ACSS Conference

For one of the first times in my life I felt like a grown-up. Driving halfway across the valley for a conference of Social Studies educators, I arrived at ASU West on Friday morning with no idea what to expect. After registration, and some free coffee, I was able to hear Barnaby V. Lewis, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Gila River Indian Community, tell a story in his native language about culture and tradition. Although he would give some commentary in English about what was going on, his narrative character was enough to understand the story and how meaningful it was to him and his culture.

The sessions themselves were a mixture of good and bad. Since I am not an educator, I was not the intended audience for most of the workshops, and they were mainly marketed for teachers to sign up for a longer weekend-long workshop with more specialized organizations. I attended a session on "Global Climate Change in the Southwest" as it pertains to a great deal of graduate work I am doing right now. Although the number of participants were small, we had some good conversation about the state of our environment as it pertains to Arizona specifically. I then attended a workshop from the Arizona Foundation for Legal Services and Education, who actually train teachers in a porogram that really affected me when I was in High School, the We the People program. This specific workshop focused on the implications of the 4th amendment as it related to students’ rights to privacy while on campus.

The award ceremony luncheon was interesting but overall hard for me to feel invested in. I couldn’t necessarily relate to the awards being given and felt detached from the ceremony as a whole. But then I really enjoyed a session concerning “Arizona’s First Civics Camp” and tried to figure out a way to incorporate our program with theirs the next time it comes around.

I also had the opportunity to do quite a bit of networking. I met a number of educators who seemed mildly interested in our program, although it took some persuading to let them know that the workload was completely manageable, and well worth it at that. I also came in contact with the Joe Foss Institute, an organization who runs a similar program to ours, only focusing on getting volunteer veterans to speak in the classroom about civic engagement, instead of the naturalization side that we focus on.

Exhausted from a long day, with my bag filled with pamphlets and swag I left the conference having mixed feelings. It certainly was worth it for me to attend. But I think next year we need to be one of the recruiters holding sessions, as much of the other aspects of the conference are geared towards educators themselves.