Time for a break?
Day one finished two hours ago. The day ended with me breaking up a fight.
Earlier in the day, I was talking with an administrator about my long-term goals. Someday I'd like to enter the adminstrative career path, and so I wask asking questions.
He asked if I had decided how I wanted to affect change. From the inside, or the out? And then he brought up this blog. He's never read it, but colleagues have and of course, not everyone has liked what I write about, or how I write about it.
He suggested that I might consider this question when I sit down to write in this forum.
Instead, it made me wonder whether or not now is the time to take a break from blogging altogether. I've tried to balance this blog with the reality of the daily grind and my thoughts on education as a whole without being specific to my building.
This is of course serious business. I love writing here. People keep reading it. But in the end, why am I writing?
posted by Mr. McNamar @ 2:38 PM
8 Comments
8 Comments:
Your blog - and others like it - are invaluable resources to those of us who aren't [for a host of reasons] in front of a class each day. You inform us and you testify with each blog post. If you didn't, who would? The NEA/AFT? EdWeek?
No, no. I'll take sites like yours.
Don't stop! I just found this blog and really like it. I never understand why people get their undies in a wad over someone's opinion.
Sounds like the administrator in his indirect way was trying to pressure you to keep school business inside the school. Keep on blogging.
This is probably why so many teachers blog anonymously, without revealing their names and/or letting people at school know they blog.
Sad that we have to censor ourselves this way...
Why are you writing? You answer this yourself... because you enjoy it. We write to learn, explore, seek, arrange, commiserate, probe, reveal. We write for many reasons, some complex reasons, but ultimately, we write because it feels good. It feels right. When we write we leave small traces of ourselves on this digital fabric.
I appreciate your committment and dedication to this blog. Unlike you, I did not blog over the summer. While it felt good not to commit myself to my blog, I missed posting to it too. It's almost ironic that now that school's beginning (and I'll be busier than I've been in months) I'll be starting up my blog again.
Although maybe it's not ironic. Perhaps it's just a natural offshoot of the job starting up again. Our blogs do give us a place to reflect, breathe, and exhale, and it seems we need to exercise those behaviors most during the school year.
Best of luck to you this year.
Keep blogging. Your blog covers both the joys and frustrations in teaching. Also, the blog along with the comments can provide valuable insights on education.
I daresay education at school would benefit from administrators who dare to put their head above the parapet by blogging openly and critically about their daily grind
We read your blog for all kinds of reasons and I am sure you have all kinds of reasons to write it. One of those reasons, it seems to me, is to explore your own thinking. This is something all teachers should do. When you do it in public, the replies you receive push you to think further, and this is also good.
When, however, you move to a position of authority over others, it can be damaging to put out your still forming thoughts for those people to see.
As we teachers know, very little authority comes because we have been given a position. Most of it comes with the consent of those we must lead. If we share our every thought with the students, we can hurt them deeply, it will cost us standing in their eyes and it will interfere with our goals for them.
So too with those who work for us. Administrators who run roughshod over their workers are sabatoged at every possible turn.
Right now, I think this blog is helping you to grow as a teacher. It is also stimulating to those of us who read it. But remember that, in a sense, you are currently protected from doing damage by your relative powerlessness. Once you take on a position of power you also take on a responsibility to be careful about how you use it.
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