In the first half of this weeks episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we had an inspiring conversation with Katherine Schulten editor of The Learning Network at the New York Times.  Our theme for this week's Teachers Teaching Teachers was about increasing teacher voice in public debates. Katherine suggested how we might use The Learning Network for that.

In addition, we were joined by:

• Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, director of National Programs and Site Development at the National Writing Project, University of California, Berkeley
• and Andrea Zellner a leader at the Red Cedar Writing Project, Michigan State University's site of the NWP.

Andrea and many o

thers in the chat room during the webcast gave witness to why we want to maintain federal funding for the NWP to continue -- an example of a time wh

en we need to get our voices to be heard! 

"It's been a heady week for teaching and learning discussion on the Times site," writes Katherine Schulten, our first guest on this podcast. One of Katherine's jobs as an editor of the New York Times Learning Network is to moderate the comments that come in on education-related articles.

• By this last weekend (3/7/2010), the article, "Building a Better Teacher, had 313 comments on it, and had been one of the top most-emailed on the Times site after it went online last Wednesday.
• For several days the article about Diane Ravitch's about-face on NCLB was right up there too.
• And this article, "Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets," which is about teaching Darwin and Global Warming got over 1000 comments.

A Student Opinion post from earlier this week, "Where Do You Stand on Unconcealed Handguns? "received many lively responses from "students 13 and older," who "are invited [to the Learning Network] to comment on questions about issues in the news."

If you just clicked on those links, your head is probably spinning: so many issues so little time! That's what it feels like to have a conversation with Katherine Schulten, who before she became an editor for the Learning Network was a NYC teacher and a consultant for the New York City Writing Project. Katherine was worried that she was talking too much, because she is so excited about managing the Learning Network.

We'll turned Katherine loose, then we interrupted her with a few questions. We think you'l learn a lot about the New York Times Learning Network on this podcast:

Currently, they are offering these features:

• Lesson Plans — Daily lesson plans based on New York Times content.
• Student Opinion — News-related questions that invite response from students age 13 and older.
• Word of the Day — Vocabulary words in the context of recent Times articles.
• 6 Q’s About the Newss — An activity in which students answer basic questions (Who, What, Where, When, Why and How) about an article.
• News Quiz — Interactive daily news quizzes on current top stories.
• Student Crossword — Topical puzzles geared toward teens.

The award-winning Learning Network was created in the fall of 1998. In October 2009, they re-launched it as a Times blog.

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

Join us, as we talk about elementary student blogging with our guest Jan Smith, a sixth grade teachers in British Columbia, Huzzah! http://huzzah.edublogs.org/  She started with a strictly controled class blog, but found that it lacked conversational give and take.  She started again with an edublogs account, and this time she encouraged a more "conversational" approach both in student's writing, giving them a voice, and how they interacted with each other.  She started a practice of "gradual release" giving students more authority, and control over their blogging and blogs as they showed responsibility until many had earned their own blogs and were self-moderated.  She also shared how she dealt with problems and conflicts when they came up, respecting students, and making them responsible. 

Link to Text Chat.

This is the second of two shows we've done recently that featured young high school women. On TTT#152 we enjoyed learning from the young women at Matt Montagne's school who are involved with tthe Gator Radio Experience.

On this podcast, we feature three amazing teenagers, three glib feminists who have begun to make their voices be heard on a group blog, "Womens Glib."

File this one under student self-initiated work that gives you hope for the future — and the present too!

The young women who started a feminist blog recently to join us on Teachers Teaching Teachers. We learned so much from them that we can't wait until we play this for our students in this fall when we introduce them to blogging.

Women’s Glib is a community of nerdy, foul-mouthed youth. Miranda started the adventure in January, after many months spent wondering if she was up to the task of maintaining a blog. She was very quickly joined by Katie, Ruth, Zoe, Phoebe, Shira, Silvia, and Kyla. Guest contributors also help spread the feministy love now and then.

Here’s what they say on their about page:

Women’s Lib[eration], a.k.a. feminism: n., belief in the social, political, and economic equality of all people regardless of gender or sex

glib: adj., performed with a natural, offhand ease

Women’s Glib is a blog by and for young feminists and womanists. Contributors are teenage New Yorkers, writing about what matters to us with a focus on feminism and other progressive values. We cannot and do not speak for all teenagers or all young feminists; we simply speak for ourselves and write our own truths.

Listen to the podcast and be inspired with us by this new generation of feminist bloggers.

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

Sheri Edwards and Matt Montagne joined Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim on this podcast.

Sheri has been teaching for decades at the Nespelem School, a public school located on the Colville Indian Reservation in Nespelem in the state of Washington, USA. They have 139 students in grades preschool through grade eight.

Sheri is involved in so much that her remarks in this podcast can only be considered an brief introduction to the rich resource that can be found in her work.

We are delighted that some of her students have begun to publish in Youth Voices. For example, west31 writes: "I think wrestling is very competitive and fun because you get to flop people around, show your skills an quickness. Also you don't always use your strength for wrestling, you use smarts against your opponents.

If you're an English teacher or a photography or media teacher, wondering if or when to introduce your students to Youth Voices, this might be the podcast for you.

Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim were joined this week by their colleague of many years, Chris Sloan, who teaches English, media and photography at Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City Utah.

Paul, Susan and Chris introduced their work with students and each other to Ron Link, a English and video teacher in the Bronx, who has recently begun to work with the New York City Writing Project, and with Fred Haas, the Technology Liaison for the Boston Writing Project, and teacher of English and screenwriting.

There is so much more for us to learn from each other. Listen to this podcast, then Join us!

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

Richard Beach, Liz Boesler, and Candance Doerr-Stevens were our guests on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers:

• Richard Beach is a professor of English education at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches and conducts research on media literacy methods, digital writing and identity construction. Richard recently published a new book, Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools
  
• Elizabeth (“Liz”) Boeser is an English/language arts teacher, Jefferson High School, Bloomington, MN, a teacher featured in Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools who conducted the online role-play activities.
• Candance Doerr-Stevens is a former English teacher, and current graduate student at the University of Minnesota. Candance is also a staff member at the Minnesota Writing Project, and she is studying online role-play with Richard.

Want more? Here are several more links about our guests:

• Liz Boeser’s current Spring, 2009 courses
• Examples of the online role-play:
  • University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux mascot debate (used with Montana, 1948): http://roleplaymascots.blogspot.com and http://mascotroleplay.blogspot.com/
• Resource wiki created for Montana, 1948: http://jhscollegewritingmontana.pbwiki.com/
• Censorship role-play http://schooledthewriteway.blogspot.com/
• NCTE 2008 presentation, San Antonio  VoiceThread: http://voicethread.com/#u11815.b338247.i1791441
• K-12 Online Conference 2008 presentation http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=326

Please enjoy the podcast.

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

Chat:

A lively show with guest Kathy Cassidy, blogger-elementary teacher extraordinaire!