I’m sorry to report that I spent about 20 minutes of the 2 hours with NBS’s Education Nation’s Teacher Town Hall yesterday, and then found that the lack of focus of discussion made my brain ache, so I sort of bailed out on it for other things. I imagine I was not alone, nor do I doubt I was alone in thinking just how Charter School-centered much of things seemed to be. Or was I just seeing what I thought I would be seeing? That might be possible.
I tried my hand at about eight to ten chat posts, but none of them got through the logjam of comments. Some were great. Some were not-so-great, but honestly, the wave of information was just too much to assimilate and make sense of, and therefore, for me, it was a fairly meaningless venture.
But I am sure NBC will make a big deal of the backchannel chat room, which had thousands of teachers in it. A lot of folks on Twitter reminded us that many of us do that kind of backchannel conversing about education and schooling every single day on blogs, on Twitter and elsewhere. So if you felt empowered by the NBC experience, come join the mix.
So, I am not sure what to make of the Teacher Town Hall. It’s nice that so many educators rose up and got involved. That’s good. But there were too many of us to have any real message being heard, in my opinion. And why did I get the sense that maybe someone was filtering the chat room comments? Is that possible? Of course, it is, but I am not sure if that was the case.
So, now I brace myself for the next wave of post-Waiting for Superman media frenzy and continue my work of planning out engaging lessons, helping my young students become better writers and readers, and finding ways to continue to push myself as a professional. I suspect you are probably doing the same, and making a difference in the lives of your students.
So, I applaud you. And maybe that voice won’t get lost in the mix.
Peace (in reflection),
Kevin