wonderful flow of pure snow, or ideas, packing in above. I could see that poor organization or leadership can be controlled by a unified purpose and dedicated members much the same as when boulders and debris are moved by accumulated weight and pressure. I could see that the sizeable group has more power to move farther into the valley and demonstrate superiority to others in the field. I appreciate that a part time teacher can be part of such a group.
The most striking part of the mountain metaphor, as with the conference, comes at the end. When all movement finishes and the melt runs off, a new landform is visible. That part of the mountain that has been pulled out and reshaped will live in a moraine as a lasting monument to the glacier's power. Lessons will be build around conference presentations which will project into the classroom in much the same way that roads will be built around the moraine that projects into the valley. Since modern technology is infiltrating my writing world, I appreciative the layers and layers of other peoples experiences which packed into the center of my educational glacier at the conference. I needed to know what programs are being developed for computer writing, who are the pioneers that can answer questions, where to go to find newly developed materials, and how to go about setting up systems which handle overenrollment problems adequately. But most of all, I needed to know how to keep the classroom human, and Neal Kramer did an outstanding job of that. Just as the moraine bridges the mountain to the valley, the humanness portrayed in that last presentation showed how to bridge the technical classroom to the 21st century. I loved the conference.