Collaborate

Recent Work

We encourage you to read BLTN member Laura Benton's primer on BLTN collaboration. 

• Rabiah Khalil and Lauren Davenport engaged their students with author Leila Aboulela, and designed an exchange to bring their students together for a day in New York City. Read "Insight on Sight: Seeing One Another Across Difference."

• In "Finding Grace and Kindness: Reflections on a First BLTN Exchange," Jacob Belvery reflects on lessons learned in his first exchange with Sara Taggart. 

• Monica Rowley (Philadelphia) and Sara Taggart (Columbus) conceived and conducting their exchange without ever having met one another in person (pandemic). Read "Learning across Community Spaces: An Ubran Exchange." 

• Gregory Masterson Booth (Ohio) and Sheilla Lupao (Nairobi) connected students in a truncated but effective exchange  building from the personal to the academic. 

• Colin LaJoie and Whitney Morgan collaborated with one another and with English department colleagues in a unit on Linguistic Justice, inspired by a summer BLTN visit and a book by BLSE faculty member April Baker-Bell.

• Read about Kayla Hostetler's collaboration with Emily Bartels in a classroom unit on Othello. 

• Browse a collection of collaboration plans and reflections on the impacts of BLSE coursework in the BLTN Journal. 

Historical Work

• Browse an abstract of several projects, with archives of historical material. 

• See Robert Baroz's one-page framework for designing and implementing an exchange.

• Read an account of a classroom to classroom exchange among the elementary students of Brendan McGrath and Tom McKenna, and author Ralph Fletcher. (December, 2014)

• Check out Janet Atkins' explicit  weekly plans for an 8-week exchange (2000).

• Read and view "Digital Learning Partnerships: Transforming the Way Students--and Teachers--Think about 21st Century Learning" by Chris Moore and Andrea Vescelius.

• Read The Effects of Online, Collaborative Discourse on Secondary Students' Writing: A Case Study of the History and Ecology of an Electronic Exchange, Julie Henderson Rucker's dissertation on "Pass the Poetry" a longstanding BreadNet exchange. (2008)

• Read "Of Bombs, Blackness and Ideal Balconies: A Cross-Cultural Poetry Exchange: Students in Africa and Massachusetts Learn to Appreciate Poetry Together Using Technology." (Bread Loaf Teacher Network Magazine , January 2001, pp. 21-23)

• Adapt  a customizable set of permission forms for BLTN collaborations prepared by Chris Benson, BLTN Magazine Editor.

Flashback: Speaking about Exchanges in the Early 2000s...

"Last night we talked about the RANGE of successful projects, some of which aren't planned as  whole classroom experience: professional seminars organized by 3-4 teachers; small groups of students working with a classroom or another small project for 'extra credit' or because of special interest; exchanges where teachers and students are in conversation together; exchanges that invite a guest responder to join the conversations." —Dixie Goswami, email to Jackie Royster (2004)

Successful BreadNet Projects (as summarized by Jackie Royster):

• Are thoughtfully planned as "whole" classroom experiences.

• Center on the quality of both the classroom experience and the on-line conversation.

• Exhibit three core features. 

  • They are... 

    • text-based

    • inquiry based

    • experience-based

• Are enhanced by technology, not controlled by it.

• Use reading, writing, critical response, and other expressive skills and processes consciously as central to the implementation of the projects.

• Are thoughtfully observed, analyzed, and documented by the teachers who implement them, often with the participation of students as co-inquirers.

• Are carefully and consistently reflected on by both teachers and students.

• Recognize the direct beneficiaries of the work to be local - i.e., the teachers, students, and schools of the participants, and schools of the participants, and the communities that surround them.

• Demonstrate the idea that participants (teachers and students) honor teaching and learning as people-centered enterprises in which respect and reciprocity matter.

• Demonstrate variously the benefits in operating (either actively or periodically) within a learning community in which the members of the community uphold the values that have been negotiated within that community.

• Become part of the discourse on educational reform in BLSE (and larger arenas) orally and in writing through the active participation of the teachers and students who have participated in them via meetings, conferences, and publication projects of various sorts.

School Year Meeting Agendas and Notes

Fall 2022

Spring 2023

Spring 2022

• April 7
• February 3

Fall 2021

• December 2
• October 7

Spring 2021

• February 4

• April 1

Fall 2020

Comment on the agenda and notes from our fall meetings.

• October 1
  Breakout sessions focused on anti-racist advocacy and teaching, student and teacher wellness, and technology and classroom structure.

• December 3
  A session focused on "decolonizing the classroom," followed by discussion of teaching and learning under pandemic conditions