Three Emerging Roles Twitter Plays in My Class: Author Chats

Step by step, Twitter has begun to find a role in my 8th grade classroom.  I am going to explain each role over the course of a few blog posts.

1. Author Chats
We recently used our classroom Twitter account (@8grwriters) to have a running conversation with two YA authors: Rebecca Stead (When You Reach Me) and Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke and Bone).  Students read a book by each of the authors and then Tweeted questions--responses came back to us over the course of a couple of days.

Fortunately for me, we have recently changed our curriculum and I was in a position to add some contemporary YA novels to our literature circles. Two of those authors also happen to be active on Twitter, while several are not--for instance, I did not have any luck accessing M.T. Anderson (Feed) or Nancy Farmer (House of the Scorpion).

I was able to have all five of my classes Tweet questions to the authors, and then they could respond to any of their choosing at their leisure. It wasn't a "live" situation--yet, that was almost better since all of the students could track responses over the next few days.

As matter of monitoring their questions, I had the students practice writing a question/observation in their writer's notebook and ask for permission before sending their tweet. The students do not have the classroom password--it is an account they can only access from class (on one of twelve classroom iPads). I also ask that they insert their initials at the end of their tweet--more for me than anything else. I believe this method keeps them anonymous and protected, but it also begins to demonstrate the power of Twitter or social networking as a tool.

Review: Toward a Better Life

Toward a Better Life: America's New Immigrants in Their Own Words--From Ellis Island to the Present by Peter Morton Coan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I grew up the great-grandson of Italian immigrants who passed through Ellis Island. The hallmarks of resourcefulness, toughness, and generosity surrounded my childhood and adolescence. I finished Peter Morton Coan's Toward a Better Life: America's New Immigrants in their Own Words with greater sense of who not only my great-grandparents were, but also a greater awareness of my grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.

We are descendants of toughness.

And through this book, I realize that I (and we) have lost some of that toughness. We've becomes insulated with ourselves.

Our ancestors broke the rock, stacked the brick, and forged the iron...and we sit and enjoy the view while all around us immigrants are still engaged in the struggle and challenge to live in America and even become an America...so that one day, their ancestors can enjoy the same warmth and comfort that I have (somehow) ignored.

I bought Toward a Better Life on a visit this summer to Ellis Island--the experience humbled me.

The experience, along with this book, has made me more aware of who I am...and who I can still become. It has made me more aware of other men, and who they may still become. And I've come to see America a touch differently.

So many statements by immigrants caused me to reflect in so many different ways.

Ava Rado-Harte, Hungarian immigrant, touched on the American family:

"...I bought the house with the fantasy and the dream that my kids would be coming over on Friday nights for dinner and I'm going to have wonderful weekends with the grandchildren and have great Sunday brunches, but the reality is this is America...parents and grandparents are really not in the picture..."

Stella Dushats, Russian immigrant, echoed the sentiment of most of the immigrants in the book, "In America, if you work hard and you want something, you will get it. I am so happy we came here."

Jorge Munoz, Colombian immigrant, opened his heart to anyone in our country by feeding the hungry on nothing but donations, "You know, people think that we are a problem--the immigrants. We are not a problem! There are lots of problems with everybody, but we are not a problem...The only thought that crosses my mind is to share. My mothers has always been an inspiration, and my mother always says, 'If you share, you're OK with God.'"

Renata Nieri, Italian immigrant, spoke with...reverence...appreciation...gratitude...about the Statue of Liberty: "...I've been out there six or seven times...I took some cousins of mine who came from Italy. We went to Ellis Island, and I still get gooseflesh. I love that lady. She's beautiful."

I feel lucky. I am only now beginning to understand my family, adolescence...and future. Add to that, I am only now beginning to understand the true meaning of the word "grateful."


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Is he really singing Bukowski?

In a damp warehouse lit by single, bare lightbulbs, I watched with two dozen people as a humble tenor from the Metropolitan Opera sang some poetry by Charles Bukowski.

The performance began at 9pm on a Tuesday evening. Parking proved difficult in the middle of the week in the blue-collar neighborhood.

We sat on rented metal folding chairs in a semi-circle around a bleak scene: a frumpy, haggard male slouched in a simple wooden chair. Near a grimy mattress and end table the man sighed and whimpered of loneliness, obscurity, and being forgotten.

Whimpers turned into song echoing and lapping over itself  across the long, wide, and empty space.

His voice, soft and deep, expanded as the performance unravelled and filled the warehouse. He sang of great personal grief and having no one or anything to turn to except his music. The tenor trembled, wept, and choked. Twenty people shrank; I felt like a child in an oversized chair; the fact that I was out on a work night and would probably wake up sleepy or cranky became insignificant; no one looked at their watches; no one shifted in their seats. For fifteen minutes we sat transfixed--isolated--and blown away.

At the end, the performer circulated around the space and shook the hand of every person in attendance. He looked every single person in the eye and thanked them with sincerity. His body and affect changed before us--previously small and broken, this man now stood tall and life radiated in his eyes. His body's wrinkles and folds undid themselves and smoothed out--he was younger and more fit than I saw during the performance. His color changed. Everything about him changed.

This was my first experience with the Philadelphia Fringe Festival almost ten years this fall. I've been back, but nothing beat the shock of the raw honesty of that beautiful little poetry sung by someone who seemed to understand the place in which it was born...and took an unsuspecting audience along with him into that cold, isolated, terrible place.

In honor of this experience, I asked PAWLP Fellow, the talented Ben Smith, to share his talent by singing a little of Charles Bukowski's poetry: