Week 1 of the 2016 Blogging Initiative!

Welcome to the new year! I’m guessing that winter break feels like a distant memory… and we’re back in the swing of things. Refreshed! (Maybe.) And if you’re anything like me, you’re already waiting for Spring Break! Wooo hooo!

Right now we’re going to start the blogging part of the #MTBoS blogging initiative! For those who are new-ish to blogging, don’t worry… We have a gentle introduction which only asks you to write four easy blogposts, one a week. What’s great about this is that we’ll be doing this together! For those who are more experience with blogging, this is going to be an opportunity for you to blog in a community effort! And if you are a #MTBoS mentor for someone with a new blog, you can help ’em dip their toes in and see hey, it’s not scary! It can actually be fun!

With that, our week one blogging challenge:

We often get caught up in our day teaching, and often don’t take the time to be in the present. So we have two options that with that goal in mind. Choose whichever floats your boat and blog about it!

Option 1: We rarely take the time to stop and smell the roses. Even on the most disastrous of days, good things happen. And these good things, when you’re on the lookout for them, pop up. All. The. Time. So for one day (heck, do it for many days), keep a lookout for the small good moments during your day and blog about them. We bet that by keeping an eye out for the good, your whole day will be even better!

Option 2: A few years ago, some people in the #MTBoS wanted to share what their teaching lives were like. Partly because we all work in different schools, and so we wanted to get a glimpse of our friends-in-action. At the same time, we also wanted to battle against the idea that teaching is easy. We wanted to share what it is like to be a teacher with non-teachers! So we all blogged about a single day of teaching — from start to finish. So for the first week of the blogging initiative, we thought you blogging about a day in your lives would be a great way to start getting to know each other!

There you go! You have two options. Your blogpost can be as long or short as you want. However we’d love it if in your blogpost you could include at least one image/picture to make it more fun to read! It can be of you, of your good things, you documenting your day, whatever!

Deadline: Press submit by the end of the day Saturday, January 16, 2016.

If you’d like a little graphic to include in your post, here are some little whatchamacallits we made:

When you’ve written and published your blogpost:

1. Tweet out the link to your blogpost with a short description, and include the #MTBoS hashtag.
2. If you’re a mentee, email your mentor the link! And if you’re a mentor, read and comment on your mentee’s post!
3. In the comments to this blogpost here, throw down the link to your blogpost and a short teaser.
4. Look at the three comments that are listed above your comment. Click on those three links, read the three blogposts, and talk to the authors by leaving a comment on their blogposts (not here).

Lastly, the #MTBoS can be a lot of information. So many blogs to read, not enough time! So we highly recommend signing up for the Global Math Department newsletter (click here to do so! see a sample here! here’s the GMD webpage!). Once a week, someone in the #MTBoS looks through what the community has produced, and shares some of their favorite things.

And that’s all!

Our second week’s blogging prompt will go up next week!

PS. If you enjoyed doing option 1, the #MTBoS has a place where you can share your one good thing. Check out the blog; we’d love for you to consider becoming a regular or semi-regular contributor (there is a link at the top of the blog with information on how to add yourself to the blog). If you enjoyed doing option 2, and want to include your blogpost in an archive of many other “day in the life” posts by math educators, please consider submitting your blogpost to the DITL tumblr (site here; submission form here).