My school year is over and between packing my classroom for a move, reading, tree planting, and scything the grasses that are growing so quickly in the fields (yes, there are still some of us who are enthusiasts) I have some time to think back on where this blog has brought me since I started it about seven months ago. Seven months and 62 posts are not the normal milestones, but for a teacher early June is when the crops have been harvested and the machinery gets repaired.

Photo Credit: Lawrence Whittemore via Compfight

This blog has given me many gifts, it’s been one the best things I’ve done to continue my professional growth. Here’s a short list of some of those gifts:

• Discipline. I’ve always been a learner, but writing regularly has kept me more focused than I’ve ever been in my teaching life. As I try to keep to a regular posting schedule, my mind naturally begins to think about what I am doing or thinking that might be interesting, which causes me to do more and to think more. It’s a cycle.
• Thinking. The Iowa Writing Project was right. Writing does cause me to think differently (and more) than I would without writing. Putting electrons on a screen, rereading, revising, scrapping whole chunks and starting over again helps me organize my writing but, more importantly, it helps me organize and push my thinking so it just doesn’t sit there, vague-like and fuzzy in my brain. For me, writing (and talking) are essential ingredients for thought.
• Community. While the audience for this blog is not large (If you have read this far, you are one of the few!), I do feel a strong sense of community among some very smart and interesting people. The fact that someone may read what I have to say causes me to think even harder and a bit more deeply and consider my words just a bit more carefully than I would if I were writing in a journal. And experiencing the importance of that community has helped me redefine how I interact with a larger community of bloggers. I’m much more willing to offer a comment than I had been earlier; I know that my comments can help others think and feel connected, just as their comments help me think and feel connected.
• Seriousness. You wouldn’t think that someone who is in his early fifties and male would struggle with a sense of  illegitimacy — in most places our patriarchal culture grants me power that I didn’t earn — but I do struggle with being taken seriously, and with taking myself seriously. Many elementary teachers do, I think. Some of that comes from being in a female dominated profession, and how those get delegitimized, even amongst educators. Some of the problem comes from the small people we work with; a profession often takes on the status of its clientele and ours are the least powerful in a society that worships power and independence. Some of that comes from the way we “infantilize” teaching through scripting, packaging content, and narrowing choices and thought. Whatever the causes, writing regularly has helped me to see my work as highly intellectual and skilled, which helps me to develop those very same qualities in my professional life. Again, it’s a cycle.

That’s a whole lot of giving over these last seven months.  If you write (or teach elementary school), have you experienced these kind of gifts, too? Am I missing anything?