I'm determined to win the Reflective Teaching 30-Day Blogging Challenge. Yes, I realize I'm only competing against myself. But I'm hoping the challenge will help me find my blogger's voice.
During my stay-at-home years of child-raising, I wrote for print publications, from Twins Magazine and Better Homes & Gardens to the Christian Science Monitor and Des Moines Register. During that time voice came easily, as sharing the challenges and mishaps of motherhood with candor enhanced my market value--and embarrassed only my family.
However, writing now from a teacher's perspective hobbles me with voice-muffling concerns: I worry about my students' privacy if they should by chance recognize themselves in my writing; I fear that celebrating classroom success sounds like bragging; I cringe at sharing classroom disasters that reveal my shortcomings. Layer on that the reality that speaking honestly about teaching often calls for hurling stones from the doorstep of my own glass house.
These issues have prevented me from coming to the page--even when my head and heart had something to share: my responsibility for a disastrous pep rally (Friday), my mixed feelings about a school speaker (Thursday), my struggle to reach a resistant student (Wednesday). You get the idea.
The 30-Day Reflective Teaching Blogging Challenge will push me here for a solid month, during which I am guaranteed to post some writing I don't like. I'm sure to wrestle with what to say and not to say. I'm already feeling like this might have been a bad idea. But if I can (a la Anne Lamott) keep those mice in the jar, a voice may emerge, and I'll call that a win.
Freshman Seminar - Aug. 28, 2014
Day One: Write your goals for the school year. Be as specific or as abstract as you'd like to be.
Reflection: I focused my writing on one goal: to improve my blogging by developing my voice. I have that student-feeling that I didn't quite follow the assignment directions. But I am going to seize my own learning by adapting the days' prompts to uncork my heart and mind. The prompt may or may not be recognizable in what then pours out.
I love this. I have struggled with how much to share--even creating a blog under an anonymous name and STILL protecting student identities even when I was writing all positive things. But you putting the words on the page when "your head and heart have something to share" is important to all of us--and important to those outside the profession as well. I am challenging myself to "win" as well. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteYes. To all of this. I will stand in front of your glass house with a bat to deflect any hurtling stones.
ReplyDelete