Rouge Forum Steering Committee Meeting minutes from RF Conference, 2009

The following is an excerpt of our steering committee meeting minutes:

Rouge Forum Steering Committee
May 2009, Conference
“Gettin’ ready to be ready”

Reflections on the conference
What went well?

• Well-organized, ran smoothly, program was great
• Coordinator was on top of every detail
• Retained sense of collective within the group
• Institutional support
• More people took responsibility to add to this conference than ever before; leadership is spreading out
• New people attended
• High school students
• Inclusion of art (a plus at every RF conference)
• Meeting with others and exchanging ideas about what we can do in the classroom

What didn’t go so well?

• would have liked to see more people here
• evaluations should have been distributed at registration (necessary for CEU credits)
• lack of attendance by college of ed faculty from universities at locations where conferences are held (historic problem)
• not many dissenting opinions at conference (should we invite in future?)
• media blackout
• labor folks did not show up for Staughton Lynd despite invitations
• need plenary sessions at end of each day

Recommendations:

• scholarly debates (inviting more opposition)
• continue to invite local educators
• consider a webcast of the conference (live streaming)
• consider one day conferences / evening events at the local level –perhaps coordinated across the country so that similar events are happening on the same day in multiple locations
• consider conference within conference – attend other conferences and plug RF; ex. NCSS, we have had several sessions by RF members and have put together fliers highlighting the sessions at the conference by those RF folks. (note upcoming conferences in Pittsburgh—AESA, and Atlanta—NCSS)
• offer one day freedom schools for high school students
• daily plenary at the end of each day
• attract more community college folks
• create an art installation

Next year’s conference

Where? Seems like we have a good lead on Aurora University. More information to follow.

Steering Committee Retreat

Where? Seems like Antioch, Chicago, or San Diego are possibilities. More information to follow.

Down the road:

• Create a 15th anniversary mega-conference in 2013 in Vancouver? AERA will be in Vancouver in 2011—one day preconference before AERA for a preview of our 2013 conference (topic: Academic Capitalism, The Corporate University, Academic Freedom...)
• LA in 2012?
• local or regional conferences as well
  

Other discussions:

Online programming
Teacher education
Conflict resolution

Where do we go from here?

• Getting the word out
• The RF News (next issue will feature keynote speeches and other papers from the conference; maybe turn it into an edited text?)
• Suggestion for creating a scholarly journal for the purpose of publishing work of RF folks, etc.
• The blog – more of a repository at this point, not much discussion at this point
• Facebook
• Textbook on curriculum
• Coordinated talks across the country (regional meetings that we might have with similar topics – same topic held on same day. This means that we will have to formalize regional chapters that could coordinate this type of event.)
• Stay tuned for updates on the 2009-2010 steering committee