the writing on the wall

Write an Opinion Post On Your Blog

This week’s task is to write an opinion post.  There are many reasons why opinion posts are vital to a successful blog.  What I find to be the most important reason, is that it sets a blog apart from another in the same niche.  Being bold enough to express an opinion in print, even electronic print, is something that I am typically not.  I admire humor blogs, where a writer expresses his or her opinion, especially if it mirrors my own.  Maybe I admire it more if it opposes my own.  The personal fear that exists when I hit that publish button is pretty great, and to call people out, that I know, or that I like, can leave me feeling extremely vulnerable.

However, the task for this week, is to write an opinion post.  And here it is.  It was originally posted over at Aaron’s blog, Opinionless.

Don’t Complain. Do Something About it.

I spend a lot of time online; reading blogs, browsing social media, following different personalities on Twitter, and catching up on Facebook.  One of the topics I seem to see popping up a lot lately is teachers.

Now, before I begin, let me tell you, I am not a teacher.  Not in the sense that I am trained to teach, that I have a degree to teach, or am certified to teach.  But, I have three girls, who expect me to guide them, and teach them things their teachers do not.

So when I see parents complaining that teachers aren’t doing their jobs because the parents should have gone over math homework with their kid, I get upset.  I am not always available to go over homework with my kids.  And that makes me sad.  But, I am lucky.  It is rare that my kids don’t understand their homework.  When they don’t, they will certainly ask myself or their Dad for assistance.  They may not like how we help them – because we don’t give them the answers – but we get the message across and they learn.

I bring this up because more and more I am seeing statuses on Facebook that look something like this:

so my daughter didn’t understand part of her math HW last night. The teacher’s response was that ‘your mother should have gone to the website to go over it with her. NOT MY JOB!!!

I’m sorry but, you know what?  It is your job.  As a very good friend of mine just said to me, while discussing this post…*I* want my child to succeed.  The teacher doesn’t have to give a shit about my kid.  And truer words were never spoken.  Now, arguably, a good teacher does give a shit about the kids in her classroom.  And some of the best teachers I’ve ever had were the ones who were the toughest on me; the ones who were still excited to see the look of enlightenment on a kid’s face as understanding of a concept sank in.

But parents who think that their job in the education process is done because their kids are in schools which their tax money pays to fund are the same parents who complain about everything else too.  I’ve seen complaints run through the parochial school network about tuition hikes.  Why do they have to increase it per student?  Why can’t it be per family?  I’ll tell you why.  It’s because you don’t pay tuition per family, you pay tuition per student.  And isn’t your child’s education worth it?  If you don’t want to send them to private school, send them to public school and keep your complaining to yourself.

Mostly, I think of the teachers.  My sister is a teacher, and largely, I think she overreacts sometimes to what the parents ask for.  I think to myself, when she vents about her day, can’t you just do what they ask?  But more and more, this less-than-a-month-since-we’ve-been-back-at-school I think that she has it right.  She’s been teaching for 23 years, and she is a good teacher.  No, she is a phenomenal teacher.  Not because she is my sister, but because she is just that good.  It’s the parents that have it wrong.  Have we become so protective of our children that a little hard work is too much to ask of them?

I know that I never would have gotten through school if I didn’t have my parents around to check my homework, and help me understand where I went wrong.  But then, my parents were smart.  They had the knowledge.  I will tell you, if I don’t understand something my kids need help with, I have found this great tool called the internet where I can usually find the answers, or the methods, to help my daughter get through her work.  We learn together that way, and she knows she will always get some help at home.

Building a Better Blog is a project Aaron and I have decided to take on together.  His posts and progress can be found here.

Watch a First-time Reader Use Your Blog

This week’s task was to observe someone reading my blog for the very first time. Now, there were a few challenges with this.

1. I’ve posted enough variety since I started the blog way back when, that there was no way I could be sure the people (at least those willing to help me) had never read my blog.

2. Who one earth has time to get together with someone to actually spend the time for a project like this?

So I did the next best thing. I put together the questions I was looking to answer, sent them off to a few friends, along with the link to my blog, and requested that they answer the questions and send them back. Below, you will see the results.

How do you navigate?

• It’s pretty easy to navigate, especially as you have your tags on show so people can jump to different categories depending on their interests. Also, your columns help a lot.
• Not sure what you are asking here, do you mean how do I navigate the web? I use internet explorer.
• Scroll/click.

Where do you click?

• I tend to click topics in your tag list and scroll through your posts that way.
• Where did I initially click on the link? I saw it on your FB page and decided to read it.
• Various – I was clicking everywhere because it was the first time reading the blog. I wanted to get a good sense of what the blog was all about.

What do you pause to read?

• I like pictures, so if a picture or heading grabs my attention, I pause to read.
• I read the whole article from start to finish. Usually when I am on FB, I click on article/stories that interest me that will take me away from FB and go back to them after I have caught up on FB.
• Most recent post

What do you skip over?

• I find it hard to concentrate on big blocks of text but you divide up your paragraphs nicely so there’s no need to skip.
• Stories that don’t interest me.
• Nothing

What areas of the blog do you seem most drawn to?

• There’s only one category at present so I’m really just drawn to the home page where I can scroll or wander over to the tag list.
• The names of the two people that died on 9/11. I was wondering if you were going to mention Katie – I couldn’t honestly remember if you two were friends in HS or if you had grown up together. I wasn’t really friends with Katie in HS though she was my lab partner in Chemistry.
• Most recent post.

What was your first impression?

• I hate to say it, but I had no idea what the site was about due to the conservative colour scheme and lack of a header.
• That you were right on so many points – I am always one to say never forget but in the same breath I often wonder —how could anyone forget??? But now living 3 hours north of NYC, outside the metropolitan area, I realize that 9/11 didn’t affect everyone the way it affected me and the people I know. So many people from this area have never even been to NYC which totally blows my mind – so they have no knowledge of the city or the people that died that day.
• To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure.

What did you first think my blog was about when you arrived at it?

• As above.
• Sept 11 – I had read so many different stories for the whole week before the anniversary. I always seem to get obsessed about it right before the date every year and read/watch until I am in tears again. I don’t know if its to keep it fresh in my heart or to be happy that I wasn’t personally affected that day.
• Wasn’t quite clear

Did you find it easy to read/navigate/understand?

• Easy enough to navigate and due to imagery and well constructed text, it was easy to understand, too.
• Yes, definitely. And after reading it, I read some of your other blogs. You are a very good writer!
• Yes.

What did you feel when you first arrived at my blog?

• I felt like I wasn’t sure what it was I was viewing, topic wise.
• Interested – just wanted to see your perspective.
• I wanted to look at it a little to see what it was about.

What suggestions do you have on how I could improve my blog?

• I like your blog but I think maybe your theme could stand out a little more so that your viewers know what it is they are viewing. Also, maybe add more categories to suit different people’s interests within your main topic.
• Write more frequently! You are a very good writer! Plus, it seems our lives have a lot of parallels (three girls, living away from where we grew up) – I would like to hear how you handle your life. Plus, I feel like I have gotten to know you better through FB than we ever did at school.
• I think the border of the blog is a little dark. Maybe find some other pictures that make it a little clearer as to what the blog is about? Or making the font under the title a little bigger so it is clear what the blog is.

What questions do you have after surfing my blog?

• Do you enjoy blogging? Do you feel you have had success with it thus far? What blogging platform do you use?
• None, currently
• How often do you write? Do you have any sort of set idea of the things you want to write about, or is it just random?

What words would you use to describe the design?

• Conservative, reserved, clean, well constructed.
• Clean, crisp, easy to read
• Very corporate looking.

What are the main elements you remember about my blog 10 minutes later?

• The layout of your posts (text, imagery etc) and the clean columns.
• How you really made me think and how I may never use the term “never forget” in the context of 9/11 again.
• I like the photographs used. Very profound.

What suggestions do you have from a user perspective?

• What other categories are there? What do you feel makes readers want to read your blog and why?
• Nothing specific. Best of luck with your project!
• I think that if you are going to talk about politics, talk about politics. I think that the blog right now is a lot of “smattering”. I really do like what you have posted so far, I just feel that you need to re-think what you want the blog to be about.

So, what did I learn?  Well, most of what I feel my friends had to say, I already knew; the look and feel need to be updated, I need to write more, I need to focus.  What was new?  People actually like my writing; they want me to write more, and that I can actually have an impact.  Truthfully, my partner-in-blog-project is always telling me to write more; to get angry, to be myself and make people feel what I’m feeling.  So, I have my work cut out for me.

Building a Better Blog is a project Aaron and I have decided to take on together.  His posts and progress can be found here.