Chana Joffe-Walt
@chanajoffewalt
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Reporter and producer for @thisamerlife . chana @thislife .org
Joined February 2012
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Nice White Parents is not possible without these books.
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You all know
@nhannahjones
for her brilliant, dogged, clear eyed reporting. Those of us who have worked with her know that in addition to all of that Nikole is deeply committed to supporting the work of other journalists.
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Nice White Parents listeners....more listening! School Colors podcast from
@GriffithMW
and
@maxfreedperson
. A deeply researched historical story about Brooklyn public schools, power and Black self-determination. Produced at
@BKMovement
. You want to hear this.
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For those of you who reached out asking if there was a Nice White Parents discussion guide I was gonna say no. But then the people at the NYT Learning Center made one! For kids and adults here:
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We all benefit from the work she creates. You should know she's also her behind the scenes cheering, challenging and investing in the work of others.
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One of the joys of making this show was many long talks with
@rachelissy
and
@eveewing
. These two sent me book titles and papers, texted links to news stories alongside bonus historical context, heard me out, challenged me + Rachel took me on my first field trip to BOE archives.
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After the white supremacist shooting in Buffalo, our executive editor
@Emanuelewithane
came to an editorial meeting saying she kept thinking about the list of names. People were sharing it. Ten names and ages.
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Then, when I came back to my desk I found a blue post she left that said: YOU WILL FIGURE IT OUT. Call anytime. I can’t tell you how many times I stared at this post-it.
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A practical tool for PTOs committed to equity and inclusion from
@allycrinerbrown
and
@teachingchange
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Each name. That's a whole life. We started talking about how to use our show to get at the surprising and weird and special chapters that make up ten lives. This is what we came up with.
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This is not celebrated work and it’s not her job. It’s a choice she makes. When I first started reporting Nice White Parents, Nikole spent several hours in an edit room talking through some early material. It was a mess. She put her head down and pieced through it all morning
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Integrated Schools has been focused on creating behavior change among white and/or privileged parents and public schools for years. I am making my way through their podcast now and it features a lot of the voices and scholarship that shaped our series.
Lots of incredible scholars/writers/thinkers on this list including
@MaggieHagerman
@nrookie
@AmandaLewisPhD
@johndiamondphd
@eveewing
@mattdelmont
#vanessasiddlewalker
#elizabethmcrae
also thx to
@PeterTPiazza
for lifting up the work of
#miltongalamison
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The whole time we worked on this, I was aware that
@CAKitchener
was capturing something fleeting. The 1st group of people to face new abortion bans are very clear how much is different now. But soon this will all seem normal, if it doesn't already.
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It's time consuming & tedious to investigate conspiracy theories and
@BenjaminGoggin
@BrandyZadrozny
@tylerkingkade
and
@oneunderscore__
did such a thorough job running this down. And it connected the 2 stories we'd been working in a way I did not expect.
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@cveiga
is the reporter we all need. Follow her and all the incredible reporters at
@Chalkbeat
covering the best and hardest beat.
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I love each piece in this episode so much.
@eveewing
says, "grief requires you to hold on to something, to sit with it, to look at it, consider it, cry, be mad."
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new story
The story of a woman from Gaza City who ran out of words. Seventy-two days into the war, Youmna stopped talking.
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Saw this wild story from
@NBCNews
as I was putting together last week's ep about using kids as grounds for political debate. Couldn't get it out of my head & put it in notes doc ABSURDITIES AND LITTERBOXES. Ultimately made its way to the end of the show.
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I especially enjoyed this recent conversation between Vanessa Siddle Walker and Elizabeth Gillespie McRae
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@michaelharriot
@eveewing
@bmluse
Bim Adewumni,
@aparkusfarce
@KieseLaymon
, and
@DamonYoungVSB
brought all the heart and depth needed to do those things.
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It’s been two years since school buildings closed. It’s hard to remember how impossible that seemed before it happened. Closing entire school buildings! I’ve been talking to people in schools (principals, parents, teachers, students) about what’s changed for them.
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More essential scholarship! Alex's paper A Great School Benefits Us All was so helpful to me.
When I say that the first episode of this podcast made me wonder why I spent three years researching gentrifying schools, given how much more effectively and accessibly
@chanajoffewalt
communicated the main ideas, believe me.
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I reached Yousef 2 weeks ago. He was in the rare position in Gaza of having internet access via solar panel. I was completely absorbed in what he was describing. We talked for a week. Every conversation went in a direction I didn't expect.
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This is the research that got
@rachellissy
and I talking several years ago. So much of the history she uncovered changed the way I see today's school system.
New on the blog!
@RachelLissy
takes us back to the origins of police in NYC public schools in the 1950s. "Sorry Junior, Recess is Over": Integration, White Backlash and the Origins of Police in New York City Schools
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Yes
@serial
@chanajoffewalt
Good list -- especially
@AmandaeLewis
and John B. Diamond's “Despite the Best Intentions” and
@MaggieHagerman
's very promising-looking "White Kids."
My only suggested additions would be
@DumiLM
's "Inequality in the Promised Land" and
@Kartemquin
's "America to Me"
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Nine months since Roe was overturned. There’s been so much to track! Changes for clinics and doctors, new laws & court challenges. We wanted to make a show simply about the people at the center of all this. People who were seeking abortions 9 months ago. What’s happened since?
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So many of the policy debates that are front and center in American politics center around children. Adults arguing with each other about "what's best for kids, how to protect kids, parents rights", etc. We wanted to hear from the kids at the center of these fights.
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🙌🙌And 🙌Julie🙌 Snyder🙌, Sarah Koenig,
@eveewing
and
@RachelLissy
🙌🙌
Congratulations to duPont Finalist
@serial
@chanajoffewalt
@neildrumming
@iraglass
on their entry “Nice White Parents.” Learn more at
#duPont2022
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The pandemic forced jobs to change, but then workers changed, too.
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My "whoa" right after
@tk_nagayoshi
said this is how I felt reporting the entire episode.
"I just feel like the seal has been broken, and it's hard for me to imagine a world to go back to that magic." Teachers and principals talk to
@chanajoffewalt
about what it's like to be in schools this year.
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I had to do several takes of "Alix Spiegel is a producer for our show" for this ep. I kept giggling to myself because ALIX! I'm introducing Alix? "Our show?" I spent so many hours in my 20s in the basement studying her story structures to try to figure out how to do this job.
New story in awesome episode put together by this amazing trio
@Starecheski
@nadiareiman
@chanajoffewalt
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New episode!
On the radio this weekend: The pandemic broke school. Can we ever go back?
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And
@tk_nagayoshi
who opens the episode by sharing how much he missed the magic he felt in the pre-pandemic classroom. A bygone era, he said! “The seal has been broken.”
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ahem apologies I am a newbie here. I meant RACHEL LISSY
@RachelLissy
One of the joys of making this show was many long talks with
@rachelissy
and
@eveewing
. These two sent me book titles and papers, texted links to news stories alongside bonus historical context, heard me out, challenged me + Rachel took me on my first field trip to BOE archives.
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All essential.
Really appreciate
@serial
@nytimes
@chanajoffewalt
highlighting books by
@nrookie
@eveewing
@AmandaLewisPhD
@johndiamondphd
@MaggieHagerman
Vanessa Siddle Walker, Clarence Taylor, Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, and me as essential for new “Nice White Parents" podcast
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Yousef promised his family that Rafah was the safest place to be in Gaza. Now, he managing a camp of 60+ relatives, Israel is threatening an invasion, and his sister is eight months pregnant. Everyone is looking to him to tell them what comes next.
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Very special show alert
We have a new show: "We Were Three" is a story of lies, family, America, and what Covid revealed, as well as what it destroyed. Hosted by Nancy Updike, coming October 13.
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And generous, talented editor ROBYN SEMIEN who is so good at many things and exceptional at listening.
We're pleased to have Dean Jelani Cobb present the next of our 2023 duPont-Columbia Awards Finalists:
Talking While Black, from
@ThisAmerLife
, by
@Emanuelewithane
and
@chanajoffewalt
.
#duPont2023
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A huge part of making stories, for me anyway, is feeling lost. I’ll do lots of interviews, learn things, read things and then…lost. I mean, I'll have people and anecdotes I love but WHAT DO THEY MEAN?
Excited to share this week’s episode of
@ThisAmerLife
. Thanks
@chanajoffewalt
for inviting me to help capture this dystopian moment in public schooling!
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In the middle of producing the episode Bim said, “once you know there are other ways to do things, there is no unknowing.”
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@Emanuelewithane
edited this episode with all the skill, clarity and heart she brings to the show every day. We're very lucky over here to have her as our guide.
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But most of the episode is not about adults. It’s about the people schools are built to serve. Two kids whose lives were changed by the disappearance of school. Over the last 2 years, these girls had drifted away from school. I wanted to see if they could find their way back.
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Absolutely listen. Worth your time.
"They’re fighting to protect their identity as students, and as people worthy of respect and dignity, but as Black people displaced by war ... they've lost all of that." Listen to my story on foreign students in Ukraine on
@ThisAmerLife
, produced by
@chanajoffewalt
:
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I have never before called an expert to help with some background on a story, only to realize the expert herself WAS a story. Mary Koss is not what I expected in all the best ways.
.
@chanajoffewalt
talks to Mary Koss, the researcher who changed the questions used in surveys to measure the prevalence of rape, and had to come up with new words—"date rape"—to describe data previously unseen.
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Sharing those conversations in a special bonus podcast here:
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This art!!! ♥
@juliarothman
MTA station agent Moneta Lewis worked through the darkest days of COVID. To get through it, she and her colleagues filled their booths with items that made them feel less alone. This week, stories about the things most of us never saw.
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So many of my favorite producers have done this fellowship. Please apply if you're interested!
The deadline to apply for our fellowship program is tomorrow!
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I’ve been waiting to produce an episode with
@bimadew
since she started at TAL. I loved every conversation about America and work and I went back to my notes from our conversations over and over as I wrote through the episode.
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The episode is great and the stories are interesting and it’s here!
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If they’d gotten pregnant weeks earlier, they would have gotten abortions immediately. Those abortions would have been available less than an hour from their homes. Instead, the last nine months have been a different story.
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Anyway, these and more were the Qs that inspired this episode. Produced, edited, mixed by all the best
@nadiareiman
@Starecheski
@aspiegelnpr
@dkestenbaum
@nelsts4
and more.
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A year and a half ago, we asked more than 50 million Americans to continue going to work because they had essential jobs. And they did. Doctors, nurses, mail carriers, waitresses, childcare workers and garbage collectors worked through a once in a century emergency.
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I kept being surprised to hear all the ways people were questioning the basic premise of school That kids go to school everyday. 5 days a week. School as a routine that the rest of your life is organized around.
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Nancy is a giant. This series is masterful, beautifully written and deeply compassionate.
Don't miss this new three-part series from Nancy Updike, one of the founding producers of our show, who has made some of our best stories.
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Nobody better to do this with than
@CAKitchener
who has been deeply focused on how these new abortion bans shape individual lives. She tells what happened to ppl in OH, GA, OK, who would have gotten abortions immediately & nearby, if not for brand new bans in their states.
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A school bus driver who realized he could make twice as much money at the Amazon warehouse. A beloved principal in Arizona (2021 AZ principal of the year!) was harassed relentlessly for enforcing her district's public health mandates. She quit in the middle of the school year.
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The corniest part of me.
.
@chanajoffewalt
*loves* the slideshows that schools display at end-of-the-year parent assemblies. But one in particular wasn’t doing it for her.
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Emanuele had this one in her head the whole time. It was a joy to work on and thrilling to see it recognized.
Congratulations to duPont Finalist
@ThisAmerLife
@Emanuelewithane
@chanajoffewalt
@RobynSemien
@Starecheski
on their entry “EP 758: Talking While Black.” Learn more at
#duPont2023
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I must've listened to this exchange 50 times in editing. It has same pull each time.
@KieseLaymon
@zfelice
"I think we are owed the deaths of our choosing... Being able to move into the light in ways of their own choosing, that's what this country owes to all black people as reparations. "
— Dr. Zandria Robinson
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I've watched so many school board meetings where parents yell as their kids watching from the chair behind them. Where a mom disrupting the meeting refuses to leave and gets into with an officer over her seated teenager son. I always wonder what's that kid thinking?
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And now we're just kind of used to it. But do we even know what just happened? The private moments that unfolded in people jobs.
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And the variety of ways people were questioning their relationship to school! A science teacher in Montana told me when her high school students began questioning vaccine science and the rigor of the scientific method, she was like “does anything I’m doing matter?”
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That is when I desperately grab
@RachelLissy
arm and she effortlessly walks me to an idea. Or asks an annoyingly precise question that opens everything up. She is unnaturally good at this. Seriously.
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So many of my favorite lines or ideas in this episode come from Rachel.
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When we repeatedly enter a circular debate about guns, following repeated school shootings, I always want to know what it's like to watch that, day to day as a student.
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Don't miss listening to this.
The story of a phone call between
@KirkWJohnson
in California, and Ajmal, a man standing in a canal outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.
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Or when parents and school districts started banning books from their libraries I kept wondering, doesn’t that make the books much more appealing? Or is there a kid who’s like, I read that book. Why that one? It’s not even that interesting!
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The intimacy here is very special. In the conversation and and in the way Parker shares it with us.
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It's here! These people are always both wise and real
@JamilahLemieux
@ejdn
and
@muzachar
(also RIP old host
@alisonbenedict
)
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The stories will keep you engaged with a million different ideas and experiences. The killer team of producers will keep you liking your job. Apply!
We’re hiring! Looking for editors who have a background in creating narrative journalism and who excel at bringing a story from the seeds of an idea to a final edit.
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CURTIS LOVELL !!!
@CurtisLovell1
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Also, check out Mustafa's incredible portraits of Tops employees
Honored to have this image featured on
@ThisAmerLife
. Tomorrow’s episode remembering the 10 lives lost in the Buffalo’s Tops massacre.
Sunday 7pm CT
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Yep, nothing beats it
"I cannot think of a more 2022 image than a work-from-home finance guy taking a Zoom call from his car, outside what may or may not be a school shooting in his kid's high school."
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@nhannahjones
@howarduchsoc
Loved your class and I love story structure! I don't what you're talking about.
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She watched. Came into talk in my office before I left for the day. The next morning, she had written this.
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Yes to hearing from kids. So many questions about what it's like to be a kid right now.
Just listened to this episode and it’s a doozy. Act 1 had me talking to my phone non-stop and Act 2, focusing on a teenager who was abandoned by the public school system, gutted me. Incredible reporting by
@chanajoffewalt
We need many more stories like this centering kids voices
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I came across Andre Mackniel's TikTok prepping this episode. Bim was the first person I sent it to. I most wanted to know what she saw in it, what it told her about who he was.
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Because a) I pretty much always want to know what Bim thinks about anything and b) she is my fav TikTok watcher, curator, critic. Bim's use for TikTok is to celebrate PEOPLE - our absurdity, our humor, neurosis, our capacity to be human in all the great and stupid ways.
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Listen, buy, enjoy
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