TYCA Reflection

Short Reflection on TYCA-Midwest Conference in Des Moines, Iowa (October 2010)

At the TYCA (Two-Year College Association)English conference, I attended six different sessions, and most of them were quite good. The first was called “Composting: Multiple Literacies in the Composition Classroom,” and it taught us how to use specific technological tools (such as animoto.com) to help construct interesting writing assignments for students. The second was called “Harvesting the Talents of Digital Natives”; like the first session, it stressed new, innovative approaches for engaging students in both writing and literature assignments. The third session was called “Shaking Up Students’ Perspectives Through Fun in the Classroom.” It was the most interactive and dynamic session of the conference. The emphasis was really on how to make the classroom more fun for all—through the use of role-play, drawing, and other creative activities. The last session of the day was on how to make African-American students successful, but this session really wasn’t all that helpful to me because we don’t really have that many black students on our campus. The next day, Saturday, I attended a session on using social networking in the classroom. Although it was too fast-paced, it was productive and engaging. The last session was a nice surprise; it was conducted by Neville Britto, who has taught community college in Michigan for 30 years. He basically just shared with us his ideas for successful teaching—it was very low-tech, but still highly successful. The man definitely commanded a sense of authority. All in all, a very good conference—I liked all the sessions but one, and I think I liked it better than the last TYCA Conference I attended in Chicago in 2008.