Returning to work after the winter holidays is an unusual thing to do at my school. On Monday, Jan. 7th, the whole school is empty – not a soul around. In fact, every teacher and student is off on some sort of winter camping excursion or community service adventure (some even go to Costa Rica!). For me, I was up at Pine Crest, in Torrance, with the grade 8 class. While I was there, the administration asked me to contribute to the Outdoor Education blog, and I was totally game!<\/p>\n
You can visit the blog at\u00a0http:\/\/www.tumblr.com\/tagged\/greenwood%20college%20school and you’ll see all the excellent adventures that the school had.<\/p>\n
But while I was blogging up at camp, I asked some students to write some posts for me, to provide a different perspective. The writing that they did – well you can read for yourself – was very positive and reflective. I think that the idea of blogging is starting to settle into the younger grades that I am focussing on. I say this because the responses to blogging were met with a positive attitude, as opposed to “I don’t want to do this”; I actually had three grade 12 students write a blog post after a very casual suggestion over a dinner of burritos!<\/p>\n
Since we’ve returned, students in grade 7, 8 and 9 are blogging about their experiences from their OE sessions, and they are starting to see how previous posts can inform their latest posts – that they are building a narrative of their own growth and experiences. I hope that this is a cumulating effect, and it continues to build.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, I had a grade 8 teacher of English approach me unprompted and ask for support in getting her started on blogging, and getting her class to start on it as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All of these are positive signs, encouraging signs that I am moving in the right direction with building a culture of blogging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Returning to work after the winter holidays is an unusual thing to do at my school. On Monday, Jan. 7th, the whole school is empty – not a soul around. In fact, every teacher and student is off on some sort of winter camping excursion or community service adventure (some even go to Costa Rica!)….
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