Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Happy New Year!

As we get started on 2015, I wanted to look back at some of what I wrote here during 2014.

I created 70 posts in 2014, by far the most since I started this blog in 2006.

That feels good. I like maintaining this blog. It keeps me writing, and maybe more importantly, it keeps me writing in the way I would like to see my students to write:
Find something you enjoy and explore the ideas that inform that thing in order to create your own view.

Today I wanted to link to my top five, the posts that I think best reflect what I am trying to do with this blog.

These are in chronological order, from earliest to latest.

In February I wrote a post about teachers and how they are perceived by the public. I like this one because whenever I step into the education debate, I keep coming back to the idea I expressed here: Teachers are treated like labor but expected to perform like professionals.

In March I posted something on the Common Core. I did that a lot last year. I was often frustrated by the way that debate has been shaped by misinformation and special interests. This post was the one where I think I kept my focus on why so many of the arguments are flawed.

In May I responded to a friend's tweet about #BringBackOurGirls. For this post I stopped to examine how my identity gets in the way of my message when I write about certain issues. It felt personal, and I am glad I got some of these ideas into this blog.

I was pleased to be able to write about Weird Al in May. I've been listening to that guy since the Doctor Demento days. But what's better, I was able to write about a very real debate that grew up around Weird Al's song on grammar.

Then in November I posted about some of the work I'm doing in the classroom. I think it is exciting work, and I was pleased to get some positive feedback about it.

So, those are the highlights for my year as a blogger.

Here's to the new year and all the possibilities it brings. I hope we can use this time to argue, teach, and write with even more enthusiasm.