S.P.E.L.T 2012

Well, I think it goes to show how little I blog when it's been one whole year since the last Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (S.P.E.L.T) conference, and the entry I made about that one is only, like, a dozen or so posts back. I should blog more. *Makes a mental note*.

Anyhow, yes, I was (again) a part of the student presenters who were given the platform to express their thoughts in a presentation in front of a room full of English teachers (And have a legit reason to wear a suit. Really, that's the main reason). I was asked if I wanted to participate again sometime during the last month, so why didn't I mention this before? Simple: because I have this philosophy that's pretty deeply etched into my psyche that any situation that you think about will not happen, ever. If you really think about something good, picturing everything that could happen and how awesome it'll be, it never will happen. Therefore, I always imagine bad things that could happen to me, and they never do. Avoid dwelling on the good things. Let them be a surprise. ^^ Keep things you don't want at the forefront of your head. Even if they do happen, at least you'll be ready for them.

Anyhow, so this is how it played out: This time we were given a chance to not present as a group, but instead give an individual presentation. That is, only you're the speaker for 55 minutes. Tradeoff was, though, that you had to write your own Abstract (pssssh) and make your own presentation (psssssh). I thought that was a really good deal, and since I love public speaking, I said I'd do an individual presentation on a topic that I could legitimately talk about: Writing. Shameer said he'd do an individual presentation too he chose the topic 'Assess our cries......if not our performance!!!' as his topic title. It was supposed to be about assessment of students, I think, and Saad, Aitzaz, Basit and Harris weren't so sure, so they grouped together.

Anyhow, I was hyped, to the point where I was again daydreaming about things I'd say and the stuff I'd do, so I violated my own law (and I only proved myself right, as you'll see in a few). I was so excited. It was going to be so fun. Me, a classroom of teachers, and WRITING! I wrote my abstract, which is basically a 200 or under word document that basically states what your presentation is about. Your abstract makes or breaks your audience. A good one will reel in the folks, and a bad one will leave you with a lot more free time than you had anticipated. And I made my presentation. And then I waited.

What happened? S.P.E.L.T people called Ma'am Sabahat and told her that there was no way in the world they could spare three separate presentation slots for learners in a teacher-centric conference. Ma'am Sabahat told us that she was bargaining for two, at least, and so we had to cut the number of presentations, which meant that nobody could fly solo. We'd have to manage. I was a little bit put off, but I said 'okay'. I selected Basit and Aitzaz as my co-presenters and Shahmeer got Saad and Harris. Presentation time also had to be cut short. Which meant that instead of the 45 minutes I'd planned to talk on (55, but 10 minutes are for the discussion time), I'd have to settle for 10 minutes. Grit my teeth, told myself 'something's better than nothing' and said okay, and got to drilling my co-presenters on what they had to say. The guidelines, at least.

And then on the first day we practiced, Ma'am Sabahat was like 'No. No. No. This will not do at all'. Apparently, my presentation wasn't even centered on one topic. I jumped from problems writers generally face in Pakistan, to the Fantasy genre, to the advantage of having writers, to the issues with students. She told me it HAD to be focused on one issue, and since we were learners going to a teachers' conference, we should take it in a way that centered students. Again, I was sort of put off, but I said fine. I'd still get to say what I wanted to say, one way or another.

So our presentation became student-centric, and how we needed to remove some issues with the education system that were stopping writers from developing. And then afterwards, as the final draft was completed, it was about what teachers can do in their daily lives and teaching schedules to encourage their students to write. I wanted to talk about the fantasy genre, the problems in the classroom, and how awesome it is to just write stories, and I managed to incorporate all those elements into my presentation. I was pretty well satisfied. I started to day dream again.

'Oh, bloody hell.' - Everyone

And, yes, my theory again struck true. How? S.P.E.L.T organizers couldn't even give us two presentation slots. They'd give us one. One 55 minutes for two presentations. 25 minutes per presentation. I'd only get to talk for six minutes. I was depressed that day. 'I couldn't convince you to by a knife in six minutes, how the bloody hell am I supposed to convince a roomful of teachers to introduce new teaching methodology?'. It was breaking point for me, and I went to Ma'am Sabahat the next day and I told her flat out that I was NOT going to go there to talk for a stinking six minutes. You know what she said to me? 'Stop being such an idealist. You're getting a chance to perform in an international conference. You're getting a certificate that'll be one of the very few that you'll get during your school life that will actually HELP your C.V and improve your chances of getting into a better institution. Six minutes or two, do you really want to sacrifice that for, what, pride and petty ideals?'.

What do you even say to that? I was like 'o.o...Okay. So, I suppose I'm staying' (paraphrasing here). And we went back to practicing. It was horrid. Shortening down everything to mini-bits. Cutting down our examples and content. A LOT of us went overtime. What's more, my team was seriously confused. Nothing was being linked back to writing, and how everything'll end up improving things for Pakistani Writers, and on top of that Ma'am Sabahat was at her nerves' end. She kept telling her that if this was how things'd stay, she was not going to take us anywhere. She's been a S.P.E.L.Ter for two decades, and she had a reputation to protect, and she was not letting us jepordize that. 'course, I knew she was just saying that to shame us into becoming better, and it did work. We slowly improved, and Ma'am Sabahat helped my co-presenters actually GET what I was trying to convey through my presentation (Thank God) and even gave them a few bases for examples we could use. She was really strict in saying that we were NOT going to use the exact same examples, but improve upon them and add our own touch.

'It'd be really ironically hypocritical if your 'Students' Mistakes' slide has a subtopic 'The Issue of Memorization', and you're propagating it though memorized examples'.

And so, we practiced and practiced and practiced and I wasn't even thinking about the conference anymore. We had to stay back from school until 5:00 pm, and it was still pretty hard (considering our assessments were on), but we did it anyway. 

You know how my theory was strengthened even more, though? On the last day before the conference, this Thursday, we got a call from the organization that told Ma'am that even though they couldn't give us two separate slots, they could give us a Workshop slot, which isn't really for presentations, but it's 1 hour 50 minutes long, and we could share it there. 

1 hour 50 minutes. 55 minutes per presentation. I could speak for 12 minutes.

I was ecstatic. Literally thrilled. I got so hyper, I started to annoy Shahmeer, but I didn't care. Not in the least bit. I could now expand my content and add examples and now I could talk. My speaking time just doubled, and Aitzaz and I were laughing like lunatics because we were the two who were going overtime, and now we could talk so much more than we used to.

Also to mention : I went shopping on Thursday night. I was looking for a casual-looking coat. What did I get? A FEDORA. That's right. I am now the proud owner of an awesome black fedora. :> How's that?

 Anyhow, I went to school on Friday dressed like a 70's detective.

Horrible picture, but awesome fedora. I couldn't leave this one behind. 

The Keynote presenter was a lady from Melbourne, Australia named Judith Grace McNaught. There were two Judiths, so she called herself Jude, and the other one was Judy. ^^ She wasn't really a compelling speaker. She had good content, and a good topic (Teachers: Novice, Experienced and Expert), but she really wasn't able to make her presentation all that captivating. Last year, the Keynote speaker was an Austrian named Peter Grundy, and he was AWESOME. To the point where I wanted to take his autograph, but whatever. She was still an interesting lady. :]

I attended her presentation the next day. It was about using cuisenaire rods to teach English to students. THAT was interesting, and she worked really well with the four dozen or so people who showed up (Which included me and Aitzaz). She kept it interesting and really fun. In the end, she made us divide into groups and gave us a box of rods. Each group was given a theme, and had to create something out of the rods. After that, half the group had to stay with the creations and the other half had to go around and look at other teams' creations and ask their half who stayed behind what they had made. Our topic was 'Something you saw on T.V'.

There was this bald-guy in our group who said that he wanted to do something on the news. An accident. I expected that, and I said 'Shouldn't we think outside the box? I mean, really, the very first thing you'd think of when you got that topic would be something horrible on the news. How about something more fun?'. And then we thought for a few minutes before the same guy said 'How about an award ceremony?', we took up that idea. Here's what we made:

The black-boundary with the green and red in between is supposed to be the parking space. The red-trail that leads to green was the red-carpet. The standy-up yellow-brown-green-blue-purple rods on the fringes are pillars. The rows of brown-purple-green and red with the woody-skin blocks are supposed to be the audience sitting on chairs. The orange-blue-yellow rectangle is supposed to be the stage. The red on the stage is supposed to be the announcer and his podium. The small green with wooden pieces is supposed to be the honorary guests' table. And the larger-green wall is supposed to be the backstage area. It was really fun, working with this group of a dozen or so people whom I've never met before, were so much more older than me, but were still so eager to participate and make sure nobody was left out x) 

Presenting: Mrs. Judith 'Jude' Grace McNaught!

After that, PHOTOGRAPHY SESSION!

Our presenters' cards. :>

I'd say 'Titanic Pose', but then Aitzaz is supposed to be Kate Winslet and- BAHAHAHAHA.

After the cameras had stopped clicking, and all the dust settled down, we went to the auditorium again to listen to the Plenary. The topic was Teacher Research, by this British dude named Simon Borg. All you need is this one eloquent quote from Harris to know how it was:

'It was really, really amazing, what he did. I deeply regret I wasn't able to record the presentation. The next time I can't go to sleep, I could have played it. In fact, mail the doctors. I've found a cure for insomnia'.

Simon Borg.

Simon Borg's presentation.

After that, I attended this presentation on Critical Thinking by this mentor-student. The 'mentor' was over 30, really energetic and reminded me of my friend Sherry. 'course, having said that, I totally embarrassed myself in front of her by getting confused when she asked me a simple question, but I tried to save face during the question an answer session by being the most involved. ^^" Err, moving on.

The third presentation I was SUPPOSED to attend was Ma'am Sabahat's. 

Okay, our Director is a really, really talented presenter. She knows how to handle the audience, and present her ideas in such an amazing way. I was really looking forward to her pres. Her topic was awesome: 'Parents: the neglected sake holders of academia'. And you know what the organization did? Mismanagement. There wasn't a projector, so they proposed that we move to the auditorium. We did that, and it took 20 minutes. Out of 55. So, we hooked the laptop to the auditorium projector, and then nothing happened. They called their technician who blamed it on the laptop. (Seriously, dude? Seriously?). And after that, we just sat around twiddling our thumbs. Basit said that Ma'am had all rights to complain to the management about this, but she was cool with it. She said she saw it coming, and she didn't really care about her presentation as much as she cared about ours. So what'd she make us do? She made us practice. In the auditorium. During the time her presentation was supposed to take place.

Wow.

After that, PICTURES!

Left to right: Me, Harris, Shahmeer (keeling), Basit, Saad, Aitzaz.

...Harris and I look like brothers O.o 

And after that we went back and stayed at the Army Base for the night. ^^ Shahmeer's uncle's in the army, so he was able to get us Mess rooms. They were pretty comfy. Flash-forward to Sunday:

The background was lovely. :]

Let me repeat myself: I was SO made to wear a suit.

'We solve problems. Problems of a...Particular nature'

MAFIA BOSS! Totally Shazzy look. :>

So, after that we had our presentation at 11 am. Like I said, ours was a 1 hour 50 minute presentation, divided in two. So, the first presentation would be 'Assess our cries......if not our performance!!!' and then 'Writing in the Modern Era'. Ten minutes before it began, the people starting looking for presentations to attend, and we were getting slightly on edge because nobody was coming into our room. And then all of a sudden, a dozen people filled in and seated themselves. We sort of just stood there, and then one of them 'Ahemed' at me, and asked 'Is this the Writing in the Modern Era presentation?'. I said 'Yes, but before that we have another presentation 'Assess our cries'. It's in the schedule. Writing in the modern era begins in fifty five minutes'. They were like 'Okay, we'll be back after fifty five minutes'.

You have NO idea how much that stroked my ego. Aitzaz, Basit and I were positively cracking up at the looks on Shahmeer's faces. These people came to see Our presentation, not theirs. And that was almost as awesome as having been asked for an autograph XD I must admit, I was getting slightly nervous (which is most unlike me. O.O I never get nervous before a public speaking opportunity) and that totally set me at ease. 

Anyhow, presentation started, we sat through the first presentation, and then our turn came. The Discussion session for the first presentation took, what, ten minutes, so we had a LOT of extra time. The audience looked seriously bored, so I tried doubly hard to win back their attention. How'd I do that? By being doubly loud, clear and lighthearted. I'll post the videos of my part as soon as I can, but later. You can judge how I did later. :P We all went overtime, and yet we ended right on cue. XD I talked for 19 minutes. 25, if you include the discussion session (lasted 17 minutes). Like I said, videos later. 

The presentation was a smashing success. Four people asked for my Email and facebook I.D. One of them said that his kids were writers, and he really wanted to introduce them to me ( :') ) and two people even said that they had attended our presentation last year as well, and that they were seriously impressed.

I was like 'WoW'. I couldn't tell you what the face of the guy who delivers milk to my house everyday looks like, let alone the three kids who gave a 55 minute presentation a year ago. And yet they remembered! And one of them personally told me that she was really, really happy that artistic talent was still alive in Pakistan, because she thought that we were running short of writers and all that, and how I'd totally managed to change her point of view. It was lovely. I swear, I won't forget those two's faces. I'll be looking out for them if I go to the S.P.E.L.T next year XD

AND THEN MORE PICTURES. IN SUITS.

Left to right: Shahmeer. Harris. Saad. Ma'am Sabahat. Aitzaz. Me. Basit.

The Awesomes. :> 

'Writing in the Modern Era' presenters. 

Me and Harris...I'll have to ask my dad if I seriously don't have a long lost brother o___o

I WAS SO MADE TO WEAR A SUIT.

After that, we went straight back to our homes, since everyone was tired and in no mood to attend another presentation. ^^' Shame. There were some interesting ones planned. 

Anyhow, it was an awesome experience. :') Before I go, though, I have one last thing to say: I DID IT, LAILA. I DID IT. 

We didn't stop at Say'yid Book Palace, but there was this shop named 'Mr Books', which ('though has a dorky name) was just as good as SBP. AND I GOT ALL OF 'A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE' BOOKS IN ONE GO!

I had to borrow money from Ma'am Sabahat, Saad and Aitzaz (because I forgot my wallet at home) and had to pay them back later, which cost me roundish three whopping thousand rupees, but IT WAS SO TOTALLY WORTH IT. I FEEL LIKE A HOLE IN MY LIFE HAS BEEN FILLED. 

So, yes, it was an awesome experience all around :'] Sorry for the superdy long post. I hope I didn't bore you XD. I just had a LOT of things to say, and I suppose this makes up for the lack of activity. :P

I'll make a follow up post with the videos in a bit. Just need to convert them from AVCHD to MP4 format >>' My part video is 1.5 GB and the QA is 780 MB. I need to convert them and resize them to make them uploadable. I'll see how well that goes.

Until then, Bob. Until then.