Educational Blogging Reflection

Educational blogging is a creative means of teacher communication with students, students' parents, and other teachers. Blogs can be expository, such as my first three blogs, while others can be narrative-based. For example, many teachers use blogs to document their work, often starting with their classroom organization and lesson planning before the school year begins. From there, they can share the blog with families so that parents can view the teacher's profile and establish a positive relationship at the beginning of the school year. This way, when the teacher posts classroom activities, shares student work, or announces important upcoming events, parents can always be up to date with their child's educational experience. I also believe educational blogging is a great resource to share knowledge and experience with others in the profession. 

Students practice fine arts: a group of students
practice dance with their teacher to talk
about books from around the world.

In my Educational Technology class, I had the opportunity to read three of my peer's blogs written about various educational topics. I focused on those discussing the importance of learning through the arts. One point that resonated with me was that access to artistic programs has positive impacts on student's academic, social, and emotional success because they allow for creativity and reprieve from the school day. Furthermore, the arts help develop students' mathematical, language, and fine motor skills, all of which are especially important for younger students. However, I was reminded of some unfortunate realities, such as the decline of creativity in mandated curricula and the disposability of arts programs in the face of school budget cuts. I could not agree more: the use of arts in classrooms of all subjects should not be in decline as they are essential to students' success and wellbeing. Some of my favorite memories from PreK-5 were of art projects that I was proud of creating or that helped me visually learn a difficult concept.

My experiences with blogging have been positive -- I find them to be a fun creative outlet and have yet to be concerned about who has read my blog or not. In my future career, I can 100% see myself documenting my teaching journey on a blog (maybe this very one) and sharing it with my students' families. Since I plan on teaching second-graders, I am unlikely to task them with writing their own blogs on a regular basis. However, I could definitely create a blog post for each student to showcase their work. This would be a great way to document student progress, celebrate student successes, and communicate regularly with parents. After all, blogging should be fun and a form of art in and of itself.