Why I blog
Seen at New Kid.
1. It’s part of my reflective practice. Blogging about teaching helps me document decisions I’ve made about my teaching and changes I’ve made in my teaching. I used to document these things in notebooks and on scraps of paper, but a blog lets me categorize things and basically have an easy to access index of my practice. It makes me feel more organized, which is very important to me.
2. It’s professional development for me. Because there is a dearth of professional development opportunities available to me locally and my travel budget is very tiny, I find that blogging functions as professional development. When I go to my blog and see my blogroll, I am usually motivated to visit ten or more blogs of other teachers and see what they are doing. I get more than just teaching ideas from the blogs of others; I get in depth discussions of pedagogical theory.
3. It helps me keep perspective and priorities. I tend to focus on the one student in a class who hates my approach. Often, blogging about that one student helps me realize that it is only one student. Likewise, blogging about administrative shenanigans often helps me realize that those administrative shenanigans aren’t really keeping me from doing my job, they are just slowing me down a bit.
4. It keeps me writing and thinking. When I’m writing, I’m thinking. Since the blog is public—although I generally suspect that there are only a handful of readers—I feel more accountable for actually writing something at least three times a week, which means that I am thinking at least three times a week. Yay.
5. It makes me feel like I am part of a larger conversation. Teaching in a small department at a small college can be a bit isolating. Blogging makes me feel less isolated. When I read about others struggling with the same issues I’m dealing with at their very different institutions—military academies, research universities, etc.—I realize that what I’m struggling with is something many composition instructors struggle with. I feel a kind of camaraderie with other bloggers.
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