All A Twitter About Reading and Writing

The world is what you make it. So is Twitter. I am a willing participant in the world of twitter. I use it to be informed and to share information. I have shaped the feed I receive to include those voices that will grow my understanding of life and learning -well mostly. I use it as a conduit for thinking.
The reading I do informs my writing. It is a place I go to to gather a little treasure among the trite and the tasteless.

 A boy once asked his father, 'What is Twitter? The father responded, 'Well you know how annoying it is when the neighbour's dog starts barking in the morning, well Twitter's like that, except it goes all day and all night.' 

 Some educators I meet perceive Twitter in this way and as a result have no part of it. Others dabble occasionally. There are also many who, like me, have jumped right in.

 I  see Twitter as a tool for learning, a resource for reading and learning. Opportunities exist for information sharing invaluable to my literate existence. Like any tool, it must be used with due diligence for amongst the treasure to be found, there is equally, a  heck of a lot of rubbish and trivia. The skill lies in being a savvy sifter. 

 This weekend I have been following the events and participant's postings coming from the 2017 NCTE (National Council for Teachers of English) Conference in St Louis, USA. I have been interested in this conference since presenting some years ago in Pittsburgh. It is a conference that attracts great educators with meaningful messages. All the way from far away Australia, I am engaged as a curious learner. It is distance education in the digital age.

 So, here is a sampling of some of the messages gleaned from Twitter  over the past two days. Hope they stimulate your thinking and maybe you might consider becoming a 'Twit' like me.

‘Reading is controversial because it reflects life. We cannot sidestep issues of race, gender, culture, and experience.’
Michelle Picard

 ‘A child is not a level. And, seriously, how many of you reading this right now, choose a book you want to read because it is at some level?’
Kylene Beers

 ‘When teachers continue to learn and grow, students benefit.’
Carol Jago

 ‘Reading gives us the chance to figure out tough issues within the safety of a book.’ 
KyleneBeers

 ‘We should be diversifying the literary canon. What’s a classic to you might not be a classic to me. If I’m Chilean, your classics aren’t my classics.’
Jason Reynolds

 ‘When students are provided that mirror — when they see characters like themselves described in the pages they are reading—they are often more drawn to and interested in the texts.’
S.L. Osorio

 ‘We English teachers do not teach happy literature. We teach life.’
Jocelyn A Chadwick

 ‘We need diverse books. Classroom shelves should reflect our nation.’
Laurie Halse-Anderson

 ‘If the rules of the classroom were the rules of the world, would you want to live there ‘
Kristine Mraz

 ‘Writing was a way to create the worlds I couldn’t enter myself.’
Ralph Fletcher

 ‘Don’t know the Lexile levels of my books any more than I know the BMI of my children. They’re healthy. Stop trying to put numbers on them.’
AS_King

 ‘When we [teachers] stop reading, we stop being as effective as we can be.’
Carol Jago

 ‘The future depends on all people having access to literature.’
 Dick Robinson

 ‘When you put out highly engaging books they want to read, and then give them time to talk about them, well that’s how you build an independent reader.’
Lucy Calkins

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