Steve Muth and Chris Sloan and a couple of 10th Graders join Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim on this show from last month.

Click Read more to see a transcript of a chat that was happening during the webcast.

On a snowy, windy night last week, Dr. Sondra Perl, Lehman College and Gradate Center, CUNY, NY and five National Writing Project  teachers from the Rural Sites Network joined us to describe their journeys as teachers of Holocaust studies.  These are the teachers who you'll hear on this podcast:

• Danielle Bethune, McCool Junction Schools, Nebraska
• Kristi Bancroft Boucher, Oxford Hills High School, Maine
• Gail Desler, Elk Grove School District, California
• Ilka Hanselmann, Wind Gap Middle School, Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania
• Susan Hodgin, Moscow Senior High School, Idaho
• Larry Neuberger, Miller High School, Springfield, Missouri

We took a look at their experiences in 10-day seminars that Dr. Perl led this summer and last summer. We learned more about how these teachers have integrated teaching about the Holocaust into their work with students. Perhaps you will be inspired by these teachers to begin your own journey into studying and teaching about the Holocaust.

The purpose of the Holocaust Educators Network (HEN) is:

...to provide a forum for faculty interested in studying and teaching the Holocaust. The Network extends the work of the summer seminars sponsored by the Memorial Library. Located at Lehman College of the City University of New York, HEN uses an inquiry-based approach to focus on how educators can engage students with difficult material and how writing and dialogue can help move students from shock and denial to empathy and action. We look to support educators from middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities in the following ways:

• By examining teaching practices both critically and generously;
• By sharing resources and devising new approaches in workshops and in online forums;
• By inviting noted scholars and researchers to present new work to the group; and
• By developing and conducting workshops in teachers' own schools and communities.

(Image: Holocaust survivor, Irving Roth)

This summer the Holocaust Educators Network will once again offer a ten-day summer seminar led by Dr. Sondra Perl to middle school, high school, and college teachers from rural sites within the National Writing Project. To find out more or to apply for this summer's seminar, please send an e-mail to Holocaust.educators@gmail.com

Don't delay! Applications for this summer need to be in by mid-January.

For the 2009 summer seminar, we invite applications in two formats: 1) applications by individual teachers who are already members of the National Writing Project (NWP) and 2) applications by teams of two teachers from different subject areas in which at least one is a member of the NWP. Click here to download an individual application form; Click here to download a team application form. Please note: applications for the 2009 summer seminar must be postmarked no later than January 16, 2009. Applicants will be notified of all decisions by March 2009.

This year, rural teachers outside of the National Writing Project may also apply. Click here for a flier with more information about the program; click here to download an application form.

This podcast grows from a session at this year's National Writing Project's Annual Meeting.We were joined by Joe Bellino from the Maryland Writing Project, Karen McComas from the Marshall University Writing Project, and Christina Cantrill, a program associate with the National Writing Project. 

Joe, Karen, and Christina were the facilitators of a session last month at the National Writing Project's Annual Meeting titled Reading the Research: Media Education and Literacy in the 21st Century. This session and their conversation with us focused on a white paper published by the New Media Literacies Project at MIT titled Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, by Henry Jenkins.

A few other teachers joined us as well to tell stories about how they teach digital writing and work with colleagues in their schools and Writing Projects:

• Susan Biggs and Kevin Hodgson from the Western Massachusetts Writing Project
• Fred Hass from the Boston Writing Project
• Beth Rimer, Ohio Writing Project

Enjoy! Read the paper, and continue the conversation in the cultures where you partiipate.

Click Read more to see a transcript of a chat that was happening during the webcast.

On November 4th, Katie, a senior at the Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, and her mother "coincidentally" found themselves in Chicago.

Yes, Chicago. I was there (coincidentally) on election day - November 4, 2008. This wasn't just any election in any city, though. This was THE election in THE city. It was the election that will forever make history. Obama was elected the first African-American president of the United States and I was there at Grant Park where he gave his acceptance speech. It was truly one of the most moving experiences of my life.

YES WE CAN: my experience in Grant Park on election day

When Katie got home she posted her reflections on this event on Youth Voices, a social network for students that her teacher, Chris Sloan helps to maintain. The joy in Katie's writing and in her image that she inserted with her text captured that important moment for the hundreds of other students who post their work on Youth Voices.

"I saw so many people whose faces expressed a relief that some glimmer of hope had finally come that, in fact, a black man could conquer a still very racist nation." Katie wrote in her post. "At that moment in time, our country seemed to get a little bit more accepting, and this was making people uncontrollably happy."

A Latina from Flushing, New York didn't share Katie's enthusiasm. In fact, for Dominique, an 11th grader at the East-West School for International Studies, something in what Katie had written brought to a head something that had been bothering her about the way people were
talking about Obama:

Another sentence that I found wrong and stirred up some anger is "a black man could conquer a still very racist country."  It's honestly comical. If this was " a still very racist  country " then trust me Obama would have not become President. Let me give you some valuable insight. Without the support of the Hispanic population and Caucasian population, there would be no (according to you) "First African-American President ". You believe this country is racist, but you don't realize that this country is racist because of people who exploit a certain race and make it seem that they on top of everyone else.

Incomplete

On the weekend after Dominique's comment, Chris Sloan contacted Dominique's teacher, Paul Allison, and Chris and Paul decided that it might be interesting to invite Katie and Dominique, along with another student, Farisa, to get together on Teachers Teaching Teachers to talk things over.

That's where this show begins.

In addition the students were joined by Elizabeth Berryman, Director of the PBS Teacher Center in Virginia. Elizabeth provided some follow up to a project that Susan Ettenheim's students at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in New York City participated in. We had talked with Elizbeth in an earlier show about the Video the Vote,a partnership between PBS and YouTube. On this show Elizabeth and Susan talk about how students and teachers took to this project, and Elizabeth begins to decribe the next project in which students will be invited to video the human impact of the economic crisis that we face.

Enjoy! And consider sharing this one with your students.

On this special episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim -- with Alice Barr, a technology teacher in Yarmouth, Maine -- welcomed to the show a couple of teachers, a couple of Writing Project Directors, and a researcher of Writing Projects. These folks (along with James Shiroff from the Denver Writing Project) will be presenting and facilitating a 2-hour session at the National Writing Project's 2008 Annual Meeting this week. The name of their featured presenation, "Writing in the Digital Age," identifies some of the issues discussed on this podcast.

• Seth Mitchell, high school teacher and Tech Liaison for the Maine Writing Project (University of Maine)
• Sarah Hunt-Barron, middle school teacher, teacher consultant of the Upstate Writing Project in South Carolina and doctoral student at Clemson University
• Rebecca Kaminski, Director Upstate Writing Project in South Carolina and professor at Clemson University, SC
• Felicia George, Associate Director of the New York City Writing Project at Lehman College, NY
• Laura Stokes, Inverness Research in California

We think you'll enjoy this conversation whether or not you are planning to join these folks at the National Writing Project’s Annual Meeting in San Antonio November 20 and 21.

These Writing Project teachers and their colleagues also shared stories about how they support their fellow teachers to further their development in teaching writing in a digital environment. Many interesting ideas about the students’ enthusiasm for writing to real audiences and generating more writing were discussed along with issues that local programs face when offering professional development services to teachers in their area.

Click Read more to see a transcript of the chat that was happening at the same time as the webcast.

Find out what happens when you bring together two Spanish Language teachers from the USA, an Emo student, and an English Language teacher from Mexico. On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison invited three new teachers and a student to join them to think about how to connect accross and through cultures and language.

Joining us on this show:

• Christian, a 10th grader at East West School of International Studies, Flushing, NYC, USA
• Señorita Leslie Davison, Tercer grado de una primaria en Colorado, USA
• Marcy Webb, 8th grade Spanish teacher at the Watkinson School, Hartford, CT, USA
• Angeles B, an English as a Foreigh Language teacher on an island off the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico
• Bill Oneal, an English Teacher from Trenton Central High School, West, Trenton, NJ, USA

Three amazing young women joined us on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers:

• Farisa, 10th Grader at East-West School of International Studies, Flushing, NY, NY
• Hannah, 11th Grader at Science Leadership Academy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Lindsea, 12th Grader at Punahou School, Honolulu, Hawaii

Paul Allison, Alice Barr, and Gail Desler stayed out of the way as much as possible. We asked the students to help us keep on track with the mission of Youth Voices: to be "a space where teachers nurture student-to-student conversations, collaborations, and civic actions." We seek to sustain student-sponsored work on our new site.

Click Read more, below, to see the chat transcript.

Elizabeth (Lizzy) Berryman, Director of the PBS Teacher Center in Virginia and Chris Sloan, a high school teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah joined us to talk about a collaborative project between YouTube and the PBS News Hour called “Video Your Vote." The purpose of this project is to look at the actual voting process. The project involves Flip Cams for high school teachers (especially ones in battle ground states) that want to have interview the voting age kids in the school or have students interviewing adults about the voting process. Lizzy joined us on the first half of this podcast to and answer some questions about the project.

In the second half of the show we help a teacher new to http://youthvoices.net set up a group and register her 7th graders on Youth Voices.

Do you have students in your classes who are voting for the first time?

The NewsHour and PBS are partnering with YouTube on an exciting new project called “Video Your Vote,” which will look at the health of democracy in America by focusing on issues surrounding voting and attitudes towards voting.  Each class will record and upload 10 short videos about the voting experience, contributing to a special YouTube pool of clips on the topic.

There are a variety of ways the videos can be shot. They could be perspectives from students who will be voting in the election for the first time, interviews with parents, teachers and school staff about their past voting experiences, or interviews with election officials about how they are preparing for the election and what they are expecting. Students could visit a retirement community to speak with elderly voters, or if the school will be a voting station they can talk to whoever is in charge. This project is a work in progress so we are certainly open to your ideas.

There is also a voting day component to the project. The good folks who are soponsoring this project would like students to take the cameras to the polls on Nov. 4 if possible.  This can happen in a variety of ways, but a few possibilities are sending the cameras with students voting for the first time, or accompanying a few students to a polling place to interview people after they vote. There will be a special “How To” video from YouTube that will give guidelines for video taping at the polls.

Please email Lizzy if you are interested in getting involved in this program at eberryman@newshour.org.

Youth Voices is growing with new teachers and students every week. If you are interested in finding out what the teachers involved in this project have been thinking about, this podcast might be for you.

Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim, both from New York City were joined by Gail Desler from California and Sarah Sutter from Maine.

Listen, then join us at http://YouthVoices.net

Click Read More to find the Chat Log

On this week's Teachers Teaching Teachers, we followed up on two collaborative projects that some of us have been working on: a new Drupal site for Youth Voices and "Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future"

Paul Oh stopped by to report on the launch of the Website for teachers, which allows us to post student writing to the Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future website. Paul Oh directed us to the website where: "At the secure area of that site, you will be able to log in using your Google account information. Once you do so, further directions will help you manage your students' pieces that were published using the special project submission
template described in Step 2. At that point, your students' work will be publicly visible along with all the writing from across the country."

Several teachers have tip-toed into Youth Voices, and on this podcast we report on the mechanics of joining this site and creating groups. Listen in, then consider having your students join us.

We invited several teachers and student to come talk about the site. In particular we talked about how to use the groups function of our new Drupal baby. (Thanks Bill Firtzgerald!) For
example, we set up a Digital Photography Community Group and a literature-focused inquiry group, "Catastrophe and Resiliency":

A space where we can take a stand against historical and current atrocities, genocides, ethnic cleanings, holocausts, occupations, and wars. A place to share our responses to books and stories about how humaity can not be stopped by these catastrophes, and how we must never again turn away from these disasters. A forum where we can connect around books, stories, and poems at all levels of difficulty and variety, books like Long Way Gone, What is the What? Persepolis, Maus, Night and other stories of spirit in the face of calamity.

Lindsea, a student from Hawaii joined us, and many others.

Looking for collaborative projects? Want to find out more? Listen to this podcast, and join in the coming weeks as we continue to plan together on Teachers Teaching Teachers.