Class is in session: Sunday night Twitter chats focus on education
Most Sunday nights, Kimberly Blodgett settles onto the couch with her laptop, where she launches into an online discussion with educators across the state from the comfort of her living room.
“It becomes like an instant community,” said Blodgett, a fourth-grade teacher at Jefferson Elementary in Norman.
From 8 to 9 p.m. every week, a community of Oklahoma educators, elected officials and others gather on Twitter to have an education conversation linked by the #oklaed hashtag.
They’ve tackled topics ranging from classroom management to the importance of creativity to the school-toprison pipeline to administrative issues. Participants share ideas and successes. They talk about how they respond to certain issues. They build relationships.
Blodgett arranges her Sunday nights around the chats. She said she’s probably missed one since she started participating at least four years ago. Afterward, she goes to bed feeling empowered and energized for the week ahead, ready to bring new ideas to her classroom.
“Who doesn’t like getting professional development in your pajamas?” she said.
The idea for the Oklahoma education chats developed in 2013 at an EdCamp, an event for educators to share ideas and network. For nearly six years, the chats have taken place every week but one because Christmas fell on a Sunday, organizers said.
“It’s great collaboration,” said Kevin Hime, superintendent of Clinton Public Schools. “It builds your network.”
Hime is one of the people who was involved with starting the chats. He and Anne Beck, digital governance specialist at the Oklahoma State School Boards Association, work to
line up moderators. Parents, superintendents, teachers and others have facilitated discussions. They’re always looking for new moderators, and Beck said she’d love to see more parents get involved.
On fifth Sundays of the month, the group holds a legislation and policy chat, hosted by Shawn Hime, executive director of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association.
Chat participants include teachers, administrators, lawmakers and other stakeholders.
A team huddle
State schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, a frequent participant, said the chats are a powerful engagement tool.
“To create an engaged community is something I feel we are tasked with doing if we’re going to improve public education outcomes,” she said. “We need more people around the table, and this is a way to gather more people in a convenient way for them.”
For her, the chats are a meaningful check-in point week after week. The topics reflect the times, and the chats are an opportunity to hear from constituents both in and out of the classroom, Hofmeister said.
“It feels like a team huddle before the week starts in education,” she said. “With this particular format, everyone’s equal and on the same playing field regardless their role in public education. And I think that is a refreshing aspect to collaboration and having a community conversation around students and how we can better serve them.”
House Majority Floor Leader Jon Echols, of Oklahoma City, has also become a regular on the chats. He said he loves that they are bipartisan. He described the chats as a “high-level discussion where everybody’s working together really well.”
“What I’ve gained is perspective,” Echols said. “The most important thing for a lawmaker is to listen, and it’s been a wonderful opportunity to listen.”
The conversation isn’t just limited to Sunday nights. At any given time if someone posts to OklaEd asking about a resource, someone will likely tweet back, Beck said.
“It’s a community that continues throughout the week,” she said. “I think given the lack of resources in our state that this has been a tremendous resource for teachers to be able to connect.”
People in the trenches
The chats can be an especially valuable tool for educators in rural areas. Beck used to teach in Dibble, where she was the only social studies teacher at her school. She joined a social studies chat on Twitter, and it was transforming, Beck said.
“To have that kind of instant information at your fingertips from other people that genuinely care about education, there’s not a money amount you could put on that because these are people actually in the trenches with you,” she said.
The #oklaed chats have grown over time. In 2013, the Sunday chats averaged 30.4 users and 253 tweets for the hour, said Scott Haselwood, director of instructional technology at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He wrote his dissertation about the chats. In 2016, the last full year for which Haselwood has data, the chats averaged 87 participants who contributed 601 tweets during the hour, he said.
Those numbers don’t include people who follow the discussion but don’t chime in.
Haselwood and fellow educator Erin Barnes started a podcast called “OklaSaid” based on the #oklaed chats. Haselwood, a former high school math teacher, encouraged other educators to check out the Twitter chats. He said he picked up great ideas to implement in his classroom, and he always feels energized afterward.
“There’s a supportive community that’s ready to engage you and to challenge you and encourage you,” he said.