Since ya’ll know how much I love data-driven assessment, I decided to uncork a wee bit of Super Bowl data and show you why I deserve one of those high-fallutin’ ETS jobs, the kind that pays over six-figures if you are selected to work in the hallowed halls of this “non-profit” institution.

Stand back and watch I sew the seeds of Bubble Test Brilliance while using nothing but our Holy Day of pizza, chicken wings and potato chips to make our schoolchildren squeal.

(Cause if they don’t squeal, it’s not a good test question, is it?)

–4,000 tons of popcorn were estimated to have been eaten yesterday. If one would have stringed/strung/strunged all that popcorn together, the ring would circle the earth 5 1/2 times. According to this information, what is the earth’s radius? (Ya feelin’ me, ETS? Ya feelin’ me?)

–15,000 tons of chips were eaten. If an elephant weighs 2 3/4 tons and a textbook weighs 1/62,476 of a ton, how many textbooks would you need to stack up in order to equal the amount of potato chips our nation ate yesterday?

Please express you answer in terms of elephants.

–8 millions pounds of guacamole were consumed on Super Bowl Sunday which ranks second to Cinco de Mayo. How many English Language Learners does a school need to demonize in order to create enough guacamole to sustain us through 3 Cinco de Mayos in a Leap Year?

Helpful ETS hint we’ll offer to make sure all test questions are not culturally biased: Cinco de Mayo occurs on May 5th — except during a Leap Year when it occurs on, well… May 5th.

–Each year we, in America, eat 3 billion pizzas as a nation. During the Super Bowl 350 slices of pizza are being consumed each second over the course of a 12 hour day. If 1/11 of those pizzas are pepperoni and 1/14 are veggie, who was driving the pizza delivery car when it took them a freakin’ hour and a half to deliver Paulie and his drunk friends a cold pie?

Come on ETS, I am lofting softballs to ya right here. Think of the bubble tests that could be created from this American phenomenon!

Am I hired? Am I hired?

One last FYI… Did you know that Indianapolis public schools took Super Bowl Monday off? Yep, they shut down. Burned a snow day. And why? Cause last time the Colts went to the Super Bowl on the Monday which followed the game, 64% of the kids came down with what was affectionately named the “Blue Flu”… but their parents miraculously healed them all by Tuesday when attendance returned to normal.

So this year, IPS took no chances and called off school before the game even kicked off.

Why is it that the higher up one rises in terms of being an educational decision maker with real power to wield, the further one is distanced from actually working with real kids on a day to day basis?

Kinda weird, huh?

I mean, by this logic — wacky as it is when you really think about it — the ratio works out so that those who make the most influential decisions are the folks that spend the least (if any… and I literally mean, if any) time with real kids in real classrooms.

Let’s break it down in a broad overview…

–Real classroom teachers who work with between 100-200 kids per day. Immense exposure to real kids. Infinitesimal influence over matters of educational policy.

–Principals, Vice Principals and other admins. They see lots of reals kids but all too often it’s from their office windows. (And I question whether or not 50% of America’s administrators could identify, by name, 100 specific kids on campus.) They certainly dictate some policy, but big, big stuff is out of their hands in most cases and they are henchmen for bigger puppet masters in a great many cases.

–District Office Personnel. A healthy amount of power… but many of them go whole weeks at times without talking to any kids at all.

–School Board Members. Also a healthy amount of power. Do they know 50 kids by name? I genuinely wonder.

–County Offices of Education. A bureaucratic jungle where their are more cubicles than actual children.

–State Departments of Education. Now you are talking influence. This is where policy gets made. Kids are talked about every day — but real, live ones made of flesh and bone? Well, at least there are pictures on the walls.

The federal government. (Congress, the U.S. Department of Ed. TheWhite House.) Spectacular influence but they lean heavily on their political aides to give reports (in order to relay salient pieces of information inside 863 page reports such as, “Kids like snacks.”). They believe in kids. They fight for kids. They are the champions of kids. (That should lock up the parent vote, right?)

Thing are outta whack! And why? Cause the higher they rise, the further they are from what they need to see.

My wife was talking to some mothers the other day about public versus private school. She’s worked as a K-2 teacher in both settings for years and as I listened on, something she said really caught my ear.

Overall, she believed, administration at private schools were all about teaching to the top. Push it, set a rigorous pace and work your best students long and hard. That was the mantra. The rest will catch up — or at least follow along. Kids in private school, that’s what they do – top work. And this is what parents expect.

In public schools, she notes that it was all about the low end kids. Get them caught up. Raise the bottom. Sure, work to serve the middle and the high but the “top kids” they were not the ones who were to get the oomph. The ones who lacked the most were the ones that were supposed to be offered the most.

Private worked one way; public the other. Quite telling indeed.

–Which is right?
–Can both realistically be done?
–Can a school raise the bottom while simultaneously teaching to the top?
–Can a school teach to the top while simultaneously raising the bottom?

Theoretically, lots of folks — especially people running for some sort of political office –will say both can be done. But in practice, I am not sure I really see it accomplished all too often.

Me, I do believe — like my wife — that most schools choose and, whether it’s resources, intentions or merely the nature of the beast, it’s rare to find a campus that accomplishes excellence at both ends of the scale, for both the top and for the bottom. (Maybe excellence is too strong a word. Simple okay-ness might be a better word choice.) They either, as a campus, really do well by the top kids or, as a campus, spend a heck of a lotta time working to serve the “low” kids.

And doing that well is hard enough. Few of us really knock it out of the park on this front… or rather, I should say, not enough of our schools do.

And so, the question is, top or bottom?

Well, if you look at the way that NCLB rewards a school’s test score data, it’s a no brainer. Elevate the bottom and you are rewarded. That’s where all schools get the most bang for the buck. Seek out the lowest achievers and make them higher achievers. Do that and your scores go up.

Have the top kids perform at an even higher level and… you really will not see much of an increase.

Now Arne Duncan seems to realize this and has thus put forth Race to the Top. It’s a GREAT notion. However, unless they change the formula of evaluating our academic institutions, we’ll still see more schools look to the floor before the ceiling.

Which groups gets most of the dialogue around your campus?

You want the top or the bottom? Welcome to America’s bunk bed educational mentality.

I had a former student — now a senior in college who can’t graduate because the last engineering class he needs is not being offered til next semester due to furloughs and budget cuts… another blog post entirely — come to visit me this week. We chatted during lunch.

I asked him how he liked his professors. He said, some were good, some were bad. Then he added, “But the bad ones are good for me because they force me to learn the material on my own. I mean I gotta know this stuff, right?”

And isn’t that the difference between kids that achieve and kids that don’t? Really, don’t ya love that ownership?

Public education in America would be absolutely revolutionized if our students — and the parents — simply had an attitude adjustment. Instead of viewing teachers as the ones responsible for making kids learn we need to flip the script so that the students feel responsible for becoming well educated… and instead, view teachers as people who are facilitators of that aim.

Not the doers of all the work for them.

Your math teacher stinks? In today’s world, that’s seems to be a perfectly justifiable reason for kids (and parents, and politicians) to blame the school for these kids not knowing their multiplication tables.

Not in my house. My kids are gonna know their multiplication tables even if they are taught by New York City’s Rubber Room All Stars!

Your English teach is lame? Well, then by all means you should not know how to compose a simple sentence.

How about a little ownership over your own education, huh? Instead of viewing school like a 5 star hotel where everyone who works their ought to be at your beck and call with white glove service, why not view school more like CostCo or Home Depot where the goods are on the shelf, but dude or dudette, you better go figure out a way to get what you need by yourself!!

And if you do find an employee that can help you, be grateful for their assistance instead of demonstrating an attitude of entitlement.

Do teachers need to do better in this country? For sure!

But if they don’t is that really a legitimate excuse for our students not to become well-educated?

All the tools are there. The internet. The public library. Teachers who care. Outreach programs. On and on and on. For the kid who is ready to apply some good ol’ fashioned elbow grease, they sky is the limit.

And for the kid who thinks it is the job of other people to “make them smart”… may the Lord watch over them.

I love sports. Always have, always will.

And if you love sports the way I do you really get into all aspects of the game. This even extends to coaches and how they speak with the media.

I have a feeling I should start to take a hint. (More on that in a sec.)

In today’s world, it’s a simple truism of life. If you can’t “manage” the media (no one really “controls” it, but most coaches and players — the more high profile, the more important this is — do work hard to “manage” the media) you are cooked.

I guess this is why coaches so often devolve into politically correct blandness. When hit with adversity like a bad call by the officials, you know they swear like sailors behind the scenes but in front of the cameras, they all know that you will not last long if you don’t work to say the right things about the refs, your opposition, the higher-ups that own the teams, run the athletic departments at the universities and so on.

It’s like that scene from the movie Bull Durham where Kevin Costner teaches Tim Robbins how to speak in cliches. Funny, but true.

As a blogger, I seek the opposite. I am trying to be honest, unvarnished and forthright. But now that the stakes are so clearly set for me and my school about “raise your test scores or suffer the consequences” I feel as if I am at risk of being too blunt.

I want to provide a window. A look in. A means for folks to see what it’s like from a real classroom perspective in a manner that actually has some flavor, some spice, some opinion and works not to pull punches so that the reality of these circumstances can be exposed — and maybe we can all learn how to be better at what we do as a result. (I really view myself as a learner, first and foremost, and writing empowers me to be incredibly reflective about my profession.)

Yet, there’s a part of me that fears the approach I take to blogging could cause me trouble. For example, if I say that teaching undocumented kids in a Title 1 school who have parents that don’t speak English sets our teachers up to have lower test scores than people who teach in schools where the predominance of kids have college-educated parents who don’t live a community plagued by things like violence, transience, little formal education, and so on, I open myself up to criticism of…

– being racist
– having low expectations for my kids
– not believing in the power of young people
– being classist
– doubting the ability to turnaround our district
and on and on and on.

Never mind that I have taught at Lynwood High and worked with such kids for years and years and loved the job, the parents I’ve met, and the work immensely. But now that the NCLB screws are turning on our staff and all our jobs are apparently at risk — while teachers who work in schools with virtually no issues of like ilk to ours are not having their jobs held over their head if they don’t immediately raise their bubble test scores — am I being too blunt?

The playing field has not been equal for kids who live in America’s lower socio-economic communities since public education began.

And now a part of me feels as if the teachers of those kids are being demonized for it. Is the playing field of teacher accountability truly equal?

As I mentioned the other day, I am a big believer in goals. So much so that I always write them down.

Yet often, when I think of goals, I think in terms of career and professional aspirations. In a way it seems as if this is the way I am wired. (As is the rest of America. We are all about “productivity”. Buncha A-type personalities in the new land, that’s for sure.)

So today I am going to begin with “personal” goals, the non-professional elements that make for a life and not simply a career.

“Be a GREAT father, husband, friend, teacher and business associate.” That’s HUGE to me. And being a writer, I choose my words carefully. It’s not an accident that I use the word “great”. Why? Cause I want to be better than merely good. Now of course, I don’t always rise to the occasion (not hardly!) but I do find that having set my intention to aspire to this level helps me a great deal over the course of a year — especially as opposed to the way I used to live, simply meandering from experience to experience, never having a core set of inner principles to guide me. (BTW, can you hear the Covey influence on my life? That stuff works I tell ya!)

Also on my personal goal list is, “Take care of my physical health.” It’s why I am working to make a greater commitment to yoga. Truth be told, yoga has changed my life (and I am so the “level 1″ student that I am not sure if I’ll ever see level 2 — and yet still, yoga treats my body, mind and spirit exceptionally well. I am just a better human being when I do it with regularity.)

Then there’s “take care of my intellectual well-being.” For me this means I must make sure I carve out time to read and write.

Uhm, hello — don’t forget my emotional sanity. I need to make sure I laugh and participate in things that I find to be joyful while recognizing the potholes — the people and things — that make me feel tense, angry, frustrated, hopeless and so on… so that I can swerve away from them at every possible juncture. Look, I ain’t no effin saint and there’s a part of me that is more than willing to lay down with dogs so that I can mix it up and good — but I always wake up with fleas when I do so.

Goal setting helps me to remember this before I ever even encounter these people. (And you know who you are!)

And finally there’s the spiritual side of matters. The key this year for me — I mean it’s a really big goal — is to be more grateful. Gratitude often feels like the antidote for much of the stuff that gets to me and it makes me feel much more deeply connected to God.

That’s right, I said it. I believe (deeply) in God and gratitude really make me feel like I have a connection to this universal spirit more so than so many other things that purport to provide that for me.

No, it’s not the biggest list in the world. (Plus, I do have some specifics to which I will not speak in such a public forum.) Yet I feel that if I aspire to these goals and earn the grade of an A for effort in seeking to reach them this year, the actual results will all take care of themselves.

Focus on the process, know your larger personal aims and put in the hard work — these are my personal goals for 2010… and I think that it’s pretty clear to see that when I attain them (it’s always good to speak in the affirmative when goal setting; nothing wrong with assuming the accomplishment of any of these aims) the tackling of my “professional” goals will not only be much easier but more rewarding as well… because they will not come at the expense of what ought to be the most meaningful to me in my actual life.

Goals: The Personal Before the Professional

America’s definition of wealth is warped. And the definition of wealth we teach our kids is skewed as well. (After all, I should know. I think the way I have been taught to think about ideas such as “worth”, “value”, “assets” and so on are exceptionally demented being that the monetary association is always my first and foremost barometer for these definitions — when I know in my heart that family, health, service to others and so on are much more meaningful to me once I slow down and count up all my chickens.)

Let’s be honest, in the United States, people use money like a scorecard. We publish the salaries of movie stars, big-name athletes and CEO’s. The higher one ranks, the “better” a person is. And come on, isn’t salary — or lack thereof — one of the prime reasons so many people treat educators in a condescending manner? I tell ya this, a lot fewer people would hit me up with the ol’ ,”Oh you’re a teacher? I really admire the work you do. It must be so challenging yet rewarding,” pity-talk I often get at holiday parties if I was banking an 8 figure salary.

Instead, they’d be schmoozing me up for hot tips like, “Yo, let’s say I was at Bloom Taxonomy level 3 preparing for a unit quiz. Got any sweet “ins” on how I could get all the way to level six without sacrificing classroom management in the process of trying to hyper-engage all the different learning styles in my classroom?”

That’ll be the day, right?

Additionally, to the uber-rich, it often feels like — at least to an outsider looking in — that no matter how much money they have, it’s never enough.

What are they still seeking, I’ve often asked myself. I mean, how big of a steak can one person eat?

Interestingly, I came across this comment from Eli Broad, a man on the Forbes List of billionaires, about what the latest financial turmoil means to the people of our country. Broad says…

It’s not any longer simply about how much money you have, what your assets are worth. The happiest people I’ve found are in science. These people have three times the IQ — maybe I’m exaggerating. They have a higher IQ than I do. They love what they’re doing, they have a good family life, they’re satisfied. People are going to take a look at how we define wealth, and not just in financial terms. They’ll ask, what am I accomplishing? What am I going to leave behind? What am I doing with my kids? How am I going to help my community? I’ve not led a balanced life. If I had it to do over again, maybe I might lead a more balanced life.

Haven’t we all been indoctrinated to believe that by reading the Forbes List of billionaires we are also reading a list of those who are the most happy and satisfied in life? Haven’t we all been served a glass of kool-aid that gets us to believe that the more we possess, the more we are fulfilled?

Are we now at the dawn of re-evaluating wealth? Does 2010 ring in a year when fulfillment is part of the equation in determining one’s “assets”?

Will the ghost of my “level of income equates to my level of value in this world” ever stop haunting me?

Cause that’s the tainted Kool-Aid I done drunk.

For the price of $65.00, starting in January, you will now be able to take a Los Angeles Gang Tour for Tourists. No joke… check out this article about it in the Los Angeles Times.

My first reaction was, these people are sick. And they are crazy. And they are looking to exploit inner city L.A. for profit.

And if they do that, it seems inevitable that this is going to end badly. And violently. And fast.

But after reading the article, and seeing how the founder of this enterprise wants to paint this as a human rights issue — and seeks to try and funnel whatever profits that may be had into the community in an attempt to revitalize some aspect of a sector of Los Angeles that is grossly suffering from dire economic hardship, I am not as skeptical.

I mean I am still skeptical, don’t get me wrong. Just not as skeptical.

But think about it for a moment, what is this tour exactly going to be? Is it a bunch of rich white folks who want to go slumming for an afternoon? Is it the international crowd, say a horde of Japanese or Argentinians who get picked up from a hotel in Beverly Hills and are then chauffeured in an air-conditioned gang bus past downtown to the southeast right through cities like Lynwood where I teach? (By the way, if I ever take the tour myself and see a student I know from my high school, am I supposed to wave, duck, or boast to all the other people on the bus, “Hey, I know that kid. He’s in my third period class!”)

Boy, wouldn’t I be the stud of the bus then?

Maybe the clientele is a a bunch of effete Frenchmen who once watched the movie Colors and like to play the hard beats of NWA over their Renault’s car stereo systems?

BTW, are gangs really going to grant “safe passage” through the hood for a brightly colored bus filled with tourists? I mean, isn’t one of the easiest criminal marks a crook could ever hope to target a tourist? Think about it, they don’t know their way around, some don’t even know the language, and they always travel with cash and expensive goodies because they have to pay for things like hotels, meals, and bus rides through inner-city gangland?

Oh yeah, am I the only troubled by the voyeuristic dehumanization aspect of this tour we might potentially be seeing here?

And for sixty-five bucks, what do I get? I mean is my driver packin’ heat? Like if they start shooting at us is someone on my bus gonna be shooting back at them?

Are there pit stops so that I can experience what it’s like to score drugs off the street?

Will I have the opportunity to write my name in graffiti on the side of a public building so that I can learn how to “tag”?

If I see a cop, should I flip him off, run, or drop to my knees and thank God that someone is about to save me from the Jurassic Park aspect of this stupid tour?

And if I don’t see any menacing looking homies who mad dogg me and make me think they are going to rip off my head and kill every member of my family, will there be some sort of refund? Like I wanna feel like I am going to die — but I am also hoping that the bus will serve lemonade, too… because as a tourist, it’s nice to have lemonade.

Oh yeah, can I get a tattoo to show that I am down for the hood? Just a henna though, please. My mom would kill me if she found out I used real ink.

For years I have said that while our attention is focused on an international war, our urban communities have been mired in a domestic war that is costing our citizens more of their lives, safety and sense of prosperity than anything going on in the middle east right now.

Truly, scores of kids die each year in urban America as a result of gang violence. As a teacher in L.A. and the author of the YA novel Homeboyz, I kinda feel I know what I am talking about to a small extent.

And now, you too can see what it’s like to live on the hard streets of gangland U.S.A. Don’t forget your camera — the trip promises lots of special photo opportunities.

Especially when you see the chalk outlines of 14 year olds. Those make for great stories once you get home and share your photo album with all your friends while sipping hot chocolate by the fireplace.

I tell ya, if it was white kids dying in America at the same rate of black and brown kids, lots of people would be singing a different tune about gangs in America.

And about tours that offer the chance to gawk.

Earlier this week I flew up to the Department of Education in our state’s capital, Sacramento, to get formally introduced to the new 2010 California Teacher of the Year Award winners.

Let me tell ya, it was ROCKIN’!!

In attendance: Jack O’Connell, the state Superintendent of Education, former Teacher of the Year Award winners from days gone by (that’s how I got an invite; it’s like the only real Skull and Bones Society to which I belong… and it’s WAY COOL!) and a host of other big kahuna CA. Dept. of Ed. staff… the really “high-ups” who make so many of the school wheels spin in our state (a state which, btw, serves MILLIONS of kids).

All and all I can’t tell you how invigorating a meeting like this can be. I mean how often do regular ol’ teachers get access to the folks who sit up at the highest levels of the food chain in public ed?

What never fails to amaze me, too, is how bright some of the minds in that room every year are. Truly, when you are kickin’ it with folks like that, even water cooler dialogue can turn into an epiphany. Without a doubt talking turkey with folks like this is just so informative/challenging/absorbing/confrontational/invigorating/fantastic and on and on and on.

If only more people could have a seat at this table. At least, that’s one of the big thoughts I had while sitting there (I even wore a tie so you know it’s got to be big) and so, with this post, here a few of the random thoughts/highlights from the day in no particular order:

– Kelly Kovacic will represent the State of California in the 2010 National Teacher of the Year competition. (I was the 2007 state rep… didn’t win the National, though — but the person who did – Andrea – was an amazing choice. Kelly, however, is one to keep your eye on. She is OFF THE CHARTS! Kelly teaches at The Preuss School, a charter middle and high school dedicated to providing a rigorous college prep education for motivated low-income students. Essentially, 100% of her students will be the first in their families to ever attend college. Talk about the front lines of The Achievement Gap, breaking the cycle of generational poverty and on and on… Kelly is doing WOW work… and doing it really damn well!

–We had good, deep chats about the P-16 counsel. I am not going to go into all the ins-n-outs but here’s a link to P-16 and let me tell ya, if we could pull this off, our state would be MUCH better off.

How to implement the recs cited above was a hot topic of discussion, though. And trust me, I spoke up big and bold about how our schools have devolved into the unfortunate circumstance of their raison d’etre now being — at least in too great of a measure — about how “the bubble tests are the tail wagging the dog.”

Spicy conversations to say the least because, as we all know, the bubble tests are on one hand foolishly backing our schools into a dysfunctional corner as if the entire world is about “how to correctly choose answer choice C” when presented a series of A-D answer choices (as if these are the most critical skills life will require our kids to possess. However, no one — not even me — is going to claim that we don’t need accountability and assessment in public education. It’s a complicated issue to say the least (How about another shout out for GROWTH MODEL ASSESSMENTS!?) and easy answers are nowhere to be found. PLUS, with dwindling resources, there are less people able to really look for them.

–Of course, Jack talked about the budget cuts. Let’s face it, what section of education has not been ravished? His own staff, his efforts, his ability to manage the demands of his position, and so on… the nuclear fiscal landscape has left no one unscathed (and most certainly not our State Superintendent). Publicly, Jack said this a few weeks ago… and this quote very much reflects the spirit of the meeting: “I am extremely proud of all teachers, here in California as well as across the nation, who in the past year, have had to endure devastating cutbacks in funding and programs as well as layoff notices and elimination of positions,” O’Connell said. “It is more important than ever to honor people who chose to become teachers and to celebrate this most noble of professions.”

See, recognition of excellence matters. There are so many folks in our state and nation that are doing INCREDIBLE work and with the way the media has tirned to bashing educators as if we are all a bunch of dirt-bag, newpaper reading, worksheet distributors who hide behind tenure and the unions day in and day out, it’s more important than ever to shine a light on who we truly are.

We are America’s educators. And we are proud of it. And we are proud of the work that we are doing. And we are working hard to do better work despite the incredible challenges, obstacles and political buffoons impeding us.

That room is one of smiles and positive energy and people who just absolutely LOVE being teachers.

And so, if there is one thing you take from this post, know that, Illegitimi non carborundum.

That’s latin for, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down!”

Why? Because there are a heck of a lot of people working their tails off right now who simply are going all out to make a difference in the lives of kids and teachers everywhere.

And without a doubt, they are being successful. Now it’s all about increasing our rate of success. And for many people in that room, that aspiration is their/our life’s work!

Makes me proud to do what I do.

NOTE: Here’s a pic of me and the State Supe givin’ and gettin’ some love for the Teacher of the Year Foundation.

Being at NCTE once again proves the point that mandatory conference attendance and professional development needs to become a prime focus if we are really going to elevate the performance of our schools.

I can’t even begin to cover the amount of dynamic, sound, invigorating and readily applicable-to-my-own-classroom-ideas that I encountered today.

From big things like learning how to better thematically connect disparate texts to one another in student friendly and intellectually smart ways to being re-energized about my choice of career paths (look, as I have said before a thousand times, teachers in America today are suffering from a crisis of morale — being the whipping boys/girls of the media as if we are the prime cause for all that ails our schools is not only unfair and inaccurate, but untrue and dispiriting as well) to encountering so many good teachers with so many good ideas in such a keenly organized venue… well, like I said, conf attendance should be mandatory in this country… instead of something so many teachers have to either beg, borrow and steal to attend – or simply miss – due to the lack of foresight by admins who rule the bean-counting roost.

I mean if we know that great teaching is one of the most effective ways to elevate student classroom performance and this entire conference is dedicated to sharing best practices (i.e. NCTE is filled with great teaching; suck as much of it up as you can while you are here because there is more than you could ever drink and only the unmotivated ever leaves thirsty) then why don’t more teachers get to attend?

Districts want better performance but they don’t want to pay for the training that will empower their teachers to deliver it.

It’s a silly cycle that we need to figure out how to break. When I look around my English Department, I realize there is not a person on staff that would not benefit immensely from being here with me… and it’s not because they are weak teachers. It’s because schools have changed, kids have changed (uh, hello — liked digitally wired and socially networked in a manner that didn’t exist as little as 5 years ago) and the world has changed.

Conferences are how you keep up.

NCTE, bay-bee!! I know I am privileged to be here — and more should enjoy the same.