The reception was about an hour long and it was just a time to eat some great food and hang out before the session with Harvey Daniels, a well known writer, educator, and speaker in the education world. I walked in, picked up a plate, and noticed a Japanese man at the food table. I took a second look and then said, "Dr. Suzuki?" Dr. Suzuki is a literacy professor at Western that I had seen a few times. He is very sweet and cares about every student. He looked up from the table and said, "Yes?" Apparently, he had traveled with Dr. Maples, my advisor by the way, but she had gotten sick so he was now by himself. Tamara and I were able to eat dinner with him, talk about education, learn his life story, and discuss getting into the doctoral program!!! It was so great! When we went over to the Harvey Daniels session he sat beside me and he was part of my group for many of the group discussions. Before leaving, I invited him to join our local council and be the WKU representative. He ended up coming to our meeting the next day and he also gave me his card and told me to call him if I needed anything. I was thinking the whole time, what a blessing.
The rest of the conference, I facilitated two sessions, that is basically where you introduce a presenter during a breakout session, but I got to attend a few that I wanted and learned a lot. I had butterflies in my stomach for most of the day Friday about my presentation on Saturday, but it helped me forget my nervousness when I met several well-known authors.
Friday evening we enjoyed a great dinner at Olive Garden and then Tamara helped me stuff 120 folders, that I had purchased for $0.20 each (they were supposed to be $0.99 each, but the sign was wrong so I got them for $0.20, yet again another blessing.) We only stuffed 120 even though I bought 150 and had enough handouts for 150 people, but I thought there was no way my session would be full. Boy was I wrong!
Saturday morning, my nerves had settled and I was only really nervous about setting up the laptop and projector, because that stuff always messes up when you really need it to work. I had a few minor problems but everything was fixed by the time of the presentation. My session flowed smoothly, it was completely packed, and I was almost swarmed at the end with questions, which is always a good sign. I gave away 149 folders, some of which had to be stuffed after the session started by my facilitator and Tamara. I also had a moral support group on the first row of friends and coworkers. I was very thankful for them. I got compliments and thank-you's from people that attended for the rest of the day. I had one person tell me I needed to write a book about Family Literacy Nights, and a few others that asked if I was going to be presenting at the two other big conferences during the year. I was very encouraged.
I attended many good sessions the rest of the day and learned even more and then headed home to rest and relax! I am so very happy about all the great blessings I received this weekend. I do not think anything could have been better!
Many of you know, I absolutely love meeting authors! Here are a few pictures of the authors I met this weekend:
George Ella Lyon
Sharon Draper
Francine Johnston
Diane Z. Shore
1 comment:
Yay, Stephanie! Your success is no surprise to anyone who knows you. You are very passionate about reading and it shows when you talk about it. I'm sure that the packed group learned a lot from your presentation. Aren't you glad it's over?!! Now you can get back to the other million things you have going on. :)
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