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
- 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
