The biggest difference I’ve seen in my blog posts this quarter is that reflecting on the
real life teaching experiences we are now having adds a lot of depth and richness to the reflecting we have been doing on what we are learning in our certification program classes and therefore my writing is more interesting. I feel like my blogging is more of a conversation now, whereas before it sometimes just seemed like a statement or analysis I was presenting. Blogging this quarter has also been a lot more challenging as our schedules have become so much busier and the time to reflect on what we are learning and doing in schools much rarer. Information and experience is pouring in at an ever-increasing rate while at the same time there is less time to digest it all. This has been frustrating because there is so much value to our ability to digest, reflect and share our thinking with each other.
That being said, it seems that this quarter we have been commenting more deeply on each others blogs. Not only are we more comfortable with each other, but also, although we share a fairly common academic experience in our university classes, our student teaching experiences are wildly different and it is so interesting to compare across grade levels, schools and districts and also across different personalities of teachers and students. We are all seeking harder to make sense of our experiences and anxious to share ideas with each other. Thinking back over some of my comments to others this quarter, many were just affirmations of what others were saying, some were advice (like these two, for example), and others were part of a really great thread of conversation.
In terms of generating feedback on my blog, I hope that just the fact that I’m writing about real life student teaching experiences instead of just reflecting on course readings leaves more loose ends and unknowns on which people can comment or to which they might add something to the conversation. I also have been better about consciously writing to an audience of more than just my professor who assigns the blogging. I’ve always known, of course, that my cohort-mates were reading my blog, but they were all reading the same things as I was in our classes, so there was not as much to say after we had participated in class discussions. Now, I write primarily with my cohort-mates, not my professor (no offense, Jane), in mind because I am so anxious to compare and learn from our various experiences. I find myself asking questions in my blog post more often, to which I hope someone will respond. I started doing this more consciously after I noticed that I was more likely to comment on other blog posts I was reading when they posed a question for me to think about and respond to.
It’s hard to pick a blog that I feel best exemplifies my growth as a blogger. I guess an ideal post would be one that integrated my student teaching experiences, class readings, my experience as a parent, and my relationship with my cohort (bouncing ideas off of each other, asking questions, etc.). In most cases, the best blog posts do not answer a question, but instead add to a conversation around an important issue or question. That being said, none of my posts lives up to that ideal, but I would say that my two best were probably Lost in Translation and Stealing Learning. One way I would characterize the change in my blogging over the past eight months would be this -- whereas in the spring I was a student blogger, I now feel more like a teacher who blogs.
On that note, our professor’s pushing us to comment on the professional teacher blogs we were following felt pretty intimidating this quarter and I was a little slow to get started. It felt a little like sending an email to a rock star. How could I add anything of significance to the thinking of these teaching giants (at least they seem that way to me right now) and, with so many followers, how would my little comment generate any notice from them? One thing I’m learning in this program is that when I am pushed to do something outside of my comfort zone (1) it is usually not as bad as I think it will be and (2) I am usually pleasantly surprised at the results. This was no exception. In October and November I left comments in three blogs that I really admire: Elementary, my Dear. or Far From It (Jenny Orr), Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension (Pernille Ripp), and Between the By-Road and the Main Road (Mary Ann Reilly). To my surprise, when I went back to check today, two out of three (Pernille and Mary Ann) had commented back to me. It felt great to make this small connection with them even if our conversation did not really move “the conversation” forward. I view it as getting my feet wet and look forward to jumping in a little deeper next quarter.
