My thoughts on Twitter

Although I am familiar with the use of social media, spending mindless hours watching and sending memes and reels on Instagram, I must admit I did struggle with my introduction into Twitter. Personally, I have used Instagram and Facebook to stay in contact with friends I don’t see often, sharing funny content and every once in a while something meaningful. Entering the Twitter world I did not know anyone, other than my professor who assigned the assignment. It felt more intimidating entering this realm of social media, I was more selective with who I was following since they were not anyone I knew on a personal level. I paid more attention to their profile, their posts, and who they followed before I began to follow them or retweeted them. After a while I was able to more quickly vet profiles and focus on articles and posts that interested me in the educational field.

The task of tweeting at least 120 meaningful tweets was daunting but once I got into the rhythm of tweeting, retweeting, and commenting I could appreciate the platform as a networking tool and the goal seemed more attainable. I connected with individuals from all around with similar mindsets as me. A highlight from my experience was getting retweeted by Dr. José Medina, a highly respected international leader in the dual language world, who has close to 2,000 followers. It was an exciting yet nerve wrecking moment knowing that I was accessible to so many people, but in the lens of networking, it was great exposure. Moving forward I think I will continue to use Twitter solely as an education account. Overall I think this experience was a positive one; I appreciated finding articles and resources that were relevant to my career path and hope to connect with even more professionals with time.

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What does flexible seating look like in the classroom?

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Spanglish

Spanglish is a term that is used in the Hispanic community when a person is speaking and mixes both English and Spanish words, either creating new words like "troca" for truck or buy interchanging languages as they speak through out the same sentence. This is a term I am incredibly familiar with since it was a big no-no in my household growing up. Even now as a dual language teacher my mother will still regañarme when I do it, but sometimes it feels almost necessary. For example using the word "regañar" for me felt more familiar and accurate; I could have said "scold me" but it wouldn't have been as natural. While of course there are times and places to use specific language over I agree with Dr. José Medina's Twitter post when he speaks of that when people, like my mother, have issues with the use of Spanglish they are linguistic oppressors when in reality it is higher cognitive skill to do so. (Kim et al., 2021) The American school system see...

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