Purpose

There is nothing quite like having a teaching colleague with whom you can have discussions that only fuel your passion for teaching. One of my closest friends at the school I work at is named Bowman, and he started a blog a long time ago that was originally a personal blog with anecdotes from his daily life. Yet since the school at which we work tends to be all-consuming, many of his anecdotes came to center around his classroom and/or boarding life experiences, and so after some thought about the possibilities of using his blog as a pedagogical resource, last year he transformed it simply into a blog about teaching math. Now his blog is a gold mine for teachers - it provides both practical and theoretical discussions, and he has used it very well as a place to bounce questions back and forth with other educators around the world.

I mention this story because it really convinced me of the benefits of technology when it is used with a purpose. Bowman would be particularly happy that this was the lesson I received from his experience because he is someone who prides himself, rightfully, on being efficient and effective, and his blog is just one more instance in which he has been successful in that regard. The conversations that he has been able to have with other teachers through his blog (including myself!), and the sort of grassroots professional development that has come out of it, made me curious as to what benefits I could derive for my own classroom using the blogosophere. So Bowman introduced me not only to Google Reader, where I can follow a selection of blogs incredibly easily, but also to a few wonderful history blogging sites, and he also shared with me ideas about how I could begin to change the way I teach, particularly through using student notebooks more effectively and the Standards Based Grading system. (Note: this story also illustrates why working with people beyond your own department is so compelling!)

So as this summer started I began following blogs and making plans for how to change what I do in my freshmen world history class in particular. Then I came across the following post: http://stephenlazar.com/blog/2012/07/my-complete-2011-2012-teaching-portfolio/. This was a wonderful read, and in particular its reflective quality was highly appealing to me. Maybe it is because I am in the middle of a summer in which I intend to reflect and change a lot about my classes, but the post was wonderful in articulating the purpose behind not only the blog but Stephen's intentions as a teacher. It also got me to thinking: I was having a hard time finding blogs about teaching history that were as good as the math history blogs that are all over the internet. Maybe this is because I am still a relative amateur at this blogging thing - or maybe it's because many history teachers are techno-phobic, but Stephen's blog was one of the few blogs that really combine practical advice with theoretical ideas, like Bowman's blog....

I began to wonder if I had the courage to start my own blog. I hesitate to use the word 'courage' - it's not like I'm going into a battle zone - but I am someone who thinks *a lot* before speaking, so a blog just seemed like a massive undertaking, especially in terms of time. And I find it somewhat strange to be so public in a space where I am not sure who (if anyone!) is reading what I write, and yet as Stephen Lazar's post so eloquently demonstrated, it is important for people in my profession to be reflective and be willing to share, so I have decided that if this blog can help me gain as well as share ideas with other history teachers, then it will be a worthy professional experience.

So as to the purpose of this blog? Over the summer I will work on changing my freshmen history course a lot, so this blog will be a place where I post many of the ideas I work on, particularly in terms of how I intend to apply the Standards Based Grading system and revamp the framing of my curriculum and its individual units. Then I hope when the school year starts I can start posting not only one how my summer planning worked and didn't work, but also on my daily experiences both in terms of lessons, classroom management, and all the other million things that go into working at a boarding school.

So that's my purpose...we'll see how this all turns out!