Reflections On Writing A Blog

Sharing you thoughts

Writing a blog as a teacher didn’t occur to me as being of any benefit. I only began using twitter in march 2015. I had had a dormant account for a few years but never realised the opportunity that twitter presented professionally. Our mentor encouraged us to write a blog for my NPQML and after a few weeks of…. no visitors, I linked my twitter account.  I then began following some education accounts, The TES etc as it was a blog about teaching so I thought my twitter account should be professionally focused as well.

Anyway I made some posts and tweeted them out, and had some visitors, and likes, and comments. Woohoo validation! I wasn’t really planning on doing anymore than making a couple of posts to share ideas and practice basically just to use as evidence of self reflection.

Starting out blogging

My first few posts are short and simple, just sharing resources I had made and things I had done linked to the NPQML competencies. This post is the subject of my project. This one is an attempt at a buzzfeed style post. This is just sharing some resources I had made.

However I found that I really enjoyed writing about things I was interested in. Almost thinking out loud. Using the process of writing as a way to clarify thoughts and opinions that I held but had never really shared. Never spent the time reflecting on what these values meant to me.

I found that by doing this I was able to start improving my practice. I was for the first time since my PGCE attempting consciously to apply ideas and theories to my practice.

The following few posts were NPQML assignments, proved quite popular with my (small) readership. After that the posts wander all over the place. A bit of technology, a bit of #teacher5aday all things I was doing in class. Apparently this is not the best way to run a successful blog your readership wants consistent posts on a narrow topic. Haha fortunately I am not a marketer. I am not selling anything so the number of visitors has no real impact on… well anything. I have blogs I’m proud of with 10 views. Others with 100s and I don’t know why.  These are my stats for the last month. Not setting the world alight but each view someone who has taken the time to check out what I have written – Thank you for reading. I urge you to start writing a blog – even if it just as a guest post on inclusiveteach.com

I love writing them, I have been writing a post a day for #teacher5aday29dayswriting and the similar (same?!) Staffrm challenge. Not for increased views (although I always check) but because I get a real sense of achievement in writing/sharing something I am proud of.