Dear Conference Participant,

The 2008 Mississippi Reading conference promises to be a powerful experience for everyone who attends. The vision for this year’s conference is to challenge teachers to dig deeper into their lives and the lives of their students, and use the knowledge gained to improve. Every person has a story to tell. This year’s theme “What’s Your Story? Live It, Write, It, Read It” revolves around using your story and that of your students to increase depth of knowledge. We all know that experiences make the best stories. Think about the best story teller you know. I had a friend in high school that could make a trip to the store to get a gallon of milk sound like an adventure! I’d be willing to bet that you can remember some people like that as well. Children learn to write by writing about their experiences. Recalling experiences connects them to prior knowledge, which also helps them to build context. Experience is the best way to connect students to prior knowledge.

The strands of the conference are intended to categorize sessions. For example, the Live It strand may offer sessions on storytelling, shared reading, read alouds, teacher mentoring, etc. What are the things we use to live our lives as teachers and help students to relate those to real life experiences? In addition, what are the practical tools that really helped us to become better teachers?

Write It might encompass the writing process, poetry, professional writing, publishing, etc. As a teacher or administrator, how many times have you said to yourself, “I could do/say that better than the person who wrote this book”? Well, this year we hope to give you directions to follow on how to get yourself published. As educators we do research every day, even if it isn’t documented. Wouldn’t it be great if we knew how to put it down on paper so that the new teachers coming after us could learn our lessons a little easier than we have ourselves? In addition, one of the hardest things for a teacher to teach is the writing process. This year’s sessions could offer practical methods you can use in your classroom.

Read It is about just that, helping students to learn to read or becoming better readers. This could be ELL and gifted students, reading research, 5 dimensions of reading, vocabulary, etc. Every year some of our highest rated sessions are on topics like this. We hope to have sessions to give you practical and applicable tools to take back to your classrooms. What strategies have you used that have worked? Would you like to share them with other teachers? Then fill out the Call for Program Proposals form and send it in.

You may have an idea that doesn’t fit the strands. We are looking for ideas for teachers whether they fit the strands or not. Please submit your ideas for consideration. We know everyone will be richer after learning from each other!

I am so excited about the new ideas we will hear this year. Don’t miss out! See you in December!

Sincerely,

Erin Parker

Conference Chairperson