Andrea Zellner

Several leaders in the National Writing Project--Paul Oh, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, and Troy Hicks--joined us from Washington DC where they were working to lobby members of Congress today, Thursday, March 31.

Also Chad Sansing, Zac Chase, and Andrea Zellner joined us on the Skype conversation--as well as many friends in the chat. Chad has been organizing a blogging effort going on around the country.  Here’s what he is asking supporters of the NWP to do:

Please add your voice to the chorus of educators from around the country who are blogging in support of the NWP. We’re trying to accumulate 1,000 blog posts by April 8, when the next Continuing Resolution for the federal budget expires. There are already nearly 150 posts - moving stories of the impact of the NWP on the lives of teachers and students - at the archive: http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/the-blog4nwp-archive/ You can tweet or email your blog post URL to Chad Sansing (twitter: @chadsansing; email: [email protected]) who has been organizing this effort, or post it to this discussion and we’ll make sure it gets added to the archive. Remember to try to tag your posts with: #blog4nwp. FYI, we’ve gotten a few responses on twitter to this effort from the press office of the Department of Education (see: http://www.andrea-zellner.com/archives/629 and http://aetweets.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/blog4nwp-and-being-bossy/), so let’s keep it up! Check out what folks have written to get an idea of what you might add but more importantly take a few minutes to add your story (stories).

Listen to find out what we can do to help restore funding to the National Writing Project. Then find your own ways to add your voice the the the chorus singing praises to the National Writing Project!

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

If you wanted to talk about online education, who better would you like to sit down with than these four educators:

Dave Cormier

Andrea Zellner

Fred Haas

Zac Chase

That's what Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison had the privilege of doing on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers. Enjoy!

As you will hear on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we are very excited about the new website, http://voicesonthegulf.org ! On this podcast we are joined by:

• Andrea Zellner, Stumbling Toward Proficiency
• Chris Sloan, Sloan Space
• Matt Montagne, The Digital Downlow
• Diana Laufenberg, Living the Dream
• Buffy Hamilton, The Unquiet Library
• Lisa Nielsen, The Innovative Educator

We are putting together a team to help us to develop this site — and fast. We've set up the following Community Managers:

David Pulling (Louisiana) - Site Manager
Paul Allison (New York) - Site Manager

Catherine Tibbs (Mississippi) - Art and Humanities
Ellen Steigman (Louisiana) - Art and Humanities
Susan Ettenheim (New York) - Art and Humanities

Paige Baggett (Alabama) - Community and Culture
Suzie Boss (Oregon) - Community and Culture

Jeff Mason (Florida) - Health and Wellness
Andrea Zellner (Michigan) - Health and Wellness

Natasha Whitton (Louisiana) - Money and Careers
Chris Sloan (Utah) - Money and Careers

Alicia Blair (Mississippi) - Nature and the Environment
Matt Montagne (California) - Nature and the Environment

Kyle Meador (Louisiana) - Social Issues and Human Rights
Diana Laufenberg (Pennsylvania) - Social Issues and Human Rights

Stacey Ferguson (Mississippi) - Our Space (K-6)
Margaret Simon (Louisiana) - Our Space (K-6)
Gail Desler (California) -  Our Space (K-6)
Kevin Hodgson (Massachusetts) - Our Space (K-6)

Along with this growing group of National Writing Project teachers, teachers from along the Gulf Coast, teachers in Edutopia’s pblcmp, AND/OR teachers involved with the EdTechTalk/WorldBridges community, we have been organizing (and working with Bill Fitzgerald at FunnyMonkey) to build this site that will do the following:

1. Provide a place where we can collect, amplify, and engage the poems, stories, and essays that students along the Gulf Coast bring to their teachers this month, as schools open.
2. Layer these stories, poems, and essays with online sources, including news releases and poetry (such as the poems on Poets for Living Waters).
3. We don’t know yet! Many of us have been working for some time on building a site like Voices on the Gulf, and we have some idea what directions this will take, AND we want to allow the discussions on the site to help us know how to develop.

The most important item, above is #1 - we are working as fast and hard as possible to get the site out to teachers, and for it to be easy to use. If you would like to add a poem, thought, or anything, please sign up, then once you’ve been made into a member, you’ll see the Add Discussion button. Please go in and write a brief reflection, add  photo, a video, or almost anything — just to see how easy it is to do. AGAIN, THANKS!

Students have been coming back the past couple of weeks in many Gulf Coast schools. A lot of our connections with teachers on the Gulf have happened this summer on a live webcast that we do every Wednesday evening. You may have already been on the show. We would love it if you would come back. We’ve been able to make a lot of invaluable connections. You can see what we mean here: http://edtechtalk.com/teachersteachingteachers

We would love to invite you to join us on Teachers Teaching Teachers every Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. Pacific / 8:00 p.m. Central / 9:00 p.m. Eastern. If you use Skype, please email Paul Allison or Susan Ettenheim and let us know your Skype name (again)— just helps us to know who to look for! We hope that you will be able to join us soon on a Wednesday evening.

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

This the fourth week of a summer series in which we have focused Teachers Teaching Teachers on the BP Gulf Oil Spill. Our guests included:

• Matt Montagne, who has been collecting materials, such as: October 28th, 2010 TEDxOILSPILL Talks. The Google Doc that Matt can be found at http://tinyurl.com/voicesonthegulf - And stay tuned! There much more to come under the domain: "VoicesOnTheGulf." (We also eventually agreed on the common tags: "voicesonthegulf" and "edoilspill"
• Diana Laufenberg, a history teacher from Science Leadership Academy who joined us on this topic 3 weeks ago will try (from her family’s farm) to join us again.
• Natasha Whitton, one of the three teachers from the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project two weeks ago, hopes to join us again
• Andrea Zellner, a biology and English teachers from the Red Cedar Writing Project in Michigan will be with us again!
• AND NEW to our webcast: Catherine Tibbs, a former high school English teacher who works for the Live Oak Writing Project in Mississippi joined us. (She is also invited colleagues who will be heard on future podcasts. Catherine wrote this on a Monday late in June :
  

   I don’t know if you know this or not, but oil reached the MS beaches this weekend. We had been fortunate so far to avoid this mess. From what I understand from the media, the manpower was not coordinated in the Gulf to skim the oil that is now reaching us. Isn’t that always the case?
  

• Also new to the podcast is Jeff Mason from Penscola, Florida, a biology and technology teacher. We met a Twitter, and we look forward to a continuing connection. (Jeff came on the webcast last week as well, so look for more from him on future podcasts.)

We hope you will be able to join us in this ongoing project. Help us know how to respond as teachers—and with our students—to this monster that will continue to reek havoc for weeks? months? to come!

Join us to talk about what's happening in the gulf every Wednesday at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA (World Times). 

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

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers -- the third in our summer series on the Gulf oil failure -- Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim are joined by Chris Sloan and Andrea Zeller. We talk about building curriculum around the Gulf oil spill and other topics, wondering how to keep student self-motivated inquiry at the center of our work while also introducing topics such as the environment, art history, obesity, AP English, or the earthquake in Haiti and other current events.

• Chris Sloan teaches at Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City, and he is a member of the Wasatch Range Writing Project. He teaches digital photography, media studies and AP English. Chris, Paul and Susan and their students have been working together on a school-based social network, Youth Voices for the last six years.
   
• Andrea Zellner has been a frequent guest on TTT this summer, we are delighted to say! Andrea is a former high school teacher in Michigan, who taught both English and Biology. Currently Andrea works for the Red Cedar Writing Project.
   
• Susan Ettenheim teaches at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in New York City. Susan and Paul have been doing Teachers Teaching Teachers together for almost five years. Susan teaches computer arts, art, and digital photography, and she is the librarian as well. This year Susan is also teaching a Caribbean Art History course for the Virtual High School.
   
• Paul Allison teaches at the East-West School of International Studies in Flushing, Queens. He is also the Tech Liaison for the New York City Writing Project. Paul teaches English and he started a school/community garden this spring.

We hope you enjoy this conversation between four veteran teachers. Just as we build on each others ideas, we hope you build on ours and let us know what you are thinking in the comments below.

We invite you to join us each Wednesday this summer to listen to teachers from the Gulf and to hear how teachers are planning to bring these issues into their classrooms this fall.

Join us at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesdays / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times

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