I feel it's about time to write this entry as I feel I have gotten to the point where this blog is here to stay. At first I was going to say I always fear that point where I start a new blog or writing something new and I end up giving up and taking it down, which leaves an intensely distasteful feeling of failure and lack of stick-to-itiveness. Actually, that's true for pretty well everything - just ask any number of January 1st gym attendees that didn't make it to week two. It's a sobbing mess of personal disappointment and damaged pride from usually telling people you're starting to better yourself in a manner you give up a few weeks later. Fortunately, not everything turns out that way, and and at the very least this blog has made it over that initial small, but undeniably significant hill. For that I am... well, somewhat proud.
But that's all beside the point fluff. I feel it's time to get all meta here and write a blog entry explaining the blog itself. I am just about to start my second round of student teaching, aspiring to be a social studies major and an english minor. I felt writing this blog would help me to be better prepared for the times ahead; I can learn a number of histories to bring to the classroom, as well as gradually honing my writing skills for english class. The past year of my life has been one of the first times I've been engaged in learning something I feel will actually be useful in some way - and if you try to tell me my education classes are, then you clearly have never been. For the years previous to the last, I would coast through school (no change there) and justify my lack of progress by saying it's another year towards my degree. While this is true, I changed little, and for the most part it's not surprisingly rather depressing. I was wasting my time. Studying histories, be it through books or, well, wikipedia, has given me some degree of focus. I feel there have actually been some accomplishments here and there, and that's more than I can say school has ever given me. Also, yes, I understand the irony in that I plan to be a teacher. I've noticed this long ago and have had it pointed out to me more times than I can count.
Writing these blogs has been a way to take what I've learned and make it a tangible accomplishment, something that video games has taught me is of utmost importance through the medium of achievement points. Every blog entry, every book read, and yes, every wikipedia page browsed is one more small chunk of information I know slightly more about. What some may view as problematic is the fact that even though I have read about these things, my blog entries are so short, overall poorly researched and what I can only assume is oftentimes factually sketchy at best; in retrospect, those are pretty valid complaints. To answer that I would like to point out again that I hope to become a teacher, and while that may seem contrary to helping my stance, I would explain that I don't have the time or the resources to explain any of these histories in full. At best, I can mention some of these as interesting factoids interspersed throughout lessons as a framework for my future students to find more about it on their own later. The idea is to have a base knowledge on as much as I can to prompt students to want to research the topics more on their own time; you know, teaching an interest in the subject matter and what not. It's a little more idealistic than I normally am, but I suppose those bull-crap ed classes are rubbing off on me.
All in all, this is a means of projecting what I find to be interesting information to soon to be students. It may be inaccurate, it may be childish, and it may have literally zero readers as I have a refusal to even proofread, but it serves a purpose. And that purpose I'll keep clinging to.
No comments:
Post a Comment