Why do I continue to blog?

Teaching is never easy, but right now it is an especially tough time to be a teacher.

I was reminded of this when I read the article on Heng Swee Keat thanks all school teachers, Education Minister said that “when we seek to bring out the best in every child, it takes more than good teaching curricula, strategies or experience – it takes heart.” He added that more challenges lies ahead, saying “Our children will need, more than ever, tools to guide them when the path ahead is not laid out… They will needs a compass of values and character that will keep them focused on their true North even when the terrain throws up surprises.”

I know that as teachers we still love the classroom, but like many others in the teaching profession, I recognized the truth of what my former colleague Mr Zee said to me: Teachers are struggling to find the energy to teach!

So I think the time is ripe for us teachers all to recharge ourselves, to help ourselves reclaim that energy, and capture again the love and hope that brought us into the teaching profession. Through expressing ourselves through blogging or writing and blogging or writing in community, we can return to our core beliefs and rekindle the energy needed to teach.

Into the fourth year now, I have seen what happens when teachers blog or write expressing, discovering and sharing their views within a community of other teacher writers. As we read into other teachers’ world, or tell their stories, or play with the magic of “letting it go”, teachers are energized. And when they have “listeners” who want to hear their stories or better still, share the same story, teachers feel cheered up and remember why they teach.

Hence, this is a way for us teachers to turn inward and open the “treasure chest of hopes and memories” each and every one of us carry in our teaching journey. Let us all listen to our inner voices – one of my teacher call this “self-talk” – the healthy and the unhealthy ones – and then together as a community of bloggers or writers show how to feed the healthy voice and silence the others. In this way, it will lead us back to those happy moments in our teaching career and help us wrestle with the demons that are hanging out there somewhere.