NEW KIDS ON THE BLoG

NEA Today, Oct 2005 by Flannery, Mary Ellen

One kid posts, another responds, a third jumps in with a link to more evidence on the Web. It's a 21st century conversation, and it prepares students for a future where they work with other people, take and give feedback.

When you write on paper, your words are self-contained-"It's on paper and it doesn't go anywhere," Richardson reflects. But when you ask students to blog, "you're asking them to go somewhere."

BLOGGING ON

The stories your colleagues could tell... and do! More than ever, under the anonymous cover of the Internet, teachers are downloading their daily frustrations, aggravations, and occasional satisfactions.

"It's the first thing I do when I get home," says La Maestra, author of A Contar, the daily tale of a bilingual educator in Texas. (At http://acontar.blogspot.com/-but be warned, La Maestra gets an R-rating from us for language!)

For La Maestra or Ms. Frizzle or Posthipchick, the blog isn't just a teaching tool, aimed at motivating students. It's a way to remember the details of their jam-packed day, turn on their inner comedian, and activate their politics. After a day spent basically alone-well, except for those 34 kids-the blog serves as a welcome way to decompress, says the pseudonymous Ms. Frizzle, who writes at http://msfrizzle.blogspot.com/.>It's cheap therapy-and it's particularly valuable for new teachers. You might not want to tell Mrs. Delaney in the next room that you dearly wish you'd looked twice at an accounting degree-but you can freely tell your tales of woe to strangers, who often offer a bit of nonjudgmental advice.

"There are books out there about first-year teachers who manage to spin gold out of air, but I wanted to read about teachers who were struggling, who were crying every day, who felt like they weren't making a difference. I couldn't find anything, so I wrote about it instead," said Posthipchick, a first-year teacher in California. (Like almost all bloggers, Ms. Chick keeps her name and location on the down-low, but she told us she's a proud NEA member. For more from her, go to http://posthipchick .blogspot.com/.)

Most of the people who read teacher Web logs are teachers-and their feedback reads like a helpful workshop. "If I write about a problem at school, 10 to 15 teachers may respond with possible solutions or ideas they've tried. If they can't help, they at least provide some good empathy," reports the author of A Series of Inconsequential Events (www.ginnybonk .blogspot.com/).

But many bloggers hope "civilians" are logging on too-if only so they can hear what it's really like to teach. "Everyone in the world has an opinion on education and the state of the public schools, but how many people have been in one recently?" writes Ms. Frizzle. "I blog not to provide definitive answers but to give one teacher's inside perspective."

Echoes the Ramblin' Educat, a young Oklahoma teacher (and building rep for her high school!) who writes at http://educat .blogspot.com/-"I want to show that in a political climate where educators are derided for 'not working hard enough' or 'choosing an easy road/ my friends and I work hard!"