It may seem strange that a school superintendent spends so much time and energy blogging. I consistently maintain 4 blogs, writing posts for each at least once a week. Each of these blogs is different from the others, one very professional, one very personal and two in between. Why do I do this? What’s the point?
I write because I must. I awake with a thought, a thought I want to share, but unless I am constantly calling folks I know to say, “I have an idea” or “There is something bothering me” or “I have another way of looking at this” I must find a vehicle to express the thought lest I lose it, or fixate on it. Hence, I write. I could email everyone I know, but eventually that would be lost and I would be wasting your time with a full inbox. With a blog, you can check in and read whenever you want to and I get it off my chest whenever I need to.
I believe the best learning comes from the lessons we teach ourselves. My blogs teach me, help me grow, help me clarify what I think and feel and know. I have kiddingly said “I learn something every time I listen to what I have to say.” But that is not far from the truth. Processing thoughts, seeing how they fit in the grand scheme of things, seeking honest, intellectual congruence is very important to me. I cannot live with me if I am unfaithful to what I think, feel and believe. Hence, I need to see those thoughts on the screen to verify that is where I am.
So, it flows. Over time, it flows faster and easier. Just me and my computer. It flows. I have a sense of where I’m starting and where I am going and it just flows. I have an electronic folder of blogs unpublished because I started, then got interrupted and lost the flow. I have more unpublished posts than published. Someday I will return to those half cooked ideas and finish them.
Why 4 blogs? That is about as schizophrenic as I can handle. I have different personas as I believe we all do. I put on my superintendent uniform and mask and go to work. I deal with issues educational from crisis to mundane as a supe, and I want to share those thoughts with my professional colleagues. That blog is on the district website for all to see so it must be very professional. As a spin off from that I have deep personal feelings about many of the professional issues we are confronting in public education. It would not be appropriate for me to post those thoughts on a school district website. These thoughts are not endorsed by this system. They belong to me. So, I maintain this blog, one-eyed bob, where I can express my more personal thoughts on things professional. Beyond one-eyed bob are thoughts and feelings from my core regarding what I believe, what I really think and feel, and these are not appropriate to share on either of the other blogs. I write to that blog under a pseudonym to maintain confidentiality, and frankly, some safety. I have one other blog that is read by invitation only. It is very personal. On that blog I express my feelings, my grief, my joys, my failures, my successes, my most intimate and candid thoughts regarding the man you know as Bob, a man who is learning and evolving, and this is my record of my journey. It is more like a personal journal than anything else. It is also the one from which I learn the most.
I also blog because I have learned it is very difficult for me to have friends, true friends, with whom I can share everything and trust their honesty and reciprocity. As a professional educator we need outlets to vent, to think out loud, to create, to process. Teachers can do that with their peers. Principals and other administrators can do that with their peers. Supes, I have learned, cannot do that totally with anyone they work with because though the supe may believe they have a professional friend those "friends" may simply be responding as a subordinate, less than honestly. I have learned I cannot do that with fellow supes, even those I know and support, because many of them will continue to act in competitive ways, very unlike what real friends do. With the loss of friends, or perceived friends, comes a deep wound, a sense of failure, a sense of being a fool, and deep sense of grief. Yet, I must turn to someone to bounce my thoughts and feelings off lest I go off half-cocked in the wrong direction. I trust Cabinet to give me most of that feedback. I cannot put that burden on Debbie as that is unfair; she does not know the context. So I put it in a blog.
(As a side note, I continue to risk having real friends in this job. It is very risky for me, but the rewards can be wonderful. I deeply appreciate my new friends, inside and out, who have stepped up to fill the gap, the holes in my friendship cadre.)
The more angst in my life the more I feel the need to blog. 2012 has been a year of angst for me. I have blogged a bunch on all 4 blog sites. I am fortunate in that over 12,000 folks have looked at the Edna website blog, one-eyed bob continues to receive national attention and about 4,000 hits per month, and my pseudonym blog continues to attract a host of visits, and comments from around the world. (Interestingly, next to the hits from the US, the most hits come from Russia and India. Weird.)
I believe all of us just want to be heard. Covey says we want to live, learn, love and leave a legacy. We want to know our thoughts and actions make a difference. We want to know others can relate to what we think or challenge what we think. I feel that way. And, when I die I want to know that I have been true to my beliefs and I know what those beliefs are. If we say, physician, heal thyself, we should also say, educator, teach thyself.
So, I blog.
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