Just arrived over here in the Island Empire and can't wait to go see and hear Herman Boone, of "Remember the Titans" fame speak. Both Melissa and I will be posting from the conference through Saturday.

I'll also be working on some stories looking at early childhood education and arts in the schools over here, so look for those stories later this month.

Bright and early this am, I marched into the Cascade Middle School gym in Auburn to do the round robin conferences on four classes my daughter takes. Some parents don't like this set up, but I don't mind it. You pick the shortest line and get in and out pretty quickly. My daughter's doing fine, so this was pretty painless. I had my questions on the math program all ready. What type of math do you teach here? Opinions on old-fashion and fuzzy? What does math look like for 8th grade? Etc. Etc.

Do you think I asked any of them? Nope. But I'll get another chance in the spring. Her social studies teacher made an interesting observation tho. He said that he wants the kids to do more on the Internet, but that five or so students don't have computers at home, and no access otherwise, so that's baffled him for now. He can't really give out homework assignments that are too Internet dependent, or it leaves those kids out.

More on the WSSDA conference tomorrow.