Wow, I sound like my 13 year-old.
Before I get into the activity, I want to say a big thanks to all the wonderful people who have left thoughtful and supportive comments on my blog. You're awesome, and I'm truly grateful for this community of which I have become a part.
So, the third activity for the Teachers Challenge involves doing a little blog cleaning. The activity says "spring cleaning" but considering the weather here in Ohio (35 degrees and raining; no sun for days...), I'm just going to call it a blog cleaning.
This is gonna be a short post. I hate the "About Me" page. I realize it's a necessary evil, but I really do hate it. It's just so...narcissistic! Even so, I am thankful for this activity because my "About Me" page was in desperate need of an overhaul. I refuse to put up a picture of myself. I use one as my avatar on Tweetdeck, and I can't believe I have my numerous followers (15 at last count!) look at a picture of me every time I post something. I have to change that. I have been reading other people's posts, and they are much more interesting than what I'm writing here. Why are you even reading this? Read theirs!
And as far as adding another page, I will do that real soon. I'm going to add a page about my conference presentations, etc. But I'm not doing it right now. I'm both too busy and too lazy (You can be both at the same time, you know.). So the small updates I've made with have to suffice. My post will be all the way down at the bottom of the comments section for the activity, so I doubt anyone's going to read it anyway. If you are reading this right now, welcome! And good night!
It is my intention to participate in this month's Teacher Challenge, a professional development program of sorts, supported by Edublogs. The Challenge will offer a month's worth of activities to help bloggers increase their readership, improve their posts, and learn from other edubloggers all over the world. I have such a busy month ahead, I hope I can keep up. I'm certainly going to try.
I never knew when I got into teaching that the profession would involve so much self-reflection. Teachers like to think about how things are going and how things can be better in their classrooms and in their schools. When I was a first-year teacher more than twenty years ago, my school sent me to a new teachers retreat. I was working in New York City, and this conference was in a very small, very rural town called Rensselaer, New York, not too far from Albany. The conference center sat in the middle of nothing, in the middle of nowhere. Literally. The rooms were bare and poorly lit. No TVs, either. At night, I felt like Kyle McLaughlin in Twin Peaks. I fully expected to open my eyes at three in the morning to see a giant at the foot of my bed.
But by the end of my three days there, the sterility and starkness of the room made some sense to me. When not distracted by TV and telephone calls and mini bars, all I did for three days was reflect, reflect, reflect. I thought about why I had chosen to become a teacher and how I was interacting with my students and where I hoped my career would take me. Turns out, the conference was one of the best I've ever attended. I went back to Manhattan feeling profoundly tranquil and thankful to have had the time to turn so much over in my mind.
Today, the Teacher Challenge asks me to reflect on my life as a blogger. And I see this as kind of a privilege. What writing this post and writing this blog in general has made me realize is that I have the time and desire to do this self-reflection. Teaching is clearly a profession that requires self-reflection, and every time I write a post, I'm doing that, even if it's not a conscious act. I may appear to be writing a book review or a piece about a tech tool, but what I'm really doing is furthering my understanding of myself: How do I relate to others? What am I hoping to accomplish? What am I really saying here?
But I have not been consistent about posting, at least, not for several months. I suppose having cancer and needing major surgery last fall is a pretty good excuse. I'm healthy now, yet I still haven't returned to posting regularly. Often, I start a post and suddenly feel like I have nothing to say. Or I feel that I have nothing original to add to the conversation and I'm just going to be repeating what someone wiser (and with many more readers) has already said. I get discouraged sometimes, feeling like a very small pebble on a road that is very, very long. I'm hoping that this Challenge will help me overcome some of these doubts I have about my own capabilities.
Blogging has been good for me. I always wanted to be a writer, and now I am writing, if only occassionally. I think I'm building up to something, though. I realize that I have plenty to say when I
