Dreaming Paris

I haven't been blogging a whole lot. And I'm getting tired of Facebook. It's just too much to keep up with. I guess I was going through a phase, and it was great to connect with everyone, and I want to stay connected, but I'm really not good at it over the long haul, you know? I'm going to the NTA conference again this year. It's in Salt Lake City. Did I mention that already? It's being paid by the NTA this time because I'm doing 2 pre-conference workshops to fill in for folks who backed out, and I'm also doing a shorter session during the week. And I'll be working the table. In the past I've gone to relax and have a bit of a paid vacation, but not this time. I even have to share my room. However, I'm sharing it with a really cool lady, so that's okay. I don't know why, but I was thinking the workshops were going to be 2 hours long, and then I thought, wait a minute, I better check that. See, I don't know where the 2 hours came from because I've been to 5 of these things and I KNOW that they're either half a day or a full day. Sure enough, I'm doing one on Saturday on Critical Thinking for 4 hours and another on Sunday on Learning Styles for 7 hours. Aaaaacccckkkkk! How could I have been so mixed up? But all will be well. Learning Styles is right up my alley as it was my favorite tutor training topic, and I just finished teaching a unit on it in my courses. Much of the time will be taken up with group activities to demonstrate points, so the time will fly by (I hope). I'm teaching critical thinking next week, so at least I don't have to divide my prep time between my classes and these workshops. They intertwine. The next unit in class is communication just before I go to the conference, and my smaller session (an hour, no more than 2) is on keeping the communication lines open with your tutors, so it's cool. I just wish I'd woken up and realized the time span sooner. I'm a bit behind in my preparations, which, as my husband says, means I'm right on schedule. I don't know why I'm like this, leaving things so close to the deadline to do. I always have been. It's as though there's some sort of switch in my system that suddenly turns on at a certain point and says, "Okay, you can think now," and I get busy putting everything together. I do do some groundwork in advance, reading and looking up stuff. I tell myself I'm letting it percolate, which it sort of does, but really, it isn't until I'm finally in that, "I have to get this done NOW" mode that my creativity juices begin to flow. Only then I'll think up some cool things that I simply don't have time to prepare for, and I'll say next time, but next time never comes. I'm going to turn on my Tutor Connection website again. I won't be running it as a business as yet, but it's perfect as a place for tutors to list their availability. I'll only let tutors whose qualifications I've checked list with me, and I'll offer training workshops for tutor certification for a fee if anyone wants it, but the listing will be free. I have a useless yellow pages ad, after all. I may as well put it to work. The phone number no longer applies, but the site listing is there, too. And Eli did such a great job on the tutor profile section, which includes the ability to make appointments and email the tutors. So I figure that if the site becomes popular, eventually I may be able to make a go of this after all. The yellow page listing runs to the end of the year. Longer for those who don't throw out their books for awhile. AND, when you google "tutoring in Tampa" my site and my cell phone number comes up. So. I intend to give it all another go.