New Blogs I'm Reading

The blogs I subscribe to in my RSS Reader seem to follow a boom and bust cycle. There are periods where I do a lot of cleaning out as my current interests change, and then times where I find myself adding a lot of new feeds. I've been adding a lot of adding recently - mostly blogs of newly discovered classroom teachers and some voices on school reform. Some of these blogs are new, others are just new to me, but have all been worth the additional time I spend reading them as a I continue to reflect both on my own personal pedagogy and helping to build a newish school:

Teacher Blogs:

• dy/dan - Dan's been blogged about a lot recently other places, and deserves all the praise he receives. His model of skill based assessment, in particular, has me rethinking how I will approach my planning next year.
• Beyond School - I think sometimes I learn the most about myself from people in the most different situations. I've tended to stay away from international teachers since I started reading blogs, but I am glad to have been reading Clay's blog for a few weeks now. Clay teaches at an prestigious private school in S. Korea - both literally and figuratively half a world away from the Bronx - but has really been expanding my mind lately. His post on eliminating schools buildings inspired me to write what I think are the two longest comments I've ever written last week.
• It's a Hardknock Teacher's Life - Miss Profe is still in her first month of blogging, but has already developed a great, fresh voice. She's the first foreign language teacher blog I've read. I'm looking forward to much more from her.
• The 21st Century School House - Mr. Miller talks a lot about Lit Circles, of which I'm a big fan. He's another new and refreshing voice to the blogosphere.
• Understanding - Not a new blog, just new to me. I've enjoyed reading the insights of someone at a similar stage in his career, in a similar environment.

School Reform Blogs:

• Schools Matter - Thoughts on school reform from people far more experienced and intelligent than me. I wish there were more voices like this represented in the debate on schools.
• The Essential Blog - A blog from the Coalition of Essential Schools. I don't teach at a CES school, but I'd like to think I'm a Coalition Teacher. I wonder what a Coalition of Essential Teachers would look like? (Actually, probably something like this).
• Transform Education - Peter doesn't like KIPP. I don't like KIPP. Unlike me, Peter can back up his views with well thought out and executed research. He is a great voice for the transformational power of education.
  

Finding Time, Finding a Voice

Just finished up my first trimester of teaching in the Bronx Lab School. I'd like to think I've made some progress -- though I'm only really sure that I've made progress recognizing how much progress I have to make to be the teacher I want to be. I know this is the biggest challenge I've ever faced, and I know that in order to serve my students I need to be much, MUCH better than I am now.

Extra time, unfortunately, seems to have disappeared from my life. I wish I took more time to stop, think, reflect, and write; but it doesn't often happen and I can't imagine it will get any better with the start of the second trimester. My day to day technology responsibilities are officially ending as I will be seeing my students one extra day per week in order to gear up for the New York State Global History Regents Exam in June. I'm glad my mind can be in one place more often, but with four extra hours of class per week, I can't imagine time becoming more available.

I feel like I've posted a half dozen times right now about not being sure what role this blog plays in my teaching. I know I want to model for students (and hopefully, eventually, for other staff members), but I have no idea what that looks like. I'm not sure where I find the voice to keep this going on a consistent basis. I'd be curious if anyone has any recommendations for other teachers/administrators who are blogging without a focus on the intersection of technology and pedagogy (which is already done so well by so many others). Inspiration is always helpful. I am thankful for Chris and Doug each time I see a new post in my Google Reader account to remind me how valuable of a tool this can be.

To end on a more optimistic note, a few of my advisies just published their first pieces on their reading blogs. I want to give them a chance to find their voice (and the spell check tool) before sharing their writing with the world, but I am happy to share the link to My Reading Blog , which should hopefully have student comments on it within the week.

Also, this week, I am eager to be starting a mini-project with my history students inspired by BionicTeacher. My students will be putting together a brief page My Space-like page (unfortunately not actually on My Space, which is blocked even from our administrative computers by the NYC DOE, though no similar services are blocked) for a Renaissance, Reformation, or Enlightenment figure. I'll post to these when they're live in a couple weeks.

Outside [The Cave] 2.0

I upgraded to Blogger Beta the other day, and because of this, am still working out some kinks (my old comments are gone, for one). Hopefully this will all sort itself out shortly. Apologies to anyone who got 25 or so odd posts from me in their reader the other day.

New Job, New Roles

(I actually wrote this about a month ago, but never got around to publishing it)

In my last post, I talked about how I wasn't sure where this blog would fit into my teaching this year. That question as answered for me last week when I found that, since I am three classes short of a full load, I would be part of our school's tech team, with one of my main responsibilities being to help teachers integrate technology into their pedagogy and practice. So even though time constrains will keep me from usingblogs in my Global History 10 classes, I plan on keeping this going to set an example that I will (hopefully) get other teachers to follow. That is of course, once I get all out computers and new Smart Boards working (the joys of being at a young, small school).

With that added motivation and responsibility, I am excited to joining the community of Teacher Bloggers. I am eager to look at what others are doing to hopefully borrow some best practices to share with my staff. Thankfully, I have a supportive principal on this front. Funny story actually - when we first started talking about my new role he mentioned a friend of his who used to teach in the City and is opening a small school in Philli. When I responded, "Chris Lehmann, right? He writes one of my favorite blogs", I knew I would have a supporter on our school's path to Tech 2.0. (Though with that said now my principal talks about the wonderful ways Chris isusing tech at his school and is expecting me to do similar work here - which, at least at this moment, is far beyond the constraints of my time and knowledge).

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Just scanning through the dates of my blog posts on ecto, it seems that I've been really good at falling off the ball after a couple good months of blogging. Many others have written about blogging as a habit. It seems that both times my blogging has hit a major transition in my life (the beginning and end of grad school), I've fallen off the ball. I'm not sure to what extent blogging will fit into my next stage - teaching at a small school in the Bronx this coming fall (and some summer school in the interim). One of the really strong appeals blogging had for me was that it enabled me to connect with a group of similarly minded educators - something I was lacking in my previous teaching job. Moving to a school filled with like-minded educators eliminates that need. However, moving to a school run by like-minded educators means that formal reflection is not only encouraged, but required, which is a good sign that this space will continue to be filled come fall.

Very little of this is on the forefront of my mind right now though. I am getting married this Saturday, and am then off to Spain and Portugal for our honeymoon! I'll post some pictures when I get back.