English teachers are notoriously prolific writers. It’s what we do. It comes naturally to us, and likely inspired many of us to pursue this career in the hopes of inspiring our students to develop a love of writing. It would be easy to imagine that many of us blog to provide ourselves with a means of creative expression. I have yet to meet an English teacher who doesn’t have “the great American novel” in the works. We like an audience for our creative endeavors, and blogging can provide that. However, I have discovered that there is much more to educator blogs than simply the satisfaction of publication. Many English teachers use blogs as a classroom tool, a showcase for students’ writing samples, or a way of sharing ideas with colleagues. I was able to locate three examples of English/Language Arts teachers whose posts provide answers to the question “Why I Blog” and shared their insights here.
Tom Whitby
Now an Adjunct Professor of Education, Tom Whitby is a veteran teacher of English with 34 years of experience in New York public schools. In his post entitled “To Blog or Not to Blog”, which can be found at this link: http://tomwhitby.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/to-blog-or-not-to-blog/, he describes his reasons for blogging.
Whitby begins by pointing out that blogging by educators tends to have a negative stigma, due to teachers in the past using blogs inappropriately. He speaks out in favor of blogs as a means of inspiring students to write. Blogs provide an incentive for students because of the opportunity to write for a larger audience, and with the guidance of a teacher, allows them to write “responsibly and intelligently”. Aside from the obvious benefits for students, teachers who blog serve as important role models for their students. Often, students don’t have the opportunity to see their teachers “practice what they preach”. Teacher blogs provide students with an opportunity to see their teacher participating in the very activities he/she asks them to do.
Mr. B-G
“Man lowers his head and lunges into civilization, forgetting the days of his infancy when he sought truth in a snowflake or a stick. Man forgets the wisdom of the child.” – Jack Kerouac
Mr. B-G, a teacher of Journalism and English from Massachusetts, maintains a number of blogs related to his career in education. He also maintains a level of anonymity by choosing not to use his full name or provide a photo of himself. Therefore, in the spirit of the quotation Mr. B-G uses in his “about me” section, I chose to include a photo of Kerouac to depict the mysterious “Mr. B-G”. The particular post I found is a short and sweet description for why this educator blogs, and can be found at this link: http://bgenglish.blogspot.com/2006/12/excited.html
Entitled simply, “The Possibilities”, this brief post dated December 19, 2006 gives the reader a feel for the excitement of an educator who has made a new discovery. Mr. B-G had just launched a blog for the purpose of posting his students’ work for their friends and family to see. He doesn’t need to say: “This is Why I Blog”, the reason shows through his enthusiasm. He utilizes blogging as a way to bridge his classroom activities with the virtual world that every modern student lives in.
Ruth Ayres
Educator Ruth Ayres is pictured above (on the left) with one of her former students, Jami, who published a children’s book. Ayres’s first years as an educator were spent teaching seventh graders language arts. Currently she is a writing coach for Wawasee School District, located in northern Indiana. She co-authored a book, Day by Day: Refining Writing Workshop Through 180 Days of Reflective Practice with the same colleague who shares her blogspot at “Two Writing Teachers”, Stacy Shubitz. The blog post entitled “A Blogging Secret” can be found at this link: http://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/a-blogging-secret/.
In this post, Ayres reveals her secret (that she doesn’t always feel like blogging), but more importantly, she provides a numbered list of reasons explaining why she blogs anyway, even when she doesn’t feel like it. Aside from concerns about disappointing her readers and her supporters, the one reason Ayres gives that resonated with me the most was reason number five:
“I ask students to write even when they don’t feel like it. I would feel a little bit like a hypocrite if I don’t write just because I don’t want to. How can I nudge students to write when they don’t want to if I don’t do it myself?”.
I believe Ayres is addressing the same idea that Tom Whitby brought up in his blog, that the act of blogging provides students with a positive role model. In other words, if we can’t practice what we preach, then we lose credibility with our students.
My Point of View
After combing through educator blogs, I feel as if I have been introduced to a valuable new tool for the classroom. In my mind, blogs had always seem like a way to write for my own amusement and feel as if I potentially had an audience at the same time. I had never considered the possibility that a blog could be an educational tool for my students. I really like the idea that students can publish their writing online to a broader audience, rather than just writing for me. When students write specifically for a teacher, they tend to sound stuffy and unnatural in an attempt to seem scholarly, and I often struggled to teach them the concept of “voice”. Featuring students’ work in an online forum is just the thing that could help them understand the importance of voice. If students know that they have a broader audience, potentially one including their peers, they are more likely to use an authentic voice in their writing. I think students, who are utterly addicted to social networking, would happily accept the idea of blogging because to them it would feel like second nature. The difference is, they would be accountable for their spelling and grammar, which may help them move away from the awful trend toward abbreviating everything and leaving out all punctuation.
Tracey Mahler 