UEA

I just got back from UEA, where I am sitting at a booth. UEA is the Utah Education Association—sort of like the Utah teacher’s union. This used to be one of the biggest , well attended conferences in Utah. The vendor hall was enormous with over 1000vendors hawking their wares. The Vendor hall is a veritable carnival. Any one who has anything to sell in the area of education is there. Publishers of text books, teaching machines, teaching and general school supplies. Plus there is every weird idea and inventor can come up with in the area of teaching. A guy sitting right across the table from me was selling some kind of system to make your kids authors and there’s insurance sale guy, US ARMY Recruiters, even food dehydration and a complete paper vending book store is there. Teachers are supposed to attend, but I have noticed ever dwindling numbers of educators the last couple of years. Many teachers who do attend end up bringing their kids so there are hundreds if not thousands of kids running wild.

One of the cool things about the UEA conference the vendors usually are giving away everything from gobs of candy to all kinds of trinkets. Lots of pencils. Rubber balls, pens, slinkys, coffee cups, games and software. But really tons and tons of candy. In Salt Lake UEA is the pre-Halloween event.

Sadly the event is dieing. Used to be all of Utah’s schools were closed or this event. It must have been a wonderful holiday for kids. No longer the case. One school district I heard of down South of here is actually in class today and tomorrow. If you are a vendor the price of a table is way over priced. I was able to attend this event because someone is willing to let us share a table wit them for some sweat labor. I manned the table two hours today and two tomorrow. I agreed to do this before I found out the host table would not allow me to set some of my brochures out on the table. Tomorrow I’ll be at the convention from 9:00 to about noon and then back to the office to recharge my charge for a coupler of hours before I head up to therapy. When I asked about the allowing us to display our brochures they sounded freaked out and had to do that thing “we’ll have to get back to you. They must have felt guilty because they offered us a free table for their conference in March. We figured the trade as worth it. I took a second once I got squared away way and zoomed round the hall and found a table who would let us set up our brochures.

We have Aunakah over UEA, with both of her parents working watching the granddaughter seemed only natural. We had her most of the weekend as well. Sometimes it’s spooky at how natural watching the granddaughter is.