From a Goodreads interview with Neil Gaiman:
Normally, in anything I do, I’m fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this aching disparity, between the Platonic ideal of the project that was living in my head, and the small, sad, wizened, shaking, squeaking thing that I actually produce.
Does that only sound like my teaching career? How often are you satisfied with the execution of that brilliant idea you had? What do you do to keep track of how to improve it next time? I don’t have a reliable method, but this blog needs to become it.
Teachers everywhere need to blog as a way of improving our craft. Every teacher-in-training needs to use a blog while in any credential program. At first, this blog contains all ed block assignments: lesson plans, reflections, reactions to readings, etc. Our professors read the blog instead of a binder to keep track of our assignments, all the while ingraining the idea that this helps us keep track of what we did right and wrong.
Once you get in the classroom full time, that blog will still be there, waiting for you to write more. And having come through a year of doing exactly that, you’ll be more likely to use noted observations to improve delivery. As soon as you get the lesson dialed in, make that entry public through some widely-available and commonly-used resource to centralize the ideas we all have.
My blog is just about as precious a resource as my lesson plan book. “Didn’t I write about how that sucked and what I might do to improve it?” The search starts and (hopefully) I avoid the mistakes of last time.
It’s like shuffling sideways toward that Platonic vision, but at least it’s movement in the right direction.
