Why I Hope All Teachers Start Their Own Blogs

Since I wrote about the reasons that I blog, I have been thinking a lot about how much blogging has added to my life. How it has made me a better teacher. What it has done for me. So much so that I have started to try to convince every teacher that I talk to that he or she should also start his or her own blog.  And it is not an easy thing to do because 1) Who wants to do one more thing? 2) Most teachers believe that they don’t actually know how to write (which simply isn’t true) and 3) Everyone is worried that no one will want to read what they have to say.  So I’ve decided to compile a list of reasons of what blogging has done for me so that I can just start sending people to this post instead of forcing them to listen to me beg them to start a blog.

So here it goes.

What blogging has done for me:

1. Blogging allows me to remember all of the ideas that go rushing through my mind — If you are anything like me, as you go through the summer, hundreds and thousands of ideas pass through your mind. You go to a workshop and you think of something you want to try in your classroom.  You are in the shower and you have a brilliant idea on how to motivate your students to write more. You read a new book and you know that it will certainly help some of your students deal with things in their own lives. And then August comes. And the school year starts. And one million things need to get done. And all of those great ideas somehow get lost in the shuffle. What I love about blogging is that my blog gives me a space to keep those ideas so that I can go back to them when the time is right.  And as I get ready to begin this year of teaching, I have loved being able to go back to my own blog posts from last year to remember the things that I did in my classroom that I want to do again. My blog holds my ideas for me until I am ready to use them.
2. Blogging forces me to live in a constant state of searching for inspiration — This summer, I got back to my original reason for blogging. To help me to be a better teacher. In order to keep myself motivated to write, I have start a list on my phone (which is always close by) of things that I want to write about. When ideas come to me throughout the day, I make sure to add them to my list. This means that as I go about my day, I am constantly looking for things to write about, things that inspire me, things that make me angry, things that I want to change, things that I want to reflect on further. That forces me to be in a constant state of reflection. When I live my life in this constant state of reflection, then I find myself thinking more about my teaching and about how I can do better for my students.
3. Blogging gives me a chance to figure out why I am doing what I am doing — Unfortunately in this world of teaching, we are often forced to defend the choices that we make in our own classrooms. Especially when we choose not to follow scripted programs or not to follow strict structures and instead adapt everything that we do in order to best meet the needs of the kids sitting right next to us.  Writing allows me to practice explaining the reasons why I am doing what I am doing in my classroom so that I am prepared when someone questions the choices that I am making. Having a place to flush out my thinking and articulate my reasoning allows me to feel more confident when it comes time to defend why certain practices are the best practices for my specific students. This, in turn, makes me braver and allows me to take more risks in my own classroom in order to make my students’ learning as authentic and meaningful as it can be.
4. Blogging gives me a chance to make myself vulnerable in the way I am asking my students to make themselves vulnerable: It is really scary to share your ideas with others. It is really scary to share your writing with others. And yet, we ask our students to do both of these things all the time. We ask them to talk in small groups, we ask them to share their writing with the class or with writing partners and sometimes we can forget just how scary that is. Blogging reminds me of how scary it is to make yourself vulnerable and it reminds me to be patient with my students as I ask them to do this difficult work.  If I am going to ask my students to share their writing and share their ideas with our class and with the world, then I certainly better be prepared to do that myself.  Blogging allows me to show my students that I am not asking them to do anything that I would not do myself.
5. Blogging allows me to push my thinking through writing: I often tell my students that the reason that I encourage them to write about their reading is because I believe that writing, like talking, can help us to push our thinking so that we end up somewhere new. One of the most exciting parts of blogging, for me, occurs when I start off a blog post thinking one way and by the time I am finished with the post, I am in a completely new place in my thinking. Often as I am writing, I discover new ideas. Often as I am writing, I find my thinking deepening and solidifying. Often as I am writing, I find that what I had been thinking at the start is purely at the very surface of my thoughts and through the act of writing, I am able to dig much deeper and end up some place richer.
6. Blogging allows me to keep a record of my thinking: As is true of so many educators, I am on a never ending journey to try to be a better teacher. Because we do what we do every day and we get busy within the moments of our days, we often don’t stop to think about how far we have come since we started teaching or how far we have come even in the course of one school year. As I write about the changes in my thinking, I am able to look back and see how far I have come. I am also able to look back when I find that I have gotten lost and strayed from the things that I know to be true. In those moments, I can look back on my own thinking and remind myself of what is really important.
7. Blogging allows me to become a part of a community of passionate educators: Teaching can be a really lonely profession. Though we are constantly surrounded by our students, we can easily isolate ourselves from other adults. We can close our doors. We can work through lunch. We can come early and leave late and often go an entire day without talking to any other educators. Blogging has allowed me to enter into a world of other passionate educators. I am able to read the thoughts of others and I am able to share my own thinking with others. Even if there are only two other educators who read what I have to say, that is a community. Even if no one reads what I have to say, I still have a space to say it and I know that I am a part of a larger conversation. Reading the blogs of other educators has given me new perspectives, renewed excitement for what I have the privilege of doing each day and in general has made me so very proud to call myself a teacher.

So that’s it. I am sure there are more reasons, more benefits to blogging. But those are the ones that I find myself thinking about over and over again. Those are the ones that speak loudest to me when I think about why I keep coming back here.

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