Reality Pedagogy Assignment

Adopting Twitter into an Elementary Classroom Community

Katie Kirk

Students and Community

Because I do not currently have my own classroom, my thoughts about how I might

design my class with reality pedagogy in mind are based off my student teaching placement. My

school is an elementary school located in Athens, Georgia. The students in my class come from

of a wide range of economic statuses and cultures. The county in which our school is districted

consists largely of students from low-income families. Because of this, every student in the

district receives both breakfast and lunch each school day at no cost. This is particularly

interesting at my school because although some students are from economically disadvantaged

families, we also have students of all races and cultures from middle-class and high-income

families. This is different than other elementary schools in the county because our elementary

school is located on a college campus, and many of our students parents earn high wages

working for the university, creating a diverse mix of cultural and economic statuses.

There are a total of 571 students currently enrolled in the elementary school. 39% are

African American, 8% are Asian, 5% are Hispanic, 4% are Multi-racial and 43% are White. My

specific third grade class is made up of 18 eight and nine year old students. Eight of my students

are White, six of my students are African American, and four of my students are Chinese. Two

different types of student groups within the class are from marginalized backgrounds. One group

being the African American children who live in nearby government housing and are raised by a

single parent or their grandparents. The other marginalized group is made up of four Chinese

male students who were born in China, are learning English as a second language, and reside in
the universitys family housing, as they are here temporarily because one or both parents attend

classes or teach at the University of Georgia.

Rationale

Reality pedagogy describes an approach to teaching and learning that values students as

individuals and focuses on implementing instruction that meets each student on his or her own

cultural and emotional turf. In order to meet students on these cultural and emotional turfs, we,

as teachers, need to make sure we are aligning what we do in the classroom with what we know

about our students and their cultures. Reality pedagogy closely relates to the practices of

culturally relevant pedagogy in which teachers utilize students culture as a vehicle for learning

(Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 159). In order to use students cultures and interests to shape

instruction, it is necessary to understand the realities of young people (Edmin, 2016, p. 29), as

these realities are often different from our own.

Electronic technology has become an increasingly significant dimension of most young

peoples lives (Buckingham, 2007, p. 3). As the use of technology is now a part of everyday lives

in large areas of the industrialized world, it is becoming more important to childrens play,

culture, and learning. Each of my third graders has their own laptops, and I am consistently

amazed by each of their abilities and interests in navigating through websites and applications.

My idea for co-constructing the classroom space with my students encompasses using social

media as a form of communication and cultural exchange by creating a class Twitter account.

Because educators and administrators often ban social media from schools, children only

interact and communicate through these platforms outside of the classroom, viewing the sites as

solely social and separate from learning. I believe highlighting social media as a space for
learning can help blur the lines between in-school and out-of-school activities (Edmin, 2016, p.

195) by using Twitter as a bridge to school learning.

Twitter in the Classroom

Edmin states, when introducing social media in the classroom, its crucial to first

instruct students in and set guidelines for its appropriate use (Edmin, 2016, p. 195). I plan to

have a class discussion about social media, and have students share their thoughts and opinions

about having an online presence. Together, we will learn about the coding and format of the

Twitter website, as I will be totally new to the tweeting process too! I will explain to the class

that we will be using Twitter to communicate and share what is happening in our classroom with

the world, letting them know that their thoughts, opinions, and learning is valued. Our Twitter

account will have a special name that we come up with as a class. I will also make sure to inform

parents and families that we will be using a class Twitter account for learning, and encourage

them to follow our class account, and tweet at us frequently!

Twitter is an excellent way to increase communication in the classroom. As a class we

can communicate both locally and globally. I want to value all of my students interests by

following and communicating with businesses, organizations, and agencies related to their

interests. I plan to set aside time during morning meeting each week to check updates of the

accounts we follow and give students the power to communicate their opinions on current events

and social issues by letting them tweet at or respond to individuals or organizations. Since my

third graders are too young to legally have their own Twitter account, they will have to run their

tweets by me before they are posted through our class Twitter. Students can type up and email

me tweets or write down what they wish to tweet from our class Twitter and place it in the

tweet jar located in the front of the room. The students have the power in the voice of our
Twitter, not me, if it is appropriate, it is posted. They can do this individually or with other

students, and choose to include their names or address other twitter accounts using the @

symbol.

Although tweeting can occur at any given moment when we have something we want to

share with the world, it can also be used for specific purposes within content areas. I plan to

create our own hashtags for various learning experiences, inviting other children, people, and

parents to join in on our class learning experiences too (Lirenman, 2013). For example, for our

mathematics unit of two-step word problem students could work with partners or small groups to

create two-step story problems that we could then tweet on our class twitter using an original,

class-created hashtag such as #2stepstoryprobs. Another option is to use more generic hashtags

to reach out to children across the country and also across the world, with hopes that they will

tweet back at us and we can learn how children outside of our classroom think about math, and

other areas of study.

Twitter is a great way to communicate and connect with people. It allows children to

make connections between what we are learning in school and the world in which they live.

Because four of my boys are from China, this is an excellent way for our class to connect to

students in China and learn about their schooling and experiences, thus making my Chinese

students feel more valued and of importance in the classroom space. Twitter can also serve as a

research tool and an outlet to express different perspectives or feelings we have towards social

studies concepts and literature, and how they relate to social and political discussions on Twitter.

In order to help teach the concept of Twitter, I will set up a twitter-like chat by

incorporating the backchannel chat platform, TodaysMeet, into activities, lessons, and

discussions. I can send a TodaysMeet chat access to students via a link, and each student can
participate in the chat using their own laptops. Like Twitter, the chat allows for a 140-character

response, and in order for students to join in the chat, they must pick their very own nickname.

Students will be encouraged to come up with their own twitter-like username and type this in

as their nickname each time we have a TodaysMeet chat, allowing them to bring parts of their

identity that are usually silenced in the classroom to the fore (p. 198). In TodaysMeet chats,

students can tweet their opinions, responses, thoughts in the message box and also tweet @

one another using their nicknames. Students will be encouraged to use informal language, and

express themselves through their online persona and the tweeting language and culture of their

choice.

Closing Thoughts

Edmin (2016) says that a reality pedagogy approach works toward making students

wholly visible to each other and to the teacher and focuses on open discourse about where

students are academically, psychologically, and emotionally (p. 27). This quote describes

exactly what I am working towards by introducing Twitter and TodaysMeets into my classroom.

Although I am the person in charge of actually typing up and delivering the tweets to the world,

my students will make the decisions on how to shape the tweets in a way that captures their

responses, thoughts, and feelings about their learning experiences both inside and outside of

school. Peter McLaren (2005) states, Knowledge acquired in classrooms should help students

participate in vital issues that affect their experiences on a daily level rather than simply enshrine

the values of business pragmatism (p. 413). Twitter can serve as a way to deviate from the

traditional and dominant educational discourses that often misrepresent my students realities,

and serve to give students learning experiences that are powerful, relevant, and reflective of the

many perspectives in our world. Although I recognize that I have a lot to learn about meeting my
students on their cultural and emotional levels, I believe adopting Twitter in our classroom will

help construct a learning community in which students have the power to frame and express their

knowledge, within 140 characters at a time, of course!

 References

Buckingham, D. (2007). Beyond technology: Children's learning in the age of digital culture.
Cambridge: Polity

Emdin, Christopher. (2016). For white folks who teach in the hood...and the rest of yall too.
Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But that's just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant
pedagogy. Theory into practice, 34(3), 159-165.

Lirenman, K. (2013, August 2). Using Twitter in a Primary Classroom. Retrieved from
http://www.klirenman.com/2013/08/using-twitter-in-primary-classroom.html.

McLaren, P. (2005). Critical pedagogy and the social construction of knowledge. In Brown, E.R.
& Saltman, K.J. (Eds.). The critical middle school reader. New York: Routledge (pp. 409-
417).