I recently celebrated my thirtieth birthday.\u00a0 And oddly, looking at that statement in print just brought more anxiety about the turn of another decade than did the actual day itself.\u00a0 As to the reason for this incipient unease regarding my fleeting youth I can only say that there is something intensely meaningful about putting thoughts down on paper (or, as in this case, on a computer screen).\u00a0 Musings are made permanent, private discourse becomes public and life feels, well, cemented, for lack of a better word.\u00a0 Perhaps this is why people blog:\u00a0 it aids in constructing meaning out of our own days and questions of existence (for me, it has lately been a matter of identity.\u00a0 Who am I?\u00a0 Mommy? Teacher? Student? Gourmet chef?\u00a0 Freelance writer?\u00a0 Jack of all trades and supreme master of absolutely none?).\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u00a0Reading through my blog posts has been enlightening, to say the least.\u00a0 Aside from an annoying proclivity for longwinded discourse (sorry about that \u2013 I\u2019ll keep this one brief), I tend to use the weekly post as a way to contextualize the readings within my own framework.\u00a0 In other words that would make Peter Elbow proud, I write to figure out what meaning the text holds for my current situation as a teacher on hiatus, temporarily pursuing a different career (though one that is in many ways similar to what I used to do).\u00a0 My posts seem to carry different variations on a theme, all centering on the teacher\u2019s role in creating a community of learning wherein the student is guided toward constructing her own knowledge in concert with peers and current educator.\u00a0 I value student-centered practices and assessments which connect the critical thinking skills necessary in expert reading to those outside the classroom walls.\u00a0 I seek to inspire students to virtuoso status, guiding them to develop and apply critical creativity in the questions they ask and the thoughtful research in which they engage.\u00a0 I hope to help them see learning not as a \u201cread, memorize, repeat\u201d endeavor but as a life-long, open-ended product worthy of revision and deeper inquiry. I look for ways to evaluate my teaching through my students\u2019 eyes and model the meta-behaviors I want to cultivate in them.\u00a0 In the end, it seems as though I take from the readings and synthesize that information which, when added to my teaching toolbox, will help me become the kind of teacher who embraces difficulty along with her students and leads them down the path to becoming better readers, thinkers and writers.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
As for the voice of this sleep-deprived mommy of an insomniac toddler, I noticed a distinct shift in the third week\u2019s post.\u00a0 I started to fear that I wasn\u2019t sounding \u201cacademic\u201d enough, that my posts were inferior to that of my peers because I was focusing more on personal experience than academic discourse.\u00a0 So I changed how I wrote, and to be openly, viciously honest \u2013 it stinks more than a day-old dirty diaper.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the last two posts sound like me, nor do they convey what I wanted to say as clearly as I would have liked.\u00a0 I\u2019ve since gone back to the real \u201cme,\u201d and it feels much better.<\/p>\n
Reviewing my writing has thus helped me realize that while these posts are (1) an assignment and (2) read by my colleagues in the course, they are really for<\/em> me<\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0They are a record of my efforts to make meaning of the course material and apply it in a suitably challenging way to my professional vocation.\u00a0 They allow me to go back and review my development as a thinker and writer, an act which is integral to intellectual growth.\u00a0 And they make my search for knowledge a concrete and communal undertaking rather than a cerebral, solitary act.\u00a0 <\/p>\n So, yeah \u2013 maybe this is why people blog. \u00a0Here\u2019s looking forward to my next thirty years of self discovery.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently celebrated my thirtieth birthday.\u00a0 And oddly, looking at that statement in print just brought more anxiety about the turn of another decade than did the actual day itself.\u00a0 As to the reason for this incipient unease regarding my fleeting youth I can only say that there is something intensely meaningful about putting thoughts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}