Over the summer I read “Shattering the Perfect Teacher Myth: 6 Truths That Will Help You Thrive as an Educator” by Aaron Hogan and in one of his chapters he encourages all teachers to start a blog. He quotes John Dewey, “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” Hogan goes on to say, “…Share those reflections with others in your field. I want you to blog. I want others to learn from you. I want the world to be better because you have added your genius to it.” While I certainly don’t consider myself any sort of teaching genius, this part of the book really spoke to me! I had been thinking hard about starting a teaching blog for several months, however I was worried about what I would write, finding time to write, and afraid of opening up about my teaching life on the Internet. However Hogan’s book put blogging into perspective for me and here I am! I really love teaching and learning and I enjoy challenging myself so starting and maintaining a blog seems like a good and natural goal for me.

When I first started teaching there was a lot I didn’t know. When I graduated from college with a degree in Broad Field Secondary Science Education, I had learned about pedagogy and curriculum, but when it came to the nitty-gritty, everyday grind and routine of teaching I had a lot to learn. That’s when I turned to the Internet and found a number of extremely helpful teaching blogs. Reading about REAL teachers in REAL classrooms trying to solve REAL problems helped me get through my first year or two of teaching and it is part of what has brought me to blogging.

I started a teaching Instagram feed about 7 months ago and called it Teaching Science In Real Life because that is what I needed and that’s what I found on the teacher Internet community in my first years of teaching. So much of my teacher education had been theoretical and I needed to see what real teachers did. Many of the strategies (especially classroom management and procedures) that I use on a daily basis are ideas that I have gotten from various blogs across the Internet from teachers who were honest about what worked and what didn’t in their classrooms. So above all, my goal for this blog is for it to be authentic and genuine about what my teaching life in the secondary classroom is like. Not every day in teaching is great, but I promise to be honest and share my joys as well as my struggles.

What can else expect from this blog? I will be sharing the lessons and management strategies I use in a secondary classroom, reflecting on new things I am trying and learning in my classroom, and sharing my teacher life. There are so many great blogs out there about teaching, but I found it hard to find a lot of blogs written by high school teachers. That said, I specifically want to share some classroom management tools that relate to science classrooms in the next months. I think it’s just as important for high school teachers to focus on concise classroom management as it is for elementary teachers. Additionally, I have a passion for incorporating reading and writing skills into the science classroom and for creating engaging lab activities. I hope to share lots of ideas in these areas in the months to come!

I am so excited to start this journey and to collaborate with you and other educators across the World Wide Web!