Last night I participated in my first ever Twitter Chat. I had tried to participate in two different chats before, but each chat had either gotten moved forward to another time, or had simply not occurred. While scrolling through the many different chats, #BlackEdu caught my eye. Since I am in the CURE Program here at Cortland, I plan on becoming an urban educator. These tribulations of BlackEdu directly contribute to teaching in Urban areas.

When the chat began, I wasn’t really sure how this was going to go. I am a beginner Tweeter, so I haven’t had the chance to use Twitter as often as I wish I could. I followed the moderator of the discussion, and soon I was pulled into discussions about the difficulties Black students face in schools. The format of the discussion was to go over the problems they face, why they are facing them, what is being done in schools to address them, how to fix them, and how we, as educators, can change them.

I responded to a few Tweets, but I quickly became overwhelmed at how fast the conversations were going, as well as how many different conversations were happening at the same time. Someone tweeted directly to me, asking me a clarifying question of something I had mentioned earlier in the chat. I responded back, and soon we had a conversation going.

I am very grateful for being exposed to this type of process because now I feel that I can turn to professionals if I have a question when teaching. I plan on exploring other Twitter chats, and seeing what else may interest me.