April 2023
In this newsletter:
- MCELA March 2024 Conference w/ keynote Penny Kittle!
- MCELA Conference Call for Proposals
- MCELA Programing: September, AI Zoom Chat
- MCELA Programming: October 21, In-person Interdisciplinary Workshop on Combining Language and Visual Arts: Exploring the Meaning(s) of Literacy, Bangor
- MCELA Programming: October/November, Online Book Study of Gholdy Muhammad's Unearthing Joy
- NCTE Co-Sponsored Event October 2, A Conversation about Intellectual Freedom with NCTE Affiliates for Banned Books Week
- CCTE Co-Sponsored Event October 3, An Evening with Laurie Halse Anderson
President's Message:
This year's conference theme, Ignite Joy–Tending the Spaces Between, is focused on allowing space for contemplating, planning, connecting, and exploring. After years of focusing on being resilient, now is a time to acknowledge our need to rekindle joy in our practice, our classrooms, and our community.
How do we ignite joy in learning? By tending the spaces between our purpose and ourselves, between ourselves and our students, between our students and their learning, between their learning and their motivation, between their motivation and their creativity, between their creativity and their inspiration, between their inspiration and their individuality. There is much we need to tend to if we want to ignite joy in learning.
Our conference theme was inspired by a poem called “Fire” by Judy Brown, from Leading from Within: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Lead (2007), edited by Sam M. Intrator & Megan Scribner.
Excerpt from “Fire”
What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
…
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
Read the whole poem here
So if we think of joy as a fire, something we want to ignite in our learners, we need to think of more than just the wood, more than just the curriculum. We must think of the spaces “between the logs,” the spaces that allow for contemplating, exploring, connecting, planning, and reflecting for our students and ourselves.
Looking forward to finding space to learn together this year,
Patti Forster, MCELA President
maine.ela@gmail.com
MCELA website: mainecela.org
