NCAE Leaders and Friends,
Thank you for the warm comments and expressions for safe travels that have been extended by so many of you. Please forgive anz tzpos. The kezboard that I am using in the hotel business center has the ¨y¨in the space where mz fingers expect the ¨z¨ to be. There are other differences in the kezboard, in order to accommodate the diacritical marks that are necessary in some European languages.
Before the official beginning of the 20th annual meeting of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement on Wednesday, January 3, 2007, more than 100 of the participants walked to schools in Piran and Portorož.
I went to Gimnayija Piran, which is an academic high school. In addition to this type of secondary school, Slovenia also offers vocational high schools. The students are very fluent in English because they have been studying this language since the third or fourth year of their elementary schools. Most of these students also have the ability to communicate in Italian and German, along with English and their native Slovene.
Clothing and hair styles are typical to what we might find in many suburban American high schools. As one might expect in a central European nation, there was very little visible racial diversity. However, there is a great deal of diversity of other sorts, including income.
Below, please visit the website for the school.
http://www.gpiran.siEnglish is the language of the conference. There are no translation equipment, because the vast majority of the participants are English speakers. In some cases, there is polite whispering when a colleague had difficulty with an accent. (Perhaps they are having such difficulty with my Eastern North Carolina twang.)
As I mentioned yesterday, the topics are very germane to the issues in North Carolina and across the U.S.
Since accountability is the central focus of the conference, ¨No Child Left Behind¨ is often mentioned. There are many questions posed to the Americans about today´s shift in political leadership in the U.S. Congress and the potential for changes in NCLB.
Most of the participants are officials from the education ministries or national departments of education. Lots of university researchers and professors are here. There are very few classroom teachers.
Again, here is an outline of the workshops and plenary sessions and info on Slovenia.
http://www.icsei2007.si/?id=32and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sloveniaThe food is very good. Dinner on Wednesday evening was highlighted by an entree of ¨monk fish.¨ The small pub in which we dined had a steady flow of eclectic music, including the ¨timely¨ playing of James Brown´s Papa´s Got A Brand New Bag. Prices are reasonable, but the dollar is taking a beating when exchanged for the Euro.
Good night. More details from the conference on tomorrow.