After a very inspiring roundtable at #NCTE2016, many of us are energized to propose a related by more hands-on roundtable for #NCTE2017.

Below is a draft proposal for NCTE 2017. Please email me ASAP (paul.thomas@furman.edu) if you are interested in offering a roundtable that is a workshop related to educators developing their public voices in a wide variety of media and purposes. The current roundtables below reflect the focus of the session, but different media and perspectives are strongly encouraged to join.

2017 NCTE Annual Convention

Teaching Our Students Today, Tomorrow, Forever: Recapturing Our Voices, Our Agency, Our Mission

St. Louis, MO
November 16-19, 2017

Proposal: Roundtable

Co-Chairs: Chris Goering, University of Arkansas, and P. L. Thomas, Furman University

From Advocacy to Agency: Workshopping Our Public Voices

This roundtable session will offer participants concrete and hands-on opportunities to investigate the “how to” of writing and speaking in a public voice that reflects our professional agency. Tables will address writing Op-Eds and letters to the editor, starting and maintaining a professional blog, participating in social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) as a professional educator, and creating and producing podcasts/radio programming. Additionally, participants will be given guidelines for blending scholarly and public work as well as how to integrate our professional advocacy-as-agency with our demanding work as classroom practitioners.

Tables:

Exploring the Op-Ed: Two Public Essayists Share Their Process for Writing in the Op-Ed Genre

Christina Berchini and Peter Smagorinsky

This table will discuss their process for identifying topics, locating a suitable publication outlet, and understanding and writing within the op-ed/blog genre. Participants will also be alerted to the risks and rewards of writing in the public forum.

Adventures in Edublogging: Finding and Developing a Public Voice

P.L. Thomas and Angela Dye

Blogging remains a misunderstood form of communication along with many types of social media. This table will discuss and workshop how to create a professional blog and social media presence while helping participants with the “how” and “why” of creating that professional voice for the public.

Guinness Stew in the Ozarks: The How and Why of Professional Writing Retreats for Teachers

Christian Z. Goering and Nikki Holland

This roundtable offers a rationale and practical advice for gathering teachers in a retreat setting to write for professional audiences. One way that teachers can develop agency in the larger conversations swirling around the punch bowl of education is by writing for professional audiences—broadly defined. The act of doing so is complicated, something that takes time, nourishment, and courage. But aren’t retreats expensive and elitist? The low cost, low maintenance model shared in this roundtable can be adapted and adopted by a wide range of teacher groups or even offered as professional development by a school district.

Blogging Advocacy in the New Latinx South

Bobbi Siefert

Blogging Advocacy in the New Latino South – In this roundtable session, presenters will discuss beginning and maintaining a TESOL Blog in the context of the New South. Discussion will center on initial steps to beginning a blog, responses to challenges, focus and direction, and sustaining momentum in an increasingly xenophobic regional and national environment. We argue that blogging is a virtual platform for our professional advocacy for Latino Transnationals K-12.

Writing Radio Commentaries for Local Stations

 Rebekah Buchanan

Local NPR affiliates can be an effective way of reaching the public about education issues in our communities. Based on my experience recording monthly radio commentaries, this roundtable will present ways to start writing for the radio, coming up with topics, and presenting commentary ideas to local stations.

What Will Attract and Persuade Blog Readers?

Patricia A. Dunn

Academics are used to writing for a particular audience with discipline specific expectations about academic evidence, research, and citation—the very elements that potential blog readers may avoid. How can we attract readers to our public writing, get them to rethink an issue in our blog, and get them to share it? We’ll look at some topics, titles, and formats of several blogs that have been shared widely. We’ll talk about selecting links for providing evidence, keeping the blog lively (and short), and using effective analogies.

Who wants to be the Village Explainer? Opening Conversations, Not Closing Them

Patricia Waters, Daneell Moore, and R. Buchanan

In rural areas the English teacher is often in the invidious position of being The Village Explainer: how can the professional communicate with non-professional audiences by meeting people where they are? How do we not lose sight of urgency but also not alienate where we need allies most?

Crafting Arguments for Change: Expanding Spheres of Influence

Trevor Thomas Stewart and George L. Boggs

This table will discuss the cultural resources employed by teachers who are speaking out in order to consider how teachers can position themselves as experts whose voices ought to count in education reform discussions. By discussing the rhetorical tools being employed by teachers who are currently speaking out online, our table will provide participants with an opportunity to develop practical strategies for engaging in civic action online while managing the risks associated with public dissent.

Telling the Positive Stories of Public Education

Steve Zemelman

To counter the ongoing propaganda attacking public schools, it’s essential not only to advocate for better education policies, but also to let the public know about the work of high quality teachers in their schools, and the meaningful learning their students experience. At this table, we’ll look at examples of published op-ed pieces by teachers, deduce some of their characteristics, get started on some writing ourselves, and brainstorm how to get through to news editors to get our stories published.

Know Thy Enemy

Jonathan Pelto

In his epic, The Art of War, Sun Tzu explains: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” This table will serve has a training session for understanding and tracking the charter school industry and their corporate education reform allies through the use of opposition research techniques and tools.  Particular training will be provided on how to utilize federal and state campaign finance reports, IRS 990 forms reports submitted by non-profit corporations and for-profit filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission.   Participants will come away with a better understanding about how to learn more about the individuals and organizations seeking to undermine students, parents, teachers and public education.

Finding Our Public Voices: Building a Community of Writers around Writing for the Public

Ann D. David and Megan Janak

This roundtable will discuss how classroom teachers, preservice teachers, and a university professor developed their individual, public voices and began publishing for the public.  We will share both our process for forming and sustaining our writing community, and our individual experiences with writing for the public across a range of channels.

Blogging from the Inside Out: Mining Personal Stories for Larger Truths

Russ Walsh and Peter Anderson

As educators our days and nights are filled with stories of personal success and personal struggle as well as student success and student struggle. Stories, informative, humorous and tragic, are part of the life-blood of the veteran teacher. As bloggers, we can mine these stories to draw the reader into our world and then reach for the larger truths that these stories illuminate. In this round-table, we will share examples of how this has been done by education bloggers, analyze how it is done, and share techniques for developing engaging blogs based on personal, school-based experience.

Ed Philosophy Book Clubs: Creating Safe Spaces for Dialogue and Debate

Nicole Amato

Teachers are increasingly bound to curricular mandates or policies that directly conflict with what research argues is best for our students, teachers, and school communities.  This roundtable will look at the development and progression of an ed philosophy book club at a high school in Chicago, Illinois. The book club was designed with two goals in mind: to create a safe space for discussing campus polices and to arm teachers with high quality,timely, peer-reviewed research.

Podcast On Your Plan – Using Podcasting as Professional Development

Josh Flores and Lara Searcy

This roundtable will demonstrate how educators can use the podcast format to expand their voice, agency, and professional growth. Attendees will participate in a live podcast during the session in order to explore the hands-on application of “how to” podcast and become familiar with a currently active program, “Podcast On Your Plan.” “Podcast On Your Plan” episodes actively advocate for teachers’ voices by promoting teachers as a resource for professional learning communities and educator’s professional growth. Each podcast episode focuses on deconstructing the expertise of a classroom teacher and their pedagogy. Listeners are encouraged to discuss the practices and strategies presented in each episode with colleagues and reflect on their own pedagogical approaches to literacy.