I'm in Awe

I always love it when I stumble across pure genius! This evening I was going back to see the rest of the comments on a discussion that Stacey Shubitz started on Two Writing Teachers about technology. John Spencer, one of the teachers who left a comment, mentioned the blog that his students contribute to. Because of the title, Social Voice, I just had to check it out.

What I found was a plethora of mentor texts for my students' blogs for next year. Not only are the students writing about multiple real issues that hold importance in their lives, they are also posting in a wide variety of formats. I love the mixture of art and text, as well as the podcasting and Google Docs presentations.

It is evident that these students are aware of current social issues. They are from Arizona, and many of their posts mention the current immigration conflicts. Here are a couple of posts that captured my attention, although there were many, many more that I could have listed: Education is the Answer and A Letter to America.

Seeing sites like these make me excited to be an educator. Even though I still have a little over a month and a half of summer vacation, it makes me wish for the school year to be here so that I can share their work.

I applaud John Spencer and his students for their great work, and I thank them for the way that I just know they will be inspiring my 6th through 8th graders in the fall.