MRA Conference in Tunica

I’m sitting on a bed in my hotel room in Tunica, Mississippi. I’m here for the annual Mississippi Reading Association conference. The conference, originally slated to be in Biloxi before the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, is two and a half days of sessions focused on building literacy skills. The chairperson also happens to be the curriculum specialist from my district. Although all new literacy teachers from the district were supposed to come, there are just two of us here from my school, and a few more from the high school. A-- and P--, my soon-to-be-former-roommates, were supposed to attend but elected not to. As for other two teacher from my school who were supposed to attend, one quit over break (she has been replaced with a retired first grade teacher) and the other was out of town for a wedding.

I’m ready to go back to school and start teaching. I wasn’t upset to miss these two days, though, because we’re doing mid-year testing. My principal decided that we should give the end-of-2nd-grade MCT, so I’m sure my hids have been thoroughly frustrated by three tests a year and a half above where they are supposed to be. There was no need for my presence.

So far, the conference itself has been a mixed bag. I attended one session that was supposed to be on writing that ended up not being on writing and was entirely not useful. Then I attended another session led by a principal from a level-5 elementary school about how the school turned itself around and became a real literacy-rich environment.

The accommodations are excellent, though. Tunica is a big gambling city. About a dozen glitzy casinos squat in the middle of flat, dry fields that are part of a reservation. The conference is at the Grand Casino, which is very highly rated by the Casino Magazine. A few of my Teach for America friends are here as well, so we’ve been eating and going out together in the evenings. Yesterday I won $2 at the slot machines and tonight I lost $20 at craps (definitely the most fun game at the casino.) The World Series of Poker is also going on right now at the Grand and the Gold Rush casinos here in Tunica (in addition to the events in Las Vegas). Tonight at the craps table, I stood next to a man who had come in 6th in the poker tournament and won $10,000.

Tomorrow I’m going to leave the conference before the final speeches so I can get to Helena, Arkansas to look at furniture. M-- and I have been forced to move out of our house in Clarksdale because our other two roommates wanted to move out. We’ve found a house on the outskirts of Shelby, out in the country, on a farm. Literally. There are chickens and peacocks roaming the yard. The owners of our new house, who we share a driveway with, also own about ten dogs and three horses (who live on the other side of our house in the fields of the Shelby Country Club, also owned by my soon-to-be-landlords.) We’re going to have to get satellite internet, furniture (A—had all the furniture in our current house) and paint for the new house (it’s in a bit of a shambles).