This and that

I found Elderbob's post from the other day a little disturbing. I have a feeling that he wants to protect both blogs and kids, which is nice and cute as I'm sure he likes them both. That's something only a caring person would do. I understand and respect that. On the other hand, this also implies that both blogs and kids need to be protected from some sort of danger (an overenthusiastic teacher?). I'm not sure I understand this.

I see blogs both as a tool in foreign language teaching and as a means of self-expression. However, it is clear to me that self-expression is something I can control only if the blog is mine. I don't want to make bloggers out of my students (that's definitely not on my agenda). They'll become one if they want to and when they want to. They'll express themselves through blogs only if this method of self-expression suits them. And this has little to do with me. It'll be their choice. I don't think potential bloggers would start hating blogs just because their teacher sets blog writing as a requirement. I'm pretty sure potential bloggers would grab blog writing as an opportunity and sooner or later open an account of their own. Perhaps they'd stop writing after a month or a year, perhaps not. But they'd surely blog until they felt the need for that. As a teacher I can't change that. I don't even want to.

Take our group as an example. I'm personally not sure that I'm a blogger. I hated the idea of keeping a blog in the beginning of this course (and I know from other participants' posts that I'm not alone). It reminded me of the times when I kept a personal diary. Those times are long gone, my life and self-expression have changed. Why would I take up something I've given up? But I'm still hanging around - writing comments to unknown people (whom I'm getting to know slowly through their blogs and comments). At first I posted to my blog only because our tutors required it from course participants. I followed their instructions because I knew I had to trust them: either you blog or you never find out what blogging is about. And now after three weeks I feel that I'm not lost in the blogosphere any more, on the contrary, I'm slowly finding my place and my voice thanks to our tutors, guests and fellow course participants although blogging is far from being the only means of self-expression that I'm capable of, that I use or that I find satisfying. I suspect this change is the result of my increasing awareness of what blogging involves both knowledge-wise and community-wise.

I also think of blogging as a possible tool for improving my students reading and writing skills in English. It won't suit everybody, I know. However, that won't stop me from using blogs in my teaching. I also know that there's no perfect teaching tool that would suit every child. Let me illustrate this. Kids don't like grammar. Fine, does that stop us from teaching it or from raising their awareness about it? My children don't like vegetables. Should I stop offering them vegetable dishes? Why would we do only what we like or what suits us? It may sound awful to some people but teaching is not just knowledge transfer. It's also socialization: learning what we like and what we don't, what's proper and what's not, the various opportunities that are out there, the obligations, responsibilities, perseverance, etc. The only thing wrong would be if we kept giving our children vegetable dishes and nothing else, teaching only grammar in EFL classes or teaching English only by writing a blog. But we are not doing that, are we? I don't remember anybody saying we should. Equally wrong would be giving up a teaching tool only because some of the kids didn't immediately take to it.

If we decided to use blog writing in our classes, we would do that only because we believed it would enhance our students' reading or writing skills. If the students learnt to like it, fine. If not, they'd know they'd tried it but it wasn't their cup of tea and they'd stop the moment the school year was over. Fair enough. Knowing what you don't like is just as important as knowing what you like. Hopefully, by then they would have improved their reading and writing skills, whether they wanted it or not.