A Class That Blogs Together…

After almost thirty years, one would think that teaching has become routine. It is the opposite. When I began, I met teachers who ran classes by binder: each unit was carefully scheduled and sequenced. Each year, it went the same way; if this was the third day of the fourth week of the second quarter, then we were studying participles. It was that simple. They had the script down, and the students were merely audience.

I cannot teach that way. Each year is different. Every class is unique. Over the summer, I set up units, lessons, activities, and, yes, schedules. I have tried to be a teacher with a perfect plan, but something always gets in the way. Whether it is because of a new book, a great opportunity, or the most aggravating factor of all, the individual  needs of the students in the class, I end up rewriting, changing, and adapting my summer plans all over again during the year.

A few years ago, I decided to embrace that process. I acknowledge my need to plan, but I am not married to those plans. I also find that experimenting in the classroom is beneficial to everyone. After hearing about a new technique, text, or technology, I will come to my class and we’ll play with it. A year later, I’ll try again a new way. It is messy and challenging, and it is anything but rote and routine.

This year, I started blogging with my students. A few years ago, I began asking seniors to blog as they pursued their individualized research projects in their last quarter of high school. These blogs turned into more than learning logs, but became communication vehicles between the students and the many people helping them on their research journeys. They were also a lot lighter to take home than the manila folders I had used for that purpose in the past.

I am trying to incorporate more and more student autonomy and choice into Senior English. In addition, our “thematic” focus with my seniors this year is finding our passions. It thought it appropriate to give them a public vehicle to express what was important to them.

So my students and I have started our own blog. Several times a week, we publish one to three short entries about topics that are important to us. The topics are as far ranging as the students in the class: we discuss make-up, basketball, fantasy football, food, college, and gender. We give advice, review, and rant.

It is a little frightening; I like to be in charge. I am a little bit of a perfectionist. The blog posts are not always completely polished and they are being written and edited by the students. I read them, but they are not “mine.”

I have also taken the little, yet scary, step of telling my Senior English students about this blog, and I am planning on doing some writing that will appear on both blogs! I want to participate, too!

So I invite you to click over to my students’ new blog, Why So Seniorous. Some entries are serious, some are not. Everything is written by seniors at Deerfield High School – with a little help from their teacher, who is still learning right beside them.