thomsen.

Such a beautiful day today. What can I say? This day is off to an excellent start. Right now, I'm sitting in the lobby of the Renaissance Hotel in Seattle, WA. First word that comes to mind: fancy. You know if I was rich, then that would be a different story, but guess what? I haven't gotten there yet ;-) Even with a discount, the cost a night for a room at this hotel is around two-hundred a night. Some of you are wondering, "Why are you in Seattle in the first place?" To be honest, there's two reasons: first, I missed the city and always love being anywhere in the Pacific Northwest. Second, there's a conference that I have to attend to help me improve my already amazing skills teaching American Sign Language.

I still haven't decided which session I want to go to...there's so many great options! I guess I'm gonna go with these two: Assess Student ASL, HOW? presented by Kim Pudans-Smith and Overview of ASL Teaching Methods presented by Dr. Keith Cagle and Kim Brown Kurz. However, before I went their presentations, I decided to go check out National ASL Standards Overview that was being presented before those two sessions. I think the National ASL Standards Overview was extremely informative since they simplified quite a bit from last time and the 5C's made it that much more to understand. I'm not really going to elaborate too much, but if you want to learn more, feel free to check it out here.

Of the two sessions, I really found that Kim Pudans-Smith to be much more engaging. It seems that many ASL teachers were having a difficult time finding ways to assess the ASL skill(s) level of their students. Kim believe that having a well-organized rubric is the key to making not only the teacher job easier, but as well as it gives students a better understanding of what the teacher expectation(s) are. 

Although, I do wish that the question(s) should have been saved for the last half an hour of the presentation because she was still unfinished with her presentation when we were running out of time. Again, it just strictly time management that could and should improve for next time. 

Lunch: Ivan and Starbucks. No additional comments! Check the photo! 

Again, the presentation, Overview of ASL Teaching Methods (actual presentation, part 1, part 2), was informative, organized, and extremely detailed. Almost too detailed. Yes, it is true that we read faster than when we're listening, but when you have that much information, it's easy to get distracted. I noticed that some of my colleagues were getting bored, lost, or trying to catch up to be engaged in the presentation. Again, it's a matter of personal taste and your learning style. As for me, I typed notes in my laptop, when that died, I took out my iPod Touch and continued to take notes to help me remember and recall what I learned. 

Overall, it was a fantastic learning experience and I'm looking forward toward to learning more tomorrow! It's gonna be a long day too!