Frustrated

I have been struggling lately to verbalize all of the thoughts about teaching from my head onto paper; or virtual paper. For the past week or so, I have been working on my digital portfolio, or e-folio. During that time, I have had to write a considerable amount about my teaching philosophy, my teaching ideals, etc. It is a little embarrassing to admit, but I have had a hard time putting my vision to words. Writing has never been my strong suit, but I have always been able to do a decent job.

I started this blog for many reasons but one of them was to strengthen my writing. I also feel that this whole exercise of creating and adding to my e-folio will also enhance my writing skills, but that is down the road. In the here and now, I am very frustrated with the slow going.

I was very excited to create my own personal website to showcase myself to potential suitors, but I think that I was excited about the idea, not necessarily the creation of said website. Adding the text that explains my vision as an educator has proved to be very difficult for me. The only good thing is that hopefully this challenge will prepare me for job interviews.

I think that the frustration lies in the fact that I see so many wonderful examples of people expressing their own educational philosophies so well on the web. I read these posts, become motivated to create my own, and then sit at the keyboard for long periods of time suffering from writers block.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that I am oftentimes pulled into numerous directions due to all of the blogs that I subscribe to. Like I said above, they provide plenty of motivation, but I think that they often complicate and muddle the overall picture that I am trying to create for myself. I have often questioned myself about the adequate number of blogs that a teacher should subscribe to. When I was student teaching, I had trouble keeping up with my Google Reader. I wondered if I was spending too much time reading blog posts and not enough time planning and creating for teaching. With the technology still so new and everyone feeling their way through it, I think that everyone will have to find their own balance.

Well, this has been a meandering post, but has also been therapeutic as I have been continually typing and letting the ideas just flow. Hopefully, this will cure my writers block and allow more of the ideas to come naturally.