Social media is a blessing and a curse.
As an introvert, social media offers access to people, places, and lives I would otherwise never know because, except for certain times of the year, I am mostly a hermit. Still, when on social media I see people, places, and lives I would otherwise never know, I feel pangs of being left out. A part of me wants to be part of, in body, the experiences upon which I gaze.
I want to be included, and yet social situations cause me much anxiety. I feel anxiety leading right up to the moment when I get face-to-face, and then all concerns dissipate because I really do enjoy being with other human beings. A lot has to happen, many choices, in order to position myself, my body, in public spaces alongside others. I have to initiate the process (sometimes months in advance), make plans, prepare something, get dressed, leave the house, travel, and then actually go to the place and interact with human beings. This may seem common sense, but it is kind of a miracle for me. The emotional investment is huge, but there is also a financial one. I recognize that introvert or not, anxiety or not, there are people missing from the shared space for emotional and financial reasons. And such people may feel something like FOMO, fear of missing out, or something much bigger: being left out or made to feel less than because such experiences are inaccessible for too many people. And this brings me to education conventions, e.g., NCTE, ALAN.
I became a member of NCTE in 2002. I have been attending the yearly convention regularly since 2010, in part, because I was nudged to do so by my doctoral advisor. (Apparently, part of doing research is disseminating your findings in public spaces, who knew.) I don’t have to tell you introverts how hard it was for me to travel for the purpose of public speaking, but over time, I recognized it as part of my professional responsibility: to share my work and support others as they share theirs. NCTE, the annual convention of language arts teachers, librarians, authors, teacher educators, and researchers, is kind of like a holiday in that people travel to their professional “home” once a year to do collaborate and celebrate.
To attend this annual professional “holiday,” however, most teachers have to use a personal day, pay for a sub, make sub plans, and still communicate with students, parents, and administrators while attending the conference. If you live locally, you can pack snacks and attend the four-day conference for $270! That is a great value, considering most affiliates are about $150 for 2-day conference. However, if you must travel, then add on hotel, airfare, shuttle, and food costs, and this convention quickly becomes an investment for some, a luxury for others, and impossible for most teachers. (And I didn’t even mention all the emotional and household costs while the teacher is away for work.)
So when a friend posted on Facebook something like this — I wonder if it is possible to share out about events without making others feel diminished or left out — I got to thinking about the feelings I was stirring up in my social media friends not able to join me this year in Baltimore for our annual gathering.
Was I showing off when I posted the picture of my roundtable session? Was I diminishing others when I shared a snapshot of the ALAN Workshop program? This blog has always been a place for me to process this teaching life, so below is how I have come to think about my social media presence.
Here is my rationale for why I share and how I choose to read other posts about events and awards:
- When I shared the picture of my roundtable about Lily and Dunkin book groups at the GSA session, I did so because I wanted to show that every seat at that table was taken by teachers wanting to share LGTBQ literature with their middle school readers. This, for me, is a sign of hope. This, for me, is a sign that we can start making our tables larger and inviting more people to into the conversation.
- When I shared information about my conversation with K.A. Holt and Julia Drake, I wanted to entice people to follow the tweets about this conversation and be intrigued enough to order and read their books because, again, the more people reading Julia’s book The Last True Poets of the Sea, the better chance her book with end up in the hands of young adults, and the more people reading K.A. Holt’s book Redwood and Ponytail, the better chance that story will end up in the hands of middle school readers. They are good, important books, and the authors are really generous human beings.
- When I shared a picture of the ALAN Workshop program with Dr. Steve Bickmore, I shared it to show the author who sat in a room of teachers to talk about their books, to recognize Dr. Bickmore made deliberate choices in his partnering of authors to engage in important conversations about YA literature, and to acknowledge the room for growth that ALAN and the YA publishing world still need to do.
- When I shared the picture of Padma Venkatraman and Jennifer Jacobson talking about writing and conferring with a room full of people, I did not want to diminish the people who did not or could not come. I wanted to show that teachers woke up early on a Sunday to learn how to confer with writers. That these teachers are doing or want to do writers’ workshop. These teachers also wrote stories and shared them — being vulnerable and being willing to practice the new strategies. I wanted to celebrate this!
- And when I shared screenshots of sessions I was attending, that I had nothing to do with planning, I wanted to show that teacher educators go to sessions and know that they have a lot to learn. Dismantling the Pillars of White Supremacy in and through English Education. Dismantling White Supremacy in Critical Teacher Inquiry: Humanizing Black and Brown Youth in English Education. Dr. April Baker-Bell. Dr. Stephanie Jones. Dr. Carmen Kynard. Dr. Rosinna Zamora Liu. I listened. Knowing others could not be in those rooms, I wanted to make visible this work and invite others to follow Drs. Baker-Bell, Jones, Kynard, and Zamora. The first thing I did when I got home from NCTE was to find everything they have written, then I started reading and I have not stopped. (See Reading List below.) I am revising my syllabi to include their work. Again, this is not to make anyone feel bad that they could not be in that NCTE session, but because I was, I wanted to share my access with anyone interested.
I choose to find the blessings in social media. When I read something interesting, I share it to offer access, not to shame someone who did not know the information. If I am happy and smiling in a picture, I hope people will share in my joy. If I share a new book or an article, I hope people will think it is interesting or useful. When others share a book I have not read, I typically begin with– Ugh, one more book I have not read. Add it to the to-read list — and then I move to– So glad I know about it now—and then when I read it, I say — I can’t remember who shared this, but I am so glad this book came into my reading path.
When a friend or colleague is doing good work, publishing, presenting, I do feel a little jealous. This is usually a moment for me to do an inventory of what that is coming from. Am I slacking? Do I need help? What is the source of this? But the truth is this: it costs nothing to lift someone up, to celebrate them, to appreciate their contributions to teachers (Brene Brown?). I think that the feeling of being diminished or overlooked is natural, but I also think that with a little inventory and then reframing, we can see social media sharing as offering access to people, lives, and experiences that can inform our own. And, if it is too much, if you are not in a good place to accept the access, you can unfriend or snooze your friends for a bit. I will welcome you back with another book recommendation and hope you have one for me. And I will hope to meet you in person someday to celebrate all that you do for the human beings with whom we are entrusted. If not, I will “like”and hope you interpret it as me lifting you up.
My Reading List
Jones, S. Mapping Racial Trauma in Schools, https://mappingracialtrauma.sites.grinnell.edu/
Baker-Bell, A., Butler, T., & Johnson, L. (2017). The pain and the wounds: A call for critical race english education in the wake of racial violence. English Education, 49(2), 116-129.
Johnson, L., Gibbs Grey, T., & Baker-Bell, A. (2017). Changing the Dominant Narrative: A Call for Using Storytelling as Language and Literacy Theory, Research Methodology, and Practice. Journal of Literacy Research,49(4), 467-475.
Baker-Bell, A., Stanbrough, R., & Everett, S. (2017). The Stories They Tell: Mainstream Media, Pedagogies of Healing, and Critical Media Literacy. English Education,49(2), 130-152.
Kynard, C. (2010). From Candy Girls to Cyber Sista-Cipher: Narrating Black Females’ Color-Consciousness and Counterstories in and out of School. Harvard Educational Review,80(1), 30-52,141.
Craig, T., & Kynard, C. (2017). Sista Girl Rock: Women of Colour and Hip-Hop Deejaying as Raced/Gendered Knowledge and Language. Changing English,24(2), 143-158.
Liu, WM, Liu, RZ, et al (2019). Racial trauma, microaggressions, & becoming racially innocuous: The role of acculturation and White supremacist ideology. American Psychologist, 74(1), 143-155.
Liu, R. Z. (2013). “The Things They Carried”: Unpacking trauma scripts inside a community writing workshop. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 26(1), 55-71.