I've come to experience blogging as one of the best ways to support my learning, and so I've dedicated myself to publishing one piece of content almost everyday for the last year and a half.
While I can't say that it hasn't taken the time and effort that some work requires, I also can't say it hasn't been fun.
It's been fun.
Learning via blogging has become a passion of mine.
But to do this, there are times when I make errors. These errors can come as content and/or grammatical. While I do work hard to make sure that all errors are kept to a minimum, I have only so much time and effort to expend and so by definition, there will be lapses in what I can catch or proofread.
Sometimes I have to decide whether to focus more on what I say versus how I say it. You won't catch me writing about the glory of rewards and punishments or how grading can be better used to garnish compliance from kids, but you will find the odd spellng mistake, type-o, or run-on sentence.
Don't get me wrong, I do proofread my blogs. I almost always read and re-read out loud so I can both see and hear what I have written. I work diligently to get the big ideas right, but I won't lose a wink of sleep over a spelling error, missing word or sloppy apostrophe.
One incident in regards to this topic comes to mind.
On June 29, 2010, I wrote a post for the second last day of school titled Made to Learn, and the first comment was left by anonymous:
You have to do better job proofing your work.
That was the whole comment. One sentence in response to my entire post. Guess how I felt. How would you feel? How would your students feel if this was the comment you left them? I'll be honest, this petty comment angered me, but then I took that anger and turned it into a teachable moment.
Here was my response to this anonymous comment:
@anonymous: Do you provide the same, cold, short, indifferent, and utterly unhelpful comments to your students or do you reserve such unproductive, ignorant one liners to only bloggers who try and publish one peice of thoughtful content every day?
The words we say are important, but often the words we don't say are even more important. Think about that.
Can you imagine how it might feel to be a child who works his tail off on a peice of writing only to get a response that takes the form of an uninspiring, one sentence critique?
If you feel the need to say such things, please feel free to dispense them on me. I will take them gladly if it means your students or children are not subjected to such thoughtless judgments.
After putting so much time and effort into writing day in and day out, this anonymous commenter's brevity came across as nothing but judgement that took infinitely less time and effort than what I put forward.
I swear, I will do my best to never do this to my students or children. And if/when I do, I'll make damn sure to apologize.
