BARD COLLEGE'S INSTITUTE FOR WRITING AND THINKING PLANS TWO DAY CONFERENCE FROM RECENT WORK AT BARD COLLEGE.

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.-Bard College's innovative Institute for Writing and Thinking continues its longstanding practice of offering experiential workshops with "A Life in School: What the Teacher Learned." This two-day conference, based on Jane Tompkins's book of the same title, will explore the process by which we learn from recalling and telling the stories of our lives. The conference will take place on from 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Friday, April 16, and from 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 17 on the Bard College campus. Tompkins will be the conference's keynote speaker and Peter Elbow will act as a respondent. Registration is required.

"A Life in School" will address a central question, What can telling the stories of our lives in school teach us about learning? Discussions will be based on Tompkins's memoir, which challenges teachers to address this question. The conference will also explore the relationship between what and how teachers learn and what and how they teach in their classrooms.

In conference workshops participants will write stories of their lives in school. They will reflect on what these stories tell them about their own and their students' learning and will consider the implications of what they learn for transforming schools. The conference will also consider the connections between narrative and analytical writing by practicing ways to bring together personal observation and philosophical reflection.

Keynote speaker Jane Tompkins is professor of English at Duke University and author of Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction; West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns; and A Life in School: What the Teacher Learned. Peter Elbow is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of Writing without Teachers, Writing with Power, What is English?, and Embracing Contraries.

The fee for the April 16 and 17 conference is $175. Participants are asked to read Jane Thompkins's book A Life in School: What the Teacher Learned before the conference. For information and registration, call 914-758-7484 or e-mail jsmith @ bard.edu.

This event was last updated on 03-02-2001

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