I already did a Facebook link about this, but I thought I would put up a Summer Vacation post as well for good measure. My friend Betsy, whom I've taught with for about twenty years, started working on her own blog this past month. She's spent the last few weeks getting the appearance of it and the voice of the writing nailed down the way she wants before turning it loose on the Internet, and just this past week she finally took it public.
Her reason for starting a blog was simple: As a writing teacher, she felt it was important to develop the habit of actively writing. The most effective teachers are, I tend to believe, the ones who are well-versed in the content areas they teach, and for her to be writing will give her more common ground with her students during the year as they write. Since she has too much common sense to spend her summer chained to a desktop computer working on a novel, a blog seems like a perfect way for her to get that writing practice done.
Now, as for this blog: Instead of just spouting off whatever self-indulgent ramblings happen to cross her mind at any given moment like *ahem* some people do, she went into creating a blog that was much more practical and directly related to her teaching. Each of her posts will somehow relate to the umbrella topic of language arts instruction: Strategies she's tried while teaching reading or writing, things that she has picked up in classes, ideas collected from articles or books she's read, and so on.
She has always been very active in developing her craft as a teacher, and I think it's fair to say she is perceived, both at our school and in the wider district, as a professional worthy of emulation. So if you're a teacher, or you're in the process of becoming one, or you're thinking about becoming one someday, or if you're just curious to see what kind of work goes into being one, I recommend that you check out her blog. Her first posts have it off to a strong start, and should give anyone reading it in these early stages a good idea of what to expect in the coming weeks and months.
Click the link below and you'll see what I mean.
LITERARY PATHWAYS
