Why a Teacher Turned to Blogging
As a person f
rom Generation X, it was only a few years after my college graduation that the internet became a part of daily life. But as a teacher, it seems that once you enter the classroom, the years almost pass in a blur as you focus on your lessons, your students, your school community.
We encourage our students to continue to be lifelong learners, yet sometimes we teachers are reluctant to embrace new ideas and techniques. The battle of control in the classroom is one hard-fought and hard-won. Sometimes letting go of a sure thing that is working reasonably well does not make sense, and so years pass with minimal change, the same lesson plans recycled again and again, in spite of new technology that might make their implementation easier.
This sensei got her first experience in pre-blogging while on a study tour to Japan. Feeling guilty about leaving my family for 10 days, but excited to be able to share my adventures with students, I wrote daily email dispatches to my contact at the National Council for the Social Studies, the organization managing the tour. I wrote about the schools I visited, how students in Japan could be so different yet so similar to my own students in South Central Los Angeles, and how I felt as a visitor to this beautiful, foreign land. These dispatches were
