I keep another blog, at school, which is only accessible through the school’s internal website. None of you can read it, and it’s pretty boring, anyway. Mostly it’s brief summaries of what happens in each class I teach during the day, and what we’re working on.
Yesterday, I got an e-mail from one of my supervisors. She was upset that I hadn’t come to her about student X, who I tutor for forty minutes every day. She asked to meet with me today, first thing. I e-mailed her back, and said, “Let’s meet, but please read this,” and sent her the link.
To my astonishment, she read my blog. When I came in this morning, instead of having a conversation about WHAT this student was doing, we had a conversation about how to fix it. Prescriptive, instead of diagnostic. And it turned out that she’d sent part of my log to the parents of Student X, so that instead of being combative they were helpful.
At lunch, I told this story to our IT director, who almost had a heart attack on his way up the stairs when another teacher said, “Oh, yes, Student Y claimed you gave no homework tonight. But I checked your website (she’s a little unclear on the differences between websites and blogs), and we printed it out, and he’s doing it tonight.”
In this way, my ass is covered. And good things happen. W00t! (notice the use of the word of 2007).
