Blogging is about building connections, and for that reason, we knew we couldn’t do this post alone. For the past two Monday posts, we’ve posted a request to our blogging friends, asking them why they blog.
Our Blog: Unleashing Readers
Our Blog’s Focus: We work to provide a blog that offers teaching materials and resources for K-12 educators. Our book review format is designed to help teachers navigate great books with their students. We try to write reflections that offer teaching tools for the instruction of these texts.
Why We Blog: Simply put, we love teaching. Sharing our love of literature with our students is incredibly rewarding for us, and we want other teachers to share this joy with us. It is our belief that many of our viewers share this mindset. We are dissatisfied with the current model of traditional classrooms (where boring, inaccessible books are the staple), and we aim to show that there are high quality, high interest books outside of the literary canon. We are not asking school systems to lock classic texts in the closet, but instead, we offer alternatives, such as bridging these classics with other texts and offering other alternatives for the one-text-for-all approach. We love sharing ideas and book titles with our blogging friends and have made some great connections with them and hope you will see what their blogs have to offer.
Alyson at Kid Lit Frenzy
Blog Focus: To share recommendations of children’s and young adult literature to teachers, librarians and parents, and to highlight educational literacy activities.
Why I Blog: I began blogging to simply share my thoughts on books that I was reading. However, it has evolved into much more than sharing thoughts. It has developed into a community in which I contribute to but also learn from.
Audrey, Crystal, Jessica, K. Imani & Jon at Rich in Color
Blog Focus: Rich in Color is dedicated to reading, reviewing, talking about, and otherwise promoting young adult fiction starring people of color or written by people of color.
Why We Blog: We believe that teens (and adults!) should be able to find themselves in the kinds of books they love to read. The discrepancy between books that feature people of color or are written by people of color and the actual composition of the U.S. population is a concern for us. We think it’s important to support these books/authors, and one way we can do that is to talk about them.
Beth at A Foodie Bibliophile in Wanderlust
Blog Focus: The theme of my blog is food, books, and travel but I write mostly about books.
Why I Blog: I started blogging because I realized that when I finished a book, I needed to talk to someone about it, and I didn’t really have anyone to do that with. I continued blogging because I found a wonderful, supportive community of teachers and book lovers on Twitter, the Nerdy Book Club, and with the “It’s Monday! What are You Reading?” participants. All of these elements of online community have made me a better reader and teacher.
Carrie at There’s a Book for That
Blog Focus: My blog highlights my addiction to and love of all things in the land of children’s literature. It includes regular updates of what I am reading and often has stories and examples of how I am using books with my primary students.
Why I Blog: I blog to tell stories of my learning and thoughts about children’s literature and teaching in general. Blogging has allowed me to be part of a learning and reading community that shares. The more I write, the more I learn. I also love the opportunity to share little windows into my classroom and the thinking that happens there.
Crystal at Reading Through Life
Blog Focus: I share kidlit and yalit and also share about teaching in my elementary library. I have an emphasis on diversity in literature.
Why I Blog: I wanted to be able to communicate with more than just the teachers and librarians in my area. My blog is also a great place to store things that I can access from my own classroom.
Debbie at The Styling Librarian
Blog Focus: I believe books are your best accessory. I blog about new and old books, celebrate authors and illustrators with interview posts, share technology that I find useful, and share about my life as an expat living in Hong Kong.
Why I Blog: I love connecting with others out in the blogosphere, have developed relationships and gained so much inspiration from them, especially for my professional life. It is fun to express myself and also keep up with family and friends with my posts. Celebrating books, authors and illustrators, and techology is something that keeps me going, appreciating, and following through week to week.
Earl at The Chronicles of a Children’s Book Writer
Blog Focus: My blog focuses on the books I’ve read. I occasionally post about my writing as well.
Why I Blog: I blog because it is such a great way to connect with so many other like-minded people all over the world. I love the give and take of it.
Karen at Ms. Yingling Reads
Blog Focus: I concentrate on books for middle school students, especially humorous, realistic fiction and books with culturally diverse characters.
Why I Blog: I am a school librarian who tries to read all of the books I buy before I purchase them. My blog serves as my auxiliary memory, helps me connect with my students, and is hopefully a good resource for other teachers and librarians who don’t get a chance to read all of the books that I do.
Linda at TeacherDance
Blog Focus: I love to share about literacy in all aspects for helping children learn, integrating across the curriculum. The focus most of the time is reading and writing in the classroom, including book reviews.
Why I Blog: I blog to write, to share aspects of education I believe are important to learning for all children. And I blog to connect to the broader education world in order to meet people everywhere who inspire me when they write of their own personal and educational experiences and practices. An added aspect of my blogging connections has been to read and learn from good writers.
Michele at Mrs. Knott’s Book Nook
Blog Focus: I want my blog to focus on giving practical resources to teachers and parents to support themselves in the areas of reading and writing. My hope is to inspire and get people excited about the wonderful books that are available to us!
Why I Blog: I blog because I love talking about books and having conversations about them with anyone who wants to discuss. I have gotten so many wonderful ideas from other blogs, I wanted to share too. One of my goals is to work on my writing, so for me, this is a chance to do this several times each week!
Thank you friends in sharing why blogging is important to you! We love having you as part of our community!
Why do you like blogging? Or visiting blogs?
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Great to read everyone’s words about their blogging! Thanks for doing this!
We love celebrating with you all!
You are very welcome, Linda! Thanks for participating!
I love the community I’ve found through blogging.
I agree. It is the best part.
Ditto! I love the support that we all give to each other.
What a wonderful list of bibliophile friends discovered through the Internet! Great to hear everyone’s thoughts about why people blog. 🙂