On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers we talk about what we talk about when we talk about Trayvon Martin #trayvonmartin. What have you been talking to your students about this? 

Here are some of the things that have been going up on Youth Voices the past few weeks: http://youthvoices.net/taxonomy/term/33223 And follow this link to find some of the the articles we have been reading and annotating together. (Once in the "Mission," click on each individual title to see students' comments.) http://youthvoices.net/node/36643

Recently, when I (Paul Allison) walked into my teachers room, it took about 4 seconds of talking about what my students were doing for three African-American colleagues to talk in wide-ranging ways about violence and protecting children and dress and racism, and more. I just listened as carefully as I could, trying to learn what their questions were.

We made an open invitation to teachers to come talkbout Trayvon Martin at EdTechTalk http://edtechtalk.com. Paul Allison, Chris Sloan and Monika Hardy hosted this conversation with Ashleigh Dennis , Al Elliott and Kiseem, one of Paul's students.

We agree with what Dan Cantor wrote recently on the Working Families blogs: "What is new and welcome is that more and more white people are reminded or learning for the first time what the persistent existence of the color line means to millions of our fellow Americans." http://www.workingfamiliesparty.org/2012/04/my-son-doesnt-look-like-trayvon/

We think this episode of TTT will add to the conversations you might be having with students and colleagues -- or you wish your were having. Let us know your thoughts by commenting below.

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, a group of us who are in the process of launching a new version of Youth Voices met to continue the process of building the technology and the pedegogy of our work together.

Youth Voices is a school-based social network that was started in 2003 by a group of National Writing Project teachers. We merged several earlier blogging projects, preferring to bring our students together in one site that would live beyond any particular class, where it would be easier for individual students to connect with other students, comment on each others work, and create multimedia posts for each other. Further we thought it made sense for us to pool our knowledge about curriculum and digital literacies. If being part of such a community makes sense to you, we invite you to join us too. We work to embrace any teacher who is interested to have their students publish online and participate in the give and take of a social network like Youth Voices.

Youth Voices is much more than a website or a social network. It is also a welcoming community of teachers who have been planning curriculum together for many years. In addition to being active members in our local Writing Projects and the National Writing Project, many of us also count ourselves as member of the World Bridges community, and we meet regularly via Skype on a weekly webcast/podcast, Teachers Teaching Teachers, which has been going live every Wednesday evening at EdTechTalk since 2006.

All of this collaboration and talk, these years of building curriculum and working on the web together have led to to consider: What do the Youth Voices/Teachers Teaching Teachers teachers love about this work? And why do we think any kindergarten - college teacher might also find to love there too? What we think you and your students will find on Youth Voices, what we keeps us coming back, what we strive to engender, what we will never give up on (even in a school) is involving our students in “authentic conversation.”

Over the years the teachers who have been working together to grow Youth Voices have learned that as important as it is to have students publish multi-media, well-crafted products, it is at least as important to nurture, guide, and allow time for students to write comments and to develop conversations about each others discussion posts. Our mission at Youth Voices is to be a place online where students from across the nation (and globally, when possible) can engage other young people in conversations about real topics that they see happening in the world. We want our students to be immersed in lively, voiced give-and-take with their peers.