I started blogging in 2008. I remember early in my blogging journey that I would come home from work and open up my blog roll to see the newest posts by math teachers around the world. I would read and learn something new almost daily. To say the MTBoS (Math Twitter Blog-o-sphere) has had a profound impact on my life and career would be an understatement. I have met some of my dearest friends and grown professionally because of this amazing online community. I am blessed with colleagues locally that I met as a result of the MTBoS and I have friends across the country / globe that I turn to on a daily basis.
When I look back at old blog posts, I am sometimes hit with a profound sense of loss. I don't always recognize my own voice and I can see moments of extreme growth in the times when I blogged regularly. I was able to reflect and process my daily lessons as well as get feedback from teachers around the globe. I would read about other people's struggles and triumphs on their blogs and use it to fuel my own creativity in my classroom. As time went on, the blogs died down, many are no longer in existence and so many of the bloggers I followed left the classroom.
I read - a lot. I always have a book in my hand, although it's usually on Kindle in today's world. I have a huge professional library and used book stores are some of my favorite places in the world. In the spring, I ran across a series of 3 books on Kindle Unlimited and this quote from Lean Lesson Planning really stood out to me:
How true is that?
Now don't get me wrong, if you get a group of teachers together, they will start talking about school. But how much of that discussion is centered around the content we teach and why? I know we often have those hallway conversations about how to approach topic or a quick discussion about pacing, but for me, this was an area where blogs and Twitter helped fill the gap. Why do we teach about triangle centers? What is the best order for Right Triangles?
Collaboration is vitally important, especially in the world we live in now. Time with our families and self-care are priorities for many of us, but we also want to be able to create those moments for our students. Having a collaborative team to help spread the load is more important now than ever.
For those of us who teach in a small school, collaboration in our local community might be more difficult. Thankfully, we are not limited to just the people in our hallway - we have the power of the internet in our hands!
I'm grateful for the conversations and connections that Social Media has provided me over the years. One of my goals this year is to get back to blogging and reflecting daily, to build those collaborative networks, and to spend more time sharing practices with others. As a friend of mine often says... "We are better together"
If you are interested in joining in the #MTBoSBlaugust fun, here's a post with some prompts to help you out! The idea is just to blog / micro-blog during August to help us focus and reflect on the year ahead. Please tag your post on Social Media with the hashtag #MTBoSBlaugust so we can support you in your blogging journey!
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