I know it’s been some time since I last posted. A lot has been going on that has kept me from writing, not the least of which was my taking part in the “TeachME” conference in Dubai on 11/11 & 11/12/09. “TeachME” is sponsored by the Rearden Educational company based in Lebanon. For the conference, Reardon brought together 15 international trainers and 25 talks over the two days of the conference.
All of the trainers were responsible for presenting four different nearly two hour workshops on a variety of topics and two one hour talks. Needless to say there was a fair amount of pressure hanging over my head over the past three months as I tried to get ready for the conference.
The workshops that I presented were:
o The Shut Down Learner: Understanding the Academically Discouraged Child
o Diagnostic Indicators of the Stages of Reading Development: Signposts to Guide Instruction
o “We Keep Telling Him You’ve Got to Get Organized…You’ve Got to Get Organized”: Understanding Executive Function Deficits in Practical Terms
o “Mom, Why Won’t Anyone Play With Me?” : The Often Unspoken Side of Learning Disabilities & Shut Down Learners
The two that I gave were:
o Relationship: The Key Variable in Providing Emotional Fuel to Struggling Children With Learning Disabilities
o Shut-Down Learners: Adult Perspectives
The participants were educators from various countries in the Middle East Region. While they may have raised some issues that were unique to their particular country or the cultural group they were teaching, so many of the issues were the common ones we face here in the United States.
o How do you motivate the unmotivated?
o What is the role of parents?
o How do we teach literacy in a world that increasingly values technology over skills such as reading, spelling and writing?
o What are the best methods to approach struggling children?
Just like educators experience in conferences here in the U.S., the participants probably walked away from the conference not having all of their questions answered, but it was nice to see that we were all talking the same language.
To learn more about the “TeachME” 2009 conference in Dubai, as well as their upcoming conference in Beirut, go to: http://www.teachmeconference.com/