why blog?

Via hipteacher

1. Why did you start blogging?

I do it so I won't forget what's happened in my life. My memory's sketchy so this really helps me keep track of it all...

2. What do you blog about primarily?

Mostly it's a space to reflect on what I'm thinking about. Sometimes it's "I went here and did this". Sometimes it's just a place to stash recipes or do creative writing. Other times I like to rant about what's wrong with the world.

3. Professionally, what do you get out of blogging?

Believe it or not, this helps me fine-tune my philosophy on teaching--and life in general.

4. Personally, what do you get out of blogging?

Well, two things, I suppose. One of the downsides of teaching it's definitely one of those jobs where it's really hard to discuss the nature of your work with other adults--nobody really wants to hear about it. Your logical audience is other teachers, but most of us don't have the time or energy to socialize, so this is about as close as I can get to it. Also, I like reading other teacher's blogs (TFA blogs were good reads during student teaching because it helped me to know that there were other people out there going through the same things).

5. What advice would you give to new blogging teachers?

Don't post anything you'd be embarrassed about or ashamed of if your students (or their parents) read it. (Generally, I wouldn't recommend using names or identifiable situations in blogs anyway).

As a substitute teacher, I spend a lot of time in a lot of different schools, so I make it a practice to never identify either the district or the school I'm referring to in my posts, and I try to write in a very general way when I'm talking about school-related stuff so that no one's confidentiality is violated. For me this is essential because I do a lot of Special Ed, and see and hear a lot of highly confidential things...confidentiality is the order of the day in this field. Everything's confidential in Special Ed...

Whether or not you want to talk about your personal life is up to you. I generally don't get "too personal" in here...this is more of a cognitive storage space for me.