Cartoons and Cord Blood

Posted on October 4, 2008 ·Tagged Arizona Daily Star, biotechnology, cartoon, cord blood, CTE, fitzsimmons.

Interesting title, eh? But then again, the end of the ACTE/NCLA Best Practices Conference was very interesting. With an Asian lunch (unfortunately without chopsticks), we got the lunch session under way. The featured speaker for the lunch was David Fitzsimmons, an editorial cartoonist from the Arizona Daily Star.

Fitzsimmons was simply a riot. Not only did he talk about humorous headlines from his paper, but he wove through his presentation the value of education and the work that educators do. Fitzsimmons said that during his woodshop class he “had an unhealthy focus on perfectionism and drafting tools.” That, through various twists and turns, lead him to cartooning.

“I love politics,” said Fitzsimmons, as he broke down the word into “poli,” meaning many and “tics,” meaning bloodsucking leeches. He also said that the CTE community suffers from “acronymania,” an amazing number of acronyms that nobody can possibly keep straight.

Throughout his presentation, Fitzsimmons brought members of the audience up to the stage and proceeded to do caricatures of them. One of the best was of NCLA Executive Director Tom Applegate.

Fitzsimmons wrapped up his hour-long presentation by reminding educators to “have a healthy sense of humor because you are essential.” I think attendees really enjoyed this presentation and it was a great way to finish up the conference on an enjoyable note.

Those of us who decided to take advantage of the tours were treated to another great experience. I went with about a dozen other educators to the Cord Blood Registry. This is the largest umbilical cord blood storage facility, with about 250,000 samples.

Basically what happens here is that people send the blood from umbilical cords to this facility, which separates the stem cells from the plasma and red blood cells and then stores the stem cells. These cells can then be used to potentially help the child or possibly other family members with certain diseases. In fact more than 70 diseases are treated with cord blood right now, according to our tour director.

The big issue with this facility and CTE is that the facility needs technicians to process the blood samples and maintain the facility, which has the potential to store millions of samples. As more and more families decide to save the cord blood this facility and others like it will need a workforce with a biotechnology background–another opportunity for CTE students.

Following the tour, the conference was over. I can’t wait to hear what everyone has to say in the evaluations–I only heard good things!

Thanks for reading and see you next year in Austin for the 2009 ACTE/NCLA Best Practices Conference.

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