1 picture & 140 characters

Is your blog going through an identity-crisis? I’d say my case is similar to the age-old writers’ block. In the world of Instagram posts, and 140 character tweets –the art of blogging has become more time-consuming than I have time for (this post for example, I don’t even want to admit to the number of drafts and hours of time I have invested into its perfection.). Therefore, if you haven't already noticed, my less-than-a-year-old- blog has become more of an after-thought this school year.

Last summer, the unveiling of my blog was all I could think about. The name, the design, the layout, the content… I wanted to create a beautiful & professional looking blog that I could be truly proud of. I wanted to create a space that teachers would revisit frequently to recharge on classroom inspiration. I even had plans for a sister-site with a collection of links that could be used directly by students in your classrooms.

Let’s just say that by the end of that summer I thought I had it all. Like so many other teachers, I successfully created my very own “brand” – it included not only a blog, but also a TpT store, a FB fanpage, a Bloglovin’ account, my collection of Pinterest boards, an Instagram, and eventually Twitter. Welcome to the world of "I'm Owl Ready to Teach." I was soaring.

It wasn’t long before I started noticing success stories of teachers everywhere -TpT sellers who were making triple my teaching-salary, teacher-bloggers appearing on morning shows, and everyday Pinterest pinners who were becoming the celebrities of the education world. I began dreaming of the day when I might somehow earn the title teacherpreneur.

You can imagine, or possibly you know based on your own experience, with all of these accounts, it becomes a bit difficult to decide where to place your focus. Here’s where my crisis began, although I didn’t realize it until months later. In the meantime, I was busy trying to figure out what content to place where, & when, & how much, & for whom…

While doing this, it became clear that just as in how we run our own classrooms, online every teacher is different –some devote their time to creating products & placing them in their stores, some to creating blog posts filled with photos of their own classrooms, some focus on shopping-steals & teacher-fashion, some focus on organizing Pinterest pins featuring the wonderful work of others, and still others spend time reading & sharing in the world of tweets. Of course, there are also those exceptionally successful teachers who seem to do it all.

For me, IG has become the most successful tool to-date, with over +1300 teacher-followers (a skyrocketing number compared to my other accounts). This caused IG to become my go-to method of sharing. It was instant. I could snap a photo of my students working on a fabulous activity & have it "posted" by lunchtime –not only to IG, but to FB & Twitter as well. A picture is worth 1,000 words –& with the dialog occurring in the comment spaces, I no longer needed a blog to elaborate. It was time-saving, efficient, and effective. I was reaching more people outside of my classroom walls than ever before.

So, it happened, my blog became abandoned -why did I feel so guilty about this? The guilt got to me a couple of times, which caused me to sit down, pick just one of the many exciting classroom happenings to discuss, and blog about it (Except for Christmas break when I posted about my week-long croqueting phase, talk about identity crisis –this is a perfect example of a post posted in the wrong place!). Regardless, it seemed as though I’d always end up writing a post that I never really felt as "proud" of anymore. I've considered deleting all content & starting over with a new school year/new focus, I guess we shall soon see if that happens or not. 

Truthfully, a blog is a large space available to share a lot of information –full articles, series’ of photos, links, step-by-step tutorials, videos, quality information… but, perhaps too much information in a world where I have gotten used to sharing in 1 photo and less than 140 characters (may I ensure you of what a very carefully selected 140 characters they are!)

So where does this all leave me? 100 followers here, 1,300 there, 500 ‘grams & 200 tweets later... my blog is in crisis, but perhaps not. My keyboard may be showing signs of writers’ block, but definitely not from a lack of sharing!  So please, if you’re a reader of this blog – don’t stop here, I have so much more to tell you, just head over to my other accounts & follow me there!