BLOOMINGTON, IN — Phi Delta Kappa International’s professional development conference will be held in Chicago — not New Orleans — in November.

The conference, which will be held at The Palmer House Hilton Nov. 10-13, was moved from the Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel following Hurricane Katrina.

“Instead of the conference in New Orleans, it will be the conference for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast,” said William J. Bushaw, Ph.D., executive director of PDK. “We are continuing to encourage Kappans to form Walk for Education teams, and, if they wish, direct their fund-raising efforts towards Hurricane Katrina relief.”

Teams can designate any non-profit educational agency to receive a portion of the money raised during the event. The premier event of the second annual Walk for Education will take place Nov. 12 in Chicago as part of the conference. Kappans can also form teams to walk in their communities. As of this week, more than 70 teams had been formed in Canada, Italy, Germany, Japan, and 24 states in the U.S.

Conference planner Jeanne Storm, director of PDK’s Center for Professional Development, worked with Hilton staff to secure another location for the conference. She was also able to speak directly with two of the three keynote speakers who live in New Orleans, and received word that all three from that region had survived the storm and its aftermath. One speaker, Tessie E. Adams Domangue, the 2005 Louisiana Teacher of the Year, will discuss how the hurricane impacted educators and students in the Gulf Coast, Storm said.

The two others — Charles Suhor, Ph.D., and the Ellis Marsalis Trio — will give a presentation called “Jazz and Language.” Storm spoke with Suhor, who said he had heard that Marsalis survived the storm and was evacuating his hometown of New Orleans. The fourth keynote speaker, Pedro Noguera, Ph.D., will speak about “Creating Conditions That Promote Student Achievement.” He is a professor at the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University.

The conference, which is focused on the theme “Doing What Matters: Education, Democracy, and the Future,” includes topical sessions focused on three strands: Practices That Improve Teaching and Learning, Classrooms of Tomorrow, and Keeping the Public in Public Education. Registrations are still being accepted, and registration forms can be downloaded at www.pdkintl.org <http://www.pdkintl.org>.

PDK, a member-based association for professional educators, has been providing leadership, research, and service to the education community since 1906.

-30-