Come Play With Me Down Under!

I'm coming to Australia! I thought my Aussie readers might like to know that I'm heading your way to join the great Marc Armitage and the inspirational Niki Buchan as keynoters at the 2013 annual Inspired EC conference at the Shoal Bay Resort & Spa in New South Wales, August 3-4. I'm then planning on a couple weeks touring the eastern part of the continent, speaking and leading workshops, with stops in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Adelaide, with a pop over to New Zealand for good measure (details pending). The folks at Inspired EC have told me it's already booking up and they don't want Teacher Tom readers to find themselves on the outside looking in, so get cracking! 

I can't tell you how excited I am to get to meet you! And what a strange thing it is to meet readers.

In the dark days before I became a father, I worked for nearly 15 years as a freelance writer. It wasn't so long ago that I didn't work on a computer or communicate a bit by email, but all that was still in such an infantile stage that most of my clients still needed me to print things out so they could read and edit it, by hand, then return it to me. And as for meeting my readers, forget about it. In fact, I once wrote some 80 biographies for the staff and consulting doctors at a Detroit area hospital without meeting a single one of them. It's bizarre to think about. I don't look back on those days fondly, these days are better ones, but I did miss the thrill of seeing my writing "in print" and the prospects that someone might actually be reading it.

This is, in large measure, what drove me to start this blog 3-1/2 years ago. I'd written a half dozen early childhood oriented articles for magazines and newsletters, pieces I thought were pretty good, and from what I knew about blogs at the time, it seemed like this would be a good way to give them life beyond the traditional printed page. I had never even read a blog before starting mine, but once I realized that I was going to be posting new material as often as I do, I began to reach out in search of . . . Well, I don't know what. Contact?

Among the very first friends I made via the blog were two of the giants of Australian ECE blogging: Jenny from Let The Children Play and Donna from Irresistible Ideas For Play Based Learning, both of whom had more or less launched their blogs at the same time I did, although I didn't know that at the time. What I did know was that I had a pair of professional sisters Down Under, women who were as passionate as I was about spreading the "gospel" of play-based education. Through Jenny and Donna I feel like I've already met thousands of my readers. Today, I have by far more readers in Australia than any other country outside the US, and 4 of my top ten readership cities are in Oz. Now I get the chance to meet everyone face-to-face.

And the best part is that we will get to play together! I may have started with the idea that play is the best way for young children to learn, but if I've learned anything on this 3-1/2 year journey, it's that everyone learns best through play. So, playmates, that's what I'm coming to do: to laugh and hug and get dirty; to sing and dance and take risks. I plan to bring some ideas to you from the former rain forest that is my home of Seattle, and I expect my Australian friends to show me around such mysterious things as gumnuts, bush walking, and this unidentified flying object I heard is called "the sun."

Come play with me Down Under!

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