Attending regional conferences

Today and tomorrow, October 12 and 13, marks the annual TYCA Pacific Northwest conference, one of the regional TYCA conferences that are held to support faculty teaching English in two-year colleges around the nation. Along with the Pacific NW, conferences are held by TYCA West, Southwest, Northeast, Southeast, Pacific Coast (which means California) and Midwest. If you want to see where your conference is this year, click this link. The Pacific Northwest conference is one of three taking place this weekend, along with those for TYCA West in Las Vegas and TYCA Pacific Coast taking place in Burlingame, California.

The theme at TYCA-PNW is "Pedagogy and Politics" and the conference will feature sessions such as "Eradicating Heterocentrism in the Classroom," "Citizenship in the Classroom," "The Politics of Empathy," "Race, Class and Privilege in the Composition Classroom" and "Politicizing Basic Skills." Faculty presenting come from colleges in Oregon, Idaho and New York (we're guessing they have a more generous travel budget than we're used to or they really think of Spokane as living up to its chamber of commerce slogan of "Near Nature, Near Perfect"), from both sides of what those in the region often refer to as "The Cascade Curtain," a mountain range that divides the relatively wet and prosperous west, wet, urban and generally more liberal sides of each state from the eastern, drier, rural and generally more conservative sides of each state. Along with teaching faculty from a variety of colleges, graduate students from the region are also presenting.

Lest anyone think these conferences are tedious, there's no fear of that. Not only does all work and no play make for a boring life and profession, but it makes for a less engaging conference. Rather than going out on "team building" exercises, engaging in trust drops (that's where you close your eyes, lean over backwards and start to fall until your colleague catches you, keeping you from cracking your skull on the floor) TYCA-PNW is featuring karaoke for the first time, along with several sit down meals, beer and wine tastings and other social events that enable faculty to establish and enhance relationships with colleagues they may get to see only once or twice a year, maybe at the regional conference or the CCCC or NCTE conferences. We're talking collegiality building, baby!

None of these conferences just happens, though it seems that way when you show up. If you have ever worked on a conference at any level, you know how much work they take. If you just show up and take part, and it seems effortless, it's not. The lead organizers for TYCA-PNW this year are Ann Ciasullo from Spokane Falls CC (my college! Yea Ann!), Betsy Lawrence and Angela Rasmussen from Spokane CC, our cross town sister college. They have been working behind the scenes since the close of last year's conference, meeting to discuss the theme, to round up presenters, put out a call for proposals, cajole publishers to provide, find out how to feed people and so much more.