Why Am I Blogging, You Say??

Greeting Earthlings,

Since I just started up this whole "Sarcastic Teacher" thingee (note: I have always been sarcastic), I wanted to have some kind of order to the chaos. I enjoy structure and order. Especially alphabetic order and anything that involves pretty colours and office supplies. It keeps the crazy down to a manageable level. So while watching SheilaJaneTeaching on Periscope today, she gave me motivation to get this train on the track. Would you like me to give a shout-out every blogpost or periscope, Sheila Jane? It is quite possible, due to your level of fabulousness!! If so, I'll have to put it on my list of requirements... #powertothequails

Anywho, I first started to blog in 2008 as a place for my students to interact with me in an educational, digital environment. All of the important peeps said I should do it, but when my kids would go to the computer room (yes, we all had one of these back then) and enter my url, guess what? BLOCKED - you can not access this site because of the following content: BLOGGING. Yep, blogging was a bad thing that bad people did. Oy vey, pass the wine. I had to write a formal request to my central office to get my EDUCATIONAL blog from EDUBLOGS that is being used to teach my kids how to be DIGITAL CITIZENS unblocked so they could interact with me at school. At their homes with no supervision - sure. At school with me right beside them - no dice.

DISCLAIMER: I will now go to the fridge and get a glass of wine from the ever-present box that resides there everytime I refer to my central office. They are very nice people, really they are!! Especially my fellow sarcastic teacher-in-crime, Kara, but I simply DETEST bureaucracy and anything that stops me from teaching my kids. DON'T POKE THE BEAR!

Okay, I've recovered and have "Big Carl" in hand for any future outbursts. (If you don't know what "Big Carl" is you obviously don't watch Cougar Town and need to give yourself a slap, and go directly to Netflix after you read this post!)

Solution: Switch to "wordpress" from "edublogs" because wordpress doesn't have the word "blog" in it and therefore won't get blocked.Yep, kids. Get around the system. Have I mentioned what a role model I am for them??

Below are my blogs before this year:

• School/Classroom: Middle School Monkeys

• Ed Policy/Politics: Exploring Education:Exploring Excellence

I also had two other blogs that I have deleted because I would like to keep my job and some people might not enjoy the content. One was about trashy tv and one was a parody on rubrics. My friends and I developed a rubric to determine the sketchiness of an entertainment venue (that's a nice way of saying it!) by giving it 1-5 mugs of beer. Determining the criteria was hilarious! The research process was gruelling...

Earlier this year, I decided to start a new blog about things that are just fun to me and those that know me. Makeup, clothes, shopping, stupid people... You know, the basics of life. It can be found here and sometimes I make YouTube videos an Perioscopes to go with this blog as well:

• Traceyland Blog-  (twitter is @traceylandblog)

Which brings us (FINALLY!) to this blog. This blog is meant for anyone that loves education and loves to laugh. That's my only purpose. I don't care if 1 person reads it or if 1000 people read it. It feels good to express myself in writing on a regular basis and it makes me a better writer/teacher of writing, too! You know that whole, write as a reader and read as a writer thing. Maybe something I write might help another teacher who is going through the same thing? That would be grrrrrrrreat!

So, that's all folks. Have you figured out yet, that trying to be concise is difficult for me? I have bullet points in my head, but I love language and how it flows, so sometimes it goes on and on... If you don't like it. Well, you can suck it. Really, you can.

Tracey