On Blogging

This Thursday is our first professional development day. I have been asked/volunteered to teach 3 training sessions on blogging that day!! I have about 40 students consisting of other teachers, guidance counselors and employees of the local I.U. I figure this is a good opportunity for me to present myself as a tech-savvy teacher who would be a good permanent asset to their building, haha. It's of course a lot of pressure too. I'm supposed to teach a mini 15 minute lesson on getting set up in the website/basics, and then have about half an hour for them to explore and create their own blogs. The hard part about all this is that the school blocks all blogs through their filter. They have chosen a site, www.edublogs.org, specifically for use by teachers. After playing with it a bit for a few weeks, I've found it to be sort of clunky: hard to maneuver, site not responding, etc. I hope it works on Thursday so I can show what I need to! Naturally, I am terrified, and hoping it goes well because I don't want to look like an idiot in front of all those teachers.

Day by day, I'm getting through my weeks. Some are good, some are bad. As the time goes by, I'm getting a lot more of the in-between ones, and the bad are less frequent. I am at school late just about every night, but at least that makes me feel more prepared for the next day. I'm beginning to deal with some anxious parents. I won't go into detail on here publicly, but it is certainly a learning experience figuring out what to say to them.

Fortunately, because of my desk in the staff room, there are a lot of teachers around to lend an ear and some advice when I need it. This is something I've had to adjust to. It is nice having some folks around when necessary, but trying to prep amidst so much excitement is tough (that's why I value my after-school and Saturday morning time). As with any workplace, when people gather together, the topics of discussion are not always the most positive. I haven't found negativity to be a huge problem, but there are some days I honestly just have to put on my headphones. I have made friends with some of the girls who are also young English teachers, and they have been providing camaraderie and generally being a huge help in every way. I don't know what I'd do without them. The girls understand what I'm going through because most of them were in my shoes just a year or two ago. I do value the advice of older and more experienced teachers, but some of them tend to be negative without meaning to, and I can't afford to be brought down. I need every last ounce of positivity I can muster. Mostly I spend my lunch hour at my desk working, or just catching up on the news or reading a book. At the risk of seeming anti-social, I just don't want to get into the mix of lunch-table gossip and complaining.