Background: This morning, I read Have We Lost Sight of the Promise of Public Schools? by Nikole Hannah-Jones in the New York Times. I tweeted about it from all of my Twitter accounts. I sent it to friends. I tried to tell my cats why it was so interesting. I wanted to dissect it. To break it apart, figure out why it spoke me, hear others chat about it, and figure out why I connected so deeply and so quickly with these particular 1500 words.
In effect, I want to do a close read of a text. Right after sharing a quote from the piece, two tweets passed by in my timeline and caught my eye.
A few back and forths with Heather and voila – an idea came to fruition.
#EdTextChats – a weekly text-based chat in which we discuss the state of education
If the idea catches on – and text-based discussions can work in 140 – the plan is to offer up different texts for people to vote on (a la #edchat). In the meantime, we’ll be picking the text using the following criteria:
- it explicitly relates to the current state of education
- is fewer than 3000 words (so it can be read in one sitting)
- is in front of a paywall
- is making the rounds among EduTweeters
- is authored by a person of color, comes from a site with a representational pool of authors and/or editors, or explicitly cites and/or references teachers/students of color
The other plan is to have each chat follow the same questioning protocol. Our first chat will be organized around these five questions:
- What do you see as the main gist of this piece? How would you summarize it in 140?
- What personal connection did you make to the piece? What experiences of yours connect to this piece?
- What aha-moment did this text spark for you?
- What did the author do that helped you or spoke to you as a reader?
- What implications do you see for the state of education?
If you’ve never participated in a text-based discussion, some lessons learned:
- I like to have a hard copy with numbered paragraphs for reference during the chat
- I need to read a text at least twice – once right after reading the guiding questions like the ones above – so I have an idea of a response before the discussion
- Each question will get about 7-8 minutes. In a face to face text-based discussion, I like to note comments that caught my ear so I can re-visit it with the speaker later. I’m going to try to do the same during #EdTextChat
Our first piece? Have We Lost Sight of the Promise of Public Schools? by Nikole Hannah-Jones in the New York Times. Hope to see you on Thursday, February 23 at noon.
