So I am wiped out. Just wrecked. And I am sitting on a bench waiting for the Disney Magic Express Tour Bus to take me back to Orlando Airport so I can catch a flight back to Los Angeles. I have a cup of caffeine in my hand but it’s not doing the trick and I am thinking that if I just close my eyes for the 40 minute ride and re-caffeinate once I get to Orlando airport, then I’ll have a shot at my travel day not being entirely wasted due to the fact that I am so wasted from spending so much energy listening and thinking and chatting and yapping at NCTE.

And what’s the last thing you want when you are having that kind of blood-shot eyes type of morning.

Yep, that’s right… someone to walk up and start a conversation.

That’s when Mark Childs approached me. Mark is a guy I met online through the ECN and we proceeded to have one of the most interesting, thoughtful, dynamic chats – one of my top three – at the conference.

The guy is just so smart, so nice, of such good spirit – and really, really funny – that, well… it just shows the value of attending NCTE.

So many good people. So many great thinkers. So wall-to-wall with really fascinating stuff.

I ended up doubling down on the caffeine and writing the whole plane ride back, Mark having triggered so much “stuff” in me.

NCTE is in the books. Next year in Chicago. 100 year anniversary. Gonna be amazing.

That’s right. Thousands of copies of my new book are going to be given away FREE of charge. Where?

At the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Conference taking place later this week.

Look, NCTE rocks so if you are going to be at the big event, please feel free to stop by the Disney booth and ask for a complimentary book if you’re interested.

Tell ‘em, “Alan sent you.” (I always wanted to say that.)

NERD GIRLS is my first comedy. (I’ll tell the story about the birth of this series in the weeks ahead, but in short, life is so darn serious these days that I really wanted to flex another writing muscle and simply pen an LOL comedy – something that would bring a bunch of genuine smiles to this oh-so-bonkers world. As it turns out, Disney scooped it up right away when I showed them the first draft and paid me more money for it than for any other book which I have yet published. Indeed, it’s been very, very well received so far.)

Laughs. Friendship. Nerds. It’s a moment years – if not decades – in the making for me and NCTE 2010 is the official launch!

I am so fired up.

BTW, I’ll be signing at 12:30 on Saturday in the Disney booth.

One warning, while Disney will be bringing a boatload of copies to NCTE, they will get scooped up quick. (As an author, I can’t really say that this is a fact that bothers me, though.)

For those of you not going to NCTE, I have a host of other stuff planned. Click here to learn more. (And check out the web comic I am starting, too.)

There comes a tiredness with having attended a big conference, a sense of exhilarated exhaustion that inevitably catches up to almost all attendees that do not live in the host city.

However, it’s the good kind of “spent”, the kind that comes with having tapped into a host of personal reserves.

For me, the draining derives as a result of a few different things.

1. All the energy inside the conference itself. You can just feel the buzz on Day 1. By Sunday, a great many tanks have been tapped.
2. Trying to attend as many sessions and listen to as many speakers as possible. NCTE starts early (well, not as early as school, but early), ends late (school doesn’t end til holiday/summer breaks – that works knows no boundaries like weekends, night and so on) and is pretty much wall-to-wall. There’s always more stuff to do and see and hear than there are hours in the day and taking advantage of all the goodies is something I always strive to do.
3. All the interactions with people. There are so many keen minds, great spirits, wonderfully generous and thoughtful and dedicated people inside the conference hall that it feels as if you are on non-stop communication bender from the moment your feet touch the ground.
4. The deep thinking. Every part of my thought process abut teaching gets challenged the more immersed I am as a teacher at NCTE. The things I think I believe have their mettle tested, the things I am seeking to learn get pumped full of juice and the things I didn’t even know I needed to know get introduced and expounded upon in a way that makes my brain feel as if it has just spent a heck of a long time at a delicious restaurant… and when I rise from the table, I recognize that, “Wow, I am really full.”

Additionally, for me, as a presenter at these big conferences, I give a lot of energy to my sessions, both in the preparation as well as in the delivery.

I also try and give a lotta love to all my book signings. Plus, I will stay in that chair and sign and sign and sign until every last person has had their book autographed. I mean I can’t tell you how long it’s been a dream of mine to become a professional author and the truth is, I still can’t believe people will wait in line to get my signature in a book so hey, if you are gonna wait, I will, too. (But really, seeing lines snake around the corner all patiently waiting to get a signature or grab a photo with lil’ ol’ me, well… it never gets old, I tell ya that.” And then to learn that Homeboyz sold out all across the conference on Day 1 in the first three hours, well… stuff like that just blows me away. I mean I have no control over how many copies of my books the publishers and sales people will bring to any event but this is now the third year in a row that Homeboyz has been flying off the shelves and I gotta say, it’s deeply gratifying – so if other folks are gonna wait in line, I am gonna sit and sign til midnight if I have to.

At the end of the day, there’s a tiredness that attends to almost any experience in life into which you deeply throw yourself. At NCTE, you work hard, you laugh hard, you play hard, you think hard (often about the people that seem to be hardly thinking when they make educational policy and top-down management decisions) and you push the pedal to the metal.

It creates deep yawns in so many, many people… but they are the satisfying kind that comes from the spirit of honest, hard, genuine, rewarding, meaningful work.

Orlando 2010. NCTE will be 100 years old. Can you say “Off the hook?”

(A special thanks to Carol Jago – though thousands busted their tails to make NCTE 2009 the magical event that it was, did anyone else work harder? You rock, Carol… and you are a gift to all of us!)

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.

I am all FIRED UP for Philly! The truth is, I just love NCTE. It’s simply a home-run experience every time I attend the annual conference and I always leave a better teacher as a result of having made the trip.

Why? The people. It’s that simple.

NCTE provides me a chance to be in the same room with some of the best minds in the world of English Language Arts. I mean where else can you go to hear Carol Jago, Kylene Beers, Jim Burke, and on and on and on and on? (To even start a list like this is to risk leaving people off of it but trust me on this one — the BEST and BIGGEST and MOST BOLD thinkers in our field will be in the City of Brotherly Love determined to share some of their brotherly/sisterly love with everyone else. It smokes!)

A search of this year’s program is tortuous though. I mean I want to go see this, but then I want to go see that and then I am scheduled to be over here but I really want to go over there as well… and on and on and on.

(A little shout out to Carol Jago for that one, too — as the prez, I guess she gets to get mentioned twice in this post — and her “team” of course… can’t forget them. So many people work so hard for so long to put this event on that I gotta give the unsung heroes need a shout out, too!)

BTW, have you ever seen more rockin’ authors made so accessible to dweebs like me gathered in one place? Look, when it comes to writers, let’s be honest… I am a bit of a groupie. Jeff Kinney, Sharon Flake, Junot Diaz, Gordon Korman, Tracey Kidder, Laurie Halse Anderson, Sharon Draper, Patrick Carmen… I could type for hours!

And they all sign books in the Exhibit Hall. Where else can you find that?

Ah, the Exhibit Hall. (Deep breath!) Can I tell you how much I love that part of the conference? I get to shop and browse and dream and think and weigh and consider — and get free stuff! (Yep, just work it, people… that’s how it’s done… work it!) I swear, the NCTE Exhibit Hall is like an amusement park ride for English teachers and I wish we all got to take it more than once a year.

Of course, at the end of the day it’s the other “real teachers” like me that I get to meet from across the country that makes it the most special. The workshops may fill my brain but chillin’ with English teachers fills my soul. Attending NCTE is a chance to listen and learn and exchange thoughts, ideas, gripes and possible solutions with so many other “front line” educators that it never fails to create in me a sense of real professional camaraderie. (And how rare is that?) NCTE is a feast for the human teaching spirit and unfortunately, I believe that our profession is, in a way, suferring from a crisis of morale. But those who attend NCTE get that shot of teacher juice which energizes, refreshes and reinvigorates them — and it just can’t be bottled or obtained in any other way.

You wanna know how I always feel when I leave NCTE. This kinda decent writer I once ran across probably says it best:

Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more!

NCTE reminds me why I love this job. It rejuvenates my batteries and inevitably, I return from the conference just thrilled by the idea of returning to my classroom.

Get there if you can or try to link in via social networking, their website, their twitter hashtag, the blogs, whatever.

It’s an important event for the profession — and for our communal spirit.

NCTE has got the WOW factor… and I am so FIRED UP!

See ya in Philly.

Look, I could rail on and on and on about why I believe it is entirely appropriate to throw a HUGE bash at NCTE to actually celebrate students.

But instead, I am going to let a student do the talking. (Please know that she is but one of the young poets you will see on Saturday night at NCTE in Philly if you come to the event… and when you are done, I’d ask you to reflect upon the question, “Isn’t it about time we did a better job of validating the aptitudes of our kids in our schools?”)

Remember, I was only allotted 50 tickets to attend the bash. Please email Beth at beaton@recordedbooks.com if you would like to be considered for the tix lottery for Saturday night.

Beth has requested that you please include your name, job title, school, state, and email address — and please make sure to put ‘BookJam Bash’ in the subject line. thx.

With a little luck, this will become an annual tradition.

So a really special opportunity has come up for me to offer 50 free tickets to a private literacy bash that is going to be off the chains at NCTE 2009 on Saturday night.

What we are gonna do is celebrate literacy, words, and books the way it oughtta be celebrated.

I wanted to open it up to everyone who wanted to come — all my ning friends — but since the food is free and the drinks will be flowing, my book publishers decided that the cap for my ability to invite my web homies would be set at 50 and they are gonna go the lottery route instead of first come first serve (cause that’s always BS anyway.)

So here’s how to put your name in for some free tix:

Email the ever gracious Beth at beaton@recordedbooks.com and let her know that you are gonna be in Philly and would love to come rock the house with us til the wee hours. (The flier says it ends at 10:00 pm but let’s be honest, when you get this many high energy teachers, writers, book lovers, spoken word artists and the such together, 10:00 is more like a start time. LOL!)

Beth has requested that you please include your name, job title, school, state, and email address — and please make sure to put ‘BookJam Bash’ in the subject line. thx.

Here’s what’s up… wish I could invite everyone. (Maybe next year in Orlando).