Monday, March 12, 2012

1st day of Oxford Round Table

Things got off to a lively start today. Each presenter has 15 minutes to tell the group his/her topic. Then, another person leads a 15 minute discussion. The overall theme is childhood education, but the presentations have varied- everything from helicopter mothers to civic responsibility to preschool explusion rates!

There was a lot of discussion about integration and connections (peer-peer, parent-child, teacher-child, parent-child). It's really interesting to see how experiences differ-- both across the United States and around the world. While most of the conference participants are from the field of education, there are also representatives from psychology, neuroscience and linguistics. Each discipline brings with it a specific perspective, and looking at an issue through a new lens is really wonderful.

In the last afternoon, I took a short walk around Oxford with a new friend, Dr. Arnold Nyarambi. He's originally from Zimbabwe, but teaches at East Tennessee State University. He gave me a preview of his presentation- a discussion of Autism in Africa. Truly incredible information! While talking & walking, we stumbled across Oxford Castle and had a quick look around. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to see more of Oxford tomorrow afternoon. We had to head back to the College for dinner, where we celebrated another new friend's birthday, Dr. Penchusee Cefola from California Lutheran University. Happy birthday Penny!

Click here for a few pictures from today

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