Comprehensible Iowa 2017

Comprehensible Iowa happened the weekend before last. Thanks in great part to the talented and hard-working duo Elizabeth Dentlinger and Kim Huegerich, everything was nice, and smooth. And somehow, Kim got the 80+ people present at the welcoming gathering to sing me Happy Birthday... without me knowing they were going to do it. How?! When?! She's good.

I was excited to bump into some of my northeast Iowa colleagues like Megan Gates, Kathy Corkery and of course Anne Wuebker. I also got to meet new friends IWLA President Jason Noble, Heidi Grimm (who just so happened to graduate from Luther College the same year as me and now teaches at Nevada HS where the conference took place... ¡Qué casualidad!) and many others.

Click on the image below to download the pdf of the presentation with post-conference notes/slides added in.

This was a five hour workshop. The content of the slides was heavily complemented by demos, stories, asides, bad jokes, practice, Q&A, etc.

Bryce Hedstrom, in addition to traveling across the plains with his wife Cheri to come to Comprehensible Iowa 2017, made a special guest appearance to the Beginner Workshop in between his own various sessions. He talked about some important elements of non-verbal communication, and shared with us the big ideas in the book Social by Matthew Leiberman. Thanks Bryce!

Tina Hargaden, who flew all the way in from Portland Oregon, danced into our workshop to show us what it feels like to be a French student while demonstrating how to build a One Word Image. Thirty minutes later we had a gigantic red and green piece of pizza (not an entire pizza) that was very sad and crying. Merci Tina!

I thank all of the beginner workshop participants. I had a blast. You were a lot of fun. Let us know how things are going!

(photo credit Kim Huegerich CIIA17)