Time for reflection

I occasionally ask my students, by way of taking stock, to complete a certain reflective exercise. And since I’m blogging again, I thought this was as good a time as ever to do it myself. It’s a reflection in the form of three questions: Where are you right now? Where are you trying to get to? and How are you going to get there? Where are you now? Well, I'm three years down the line. When I started, it was probably the most productive period in my writerly life. I started out wanting to reflect on my Teach First journey, my highs and lows and what I learnt along the way. Since then, I have even begun to try to find a way to make it work as a tool in my classes. And that has happened a little (see www.merchistonenglish.blogspot.com). I'm reading more than I ever have, but I'm reading differently. Aside from the marking, I tend to read tweets, headlines, ideas, RSS feeds, aphorisms; I have articles that people have recommended to me coming in by the dozens each day, but I'm having trouble even getting round to opening books. I've got a stack of brand new books waiting for me by my bed, and there are so many things going on in my head that I don't have time to get to them. At some point I'm going to have to take a deep breath, back off, make some decisions about boundaries, but perhaps tomorrow; it’s still fresh and exciting. Where are you trying to get to? I think this is an essential question for me, and I don't really have an answer for it yet. I'd like to be able to find a sustainable pattern. I've always run—I run first thing in the morning—light, dark, snow, hail, thunder—without fail. I run for about an hour, which is enough to have the desired effect and not so long that I'm really ever tempted to skip it. I'd like to be able to find the blogging equivalent of that rhythm. During my time on the Teach First programme I managed about three to four posts a month, but I don't think that's sustainable in my current role, given that I have other responsibilities as a teacher, a student, an assistant Housemaster, fiancé, friend etc etc. Plus I need to eat, sleep and I have a pile of coursework marking waiting for me, and I'd like to have them done before the weekend. So the time that I am spending doing this is time I'm spending not doing that and I’ve already found juggling those aforementioned responsibilities a challenge. I feel like I haven’t chewed the fat with some of my closest mates in too long…so, following on from the last post, I’m lowering the bar just slightly. How are you going to get there? Just one thought really: I want to use blogspot.com as a space to talk to myself, and to anyone else who is interested about whatever I want to talk about.