I’ve come back for another look at this site and haven’t quite got the hang of it yet! I can work out how I can access blogs that have recently been updated, but I don’t know where there would be a definitive list, or how to search through them. Can anyone help? Thanks!
This is amazing isn’t it! I just discovered this site, and it seems like now we take it for granted that we can have a peek into the lives and thoughts of other educationalists. I was having a surf yesterday and even watched a video clip of a social sciences teacher in the US taking his lesson, which is the kind of thing I find fascinating because my only insights into the American education system are from films like “Dead Poets Society” and other such rosy Hollywood views.
Almost three years ago I started my own website http://www.rantingteacher.co.uk which required a rudimentary knowledge of html and lots of messing about by this amateur of web design. I started it out of pure frustration because although I love teaching, as every teacher knows there is so much more to the job that’s not so great. I had to find a place to let off steam, and writing is a very good therapy!
I like reading other teachers’ blogs to get an insight into their lives and classrooms. I’m a teacher in Britain, and we have a weekly newspaper for educationalists which gives us a good insight into what’s going on in other teachers’ schools and in education in general, with just one page devoted to international issues, and that’s usually only when something outrageous has happened in overseas schools. American schools fascinate me in particular, probably because of the dominance of the American media, and Britain in this current political climate tends to look west to America rather than east to our closest neighbours of continental Europe.
American schools seem such a contradiction. On the one hand we have the Hollywood image of tough inner city schools where the kids turn out alright in the end, or the private schools of privileged children, and then we have the sad news items of high school shootings and gangs gone wild. And yet thanks to the internet I can actually pop my head round a virtual school door and take a peek inside into the wonderful creative stuff that goes on. And what I see there doesn’t match up much with the media image of the American education system.
Similarly, being Britain, we still imagine Australia to be an off shoot of our little country in many respects, just bigger and sunnier. And yet to get an insight into Australian schools beyond what we see on soaps such as “Neighbours” and “Home and Away” is a special treat.
So hooray for blogging! And long may we all continue, even if it means we’re spending even more time thinking about our jobs!
