Back from Florida, Trip 1

Lisa and I made it back to Springfield with no problems--a little more sun, a little more knowledgeable about reading and its place in our current education system, and a LOT more tired! I will post some of our better pictures to show that we did have some fun while we were supposed to be "working".

We arrived in Orlando around 9 pm on Saturday and boarded the bus to our hotel. Since we were staying at the Coronado Springs Resort, we did not have to pick up our luggage. The Magical Express service did that for us! Once we checked in and found our room (after wandering aimlessly for a few minutes), we decided to get settled in. Our luggage arrived right around midnight, and I was grateful for my PJs.

The Lexile conference began on Sunday with a Pre-conference workshop on the background information about the Lexile system. That was pretty good info because while I knew what it was, I had no idea about the complexity of the whole program. For those of you who don't know, a Lexile is a number assigned to both a reader and a text. For example, the book To Kill a Mockingbird is 870Lexile. A reader would also need to be within 770-920 Lexile range in order to understand the content of this book. The nice thing about Lexiles is that it takes a grade level completely out of the equation. For our high school kids who aren't as skilled at reading as their peers, a Lexile is not nearly as degrading as saying "you read at a 3rd grade level".

The pre-conference workshop was over by 3:30 pm, so Lisa and I decided to use this night as the chance to go to the Magic Kingdom. Lisa had never been to Disneyworld before, and as this was my 6th trip, I couldn't wait to show her around my home away from home. She was completely won over by all of the magical atmosphere of the Magic Kingdom. We had a blast that night! We watched the new Mickey's Dreams stage show, rode some of the rides (Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, It's a Small World, Space Orbiter), took in Mickey's Philharmagic 3D show, watched the Spectromagic parade and Wishes fireworks show. The park was open until 2 am for resort guests, so we were there until they closed the park down! In fact, we were the last people they let in the ice cream shop on Main street before they closed the doors. We had to get a little snack before leaving!

Needless to say, we were dead tired for the next morning. We did not go to bed until 3:45 am and had to be up by 7 am for the conference the next day. Somehow we made it through the day, and we both learned A LOT from the presenters. We both agreed that an administrator should have also been at this conference to take back what was learned and could be put in place for next year. As it is, we will present our findings, then see if anyone takes us seriously.

Tuesday and Wednesday brought more of the same--conference during the day, playtime at night! We went to Downtown Disney both of these nights for dinner (Planet Hollywood and House of Blues) and shopping. We bought most of our souvenirs from here, and it seems most of the stuff I bought was for school. I guess when Todd and I go back I'll spend my money of more fun stuff! We flew back on Thursday, and Lisa and I were both sad to leave our hotel and the Orlando area. As we were boarding the plane, I turned around and said, "Goodbye Orlando. Goodbye Mickey. See you in a month!" I thought the lady in front of me was going to punch me!

We made it back to town, and Todd and Soze were both really glad to see me. Now I get to have fun planning our July trip!