Blogging Blogs: "Aimless"

I figured I’d begin Blogging Blogs by commenting on a familiar one. Amy was a classmate of mine in the Writing For Secondary Teachers course last spring. I found her blog last week after we looked at Walk Away Renee in class. Aimless appeared as a blog link on Renee’s sidebar. Realizing that title corresponded with Amy’s nickname, I opted to take a look.

What I see here is a notebook. It is personal, but much less of a “blurt” than the typical blog. She writes one entry every day, most of which appear to me to be pretty well developed and thought out.

The blog is a chronicle of her student teaching internship, which if I recall correctly, is at the high school in Red Lake. Her entries focus on teaching, and her feelings about working with youth. She does post once about volunteer work for the DFL, but that still kind of fits in. As I see it, teaching and politics fit into the general realm of public service, as does volunteerism, so it’s ok to stray occasionally from teaching and this blog will still hold true to its purpose.

I think Amy talks about some cool stuff in this blog. As I read through, I can clearly see some of the emotions that are associated with the experience of student teaching: happy, frustrated, nervousness about the first day, etc. As someone who faces the same type of experience down the road, I’m interested to see what I may encounter, and how I might find myself feeling about it.

Another thing that’s clear through her writing is how much she cares about her students. She makes reference several times to her kids being “great”, “awesome”, and the like. In one post, she says she even called the parents of the students who were absent…something most teachers would never dream of doing.

We had a great time in class last year. It was very clear from day one that Amy’s ultimate goal was to be the absolute best teacher she could. She has a great love for the profession, and even if I didn’t know her, I’d get a sense of that from her postings. The school she eventually teaches in will be lucky to have her.

My Verdict: I’m definitely excited to continue reading this blog. Rock on Amy. Teach those kids. You truly are anything but Aimless!