Happy 2017 #MTBoS!! With every new year comes the opportunity to commit yourself to positive habits. If you navigated the series of tubes to this post, then you probably are interested in writing about math teaching and learning, or supporting those who do. For people who plan to start 2017 blogging, or people who want to them on, I present a individualized, flexible initiative, to support writers and streamline process for readers who follow along. It’s the #MTBoSblogsplosion!

Why #MTBoSblogsplosion?

It’s been shown that the practice of writing reflective helps one think deeper and helps the brain make connections. The collective blog posts can form an accurate snapshot of teaching and education in a world where the realities of the classroom can be lost beneath messages from people outside of education. When initiatives like this take place, it affords the opportunity for writers and readers to have real conversations, helping to strengthen the bonds that make the #MTBoS such a wonderful place.

What is the #MTBoSblogsplosion?

Simply put, bloggers will decide the kind of blogging they can commit to, then they will blog, and all of it will be shared on social media with the hashtag #MTBoSblogsplosion so others can follow along.

You can think about it as a 3 step process. Step 1 is to make a commitment to a realistic amount of blogging. Maintaining work-life balance isn’t easy, and the #MTBoSblogsplosion isn’t trying to force that to be much harder. Choose the kind of blogging commitment that makes sense to you. Start with a regular Frequency such as:

Daily

Weekly

Monthly

Twice each fort-night

Three times a week unless my kid doesn’t go down for their nap on the weekend

Something else?

Then you may want to choose a duration, or how long you want this to go. Maybe the month of January would work for you? Maybe you want to take it through February vacation, go for it! Do you only want to dip your toes in the water and go for two weeks? That’s also great!

Finally, you may want to focus your writing. Here you want to think about whether you want to document what is going on in your class, maybe you want to write about the different tasks that you’ve been working on, maybe you want to discuss your new role as department chair. It may help people to write with prompts, if so you can do that. Here are prompts and some other ideas:

The 2016 Blogging Initiative blog prompts are here. Great for beginners!

Teachthought.com has a full month of prompts around teacher gratitude

Summaries of books and NCTM Journal articles

Taking a picture of student work each day

Isolating and describing a memorable teacher-student interaction

Describing classroom activities that you would like feedback on

Are there other prompts?

If it doesn’t help you to have a focus, then don’t pressure yourself, feel free to leave it open.

So now you’ve got a commitment. You’ve decided an amount, a duration, and a focus. Step 2 is to share your commitment. Twee this out as a nice sentence so readers can know what you’re trying to do, and cheer you on! For example:

“Starting today I’m going to blog twice a week until Feb 1 about ways I can support my students. #mtbosblogsplosion”

“This month, I’ll write posts every school day (even if they’re short) about teaching and learning. #mtbosblogsplosion”

“For my New years resolution, I’m writing twice monthly, about a book or article that I’ll read,#mtbosblogsplosion”

After that initial tweet comes Step 3, start blogging! Each time you post, tweet out a link along with the hashtag #mtbosblogsplosion.

And now the final step… Step 4 is to read and support others. The best part of initiatives like this is the positive energy and support you can get to reach your goals. Help generate and spread this energy by reading and leaving comments for other #MTBoSblogsplosion posts. This is a step that people can do even if they skipped the first 3 steps.