OK with people off to conferences, and with summer in full sail, let’s really take a full break. We can report back from the conferences, of course, or anyone with a pressing article can just send those conference reports from the field or articles to me for publication when I can get to them. I am particularly interested in things that you find out at conferences that are important in some way. That is, if you find that something new that really works, or experience validation of something like vPQA that we’ve talked about here, or anything that you feel needs the attention of the PLC, send those reports. Of course, information as seemingly trivial as someone getting a new haircut from last year, send that as well. Some of us have known and looked forward to seeing each other at “summer camp” for as long as 15 years, so in that respect we are far more fortunate than mere kids who grow out of summer camp mode way too fast. Anyway, the point is that I won’t be trying as usual to start any fights or drive some new point home here, and we really need to rest – I keep saying that and we never do – because soon enough we will be back again in the thick of the fight.
One thing that I also want to announce is that I have accepted a position in New Delhi, India at the American Embassy School teaching middle school French. My classroom will be right next to Linda Li’s and it is Linda who kindly thought of me, correctly guessing my boredom last year in my first year of retirement, which, aside from allowing me to write that Big CI Book, was really boring. I will take to India my 15 year old boy, Landen, all 6’2″ of him, but the rest of my family will stay in Denver at least until the following year, for all the physical reasons attendent on such a move. I am committed to the school not just because Linda is there, and I will certainly be funneling information from what I learn from not just her but from the overall situation to the group, because teaching is learning. The school looks like a marvelous one, and the administrators are the real deal with open minds to WL instructional change, which besides Linda was the key decision in my move, and we certainly have discussed at length here this past year the pre-eminent roles of administrators in our job happiness. Linda and I also have already approached Diana Noonan and Dr. Krashen about a conference in New Delhi on CI and they are open to it. And of course I will ask Carol if she is interested next week as well. And how cool would that be, to meet the Australian members of this PLC! Can you see Australia from India? Of course, if we get the conference going, perhaps in the second or even third year, y’all are invited and many of you should come and present!
So I will see some of you on Monday, as we get the war rooms cranked up, and then off to Paris for five days. I can pretend like I’m Thomas Jefferson showing Paris to his daughter Polly in 1787 or John Adams doing the same with his John Quincy, also about fifteen when he arrived in Paris for the first time. I’ll be teaching Landen culture but it won’t be nauseating to me, because I’ll have some real cool visual aids! I will miss my family, the scene in DPS, the Rachel Maddow show, Broncos football, and my long bike rides here in the mountains, but we can’t have everything. And speaking of fresh air, yes, I do know that New Delhi is the #1 most polluted city in the world, worse than Beijing. But we can’t have everything, and none of us will live forever, and so I embrace this chance to work with those kids in that school as if my entire career has been in preparation for it. In a way, it has, right? It’s why I wrote the Big CI Book, as well, to have everything we have discussed here on the PLC over so many years available to me in one place, for ease of planning. I know that God is not only good but most kind, when He takes an old broken down piece of furniture like me and gives me a cool new job in one of the great countries in the world, a new start for an old horse, as it were. I look forward to being there in a few weeks with a completely open heart and mind and great gratitude to He who plans everything.