I am a teacher educator from Athens, Greece. I train English language teachers and help them become better teachers in the classroom.
I started blogging in late 2009 my first blog, Marisa Constantinides – TEFL Matters (in English), was followed by this blog which was originally intended to include topic areas more focused on the Greek teaching and learning context. But very soon, the comments left by my blog visitors and the conversations that developed out of them showed me that all teachers everywhere share similar problems and face similar difficulties. So, instead of narrowing down the scope of topics, I decided to turn this into a group blog where my colleagues and trainees can also contribute and take their first steps in being a blog author.
Since then, I have started and maintain various blogs, one in Greek too!
This is a re-post from my Webheads Blog which I never tire of sharing – hoping to spread my enthusiasm for blogging with you and to make you start blogging too!
So, Why do I blog?
Richard St. John shares his eight secrets of success in a fantastic video and I want to talk about blogging and how I think it is connected to these eight great secrets.
Here are the eight secrets in a word cloud
Richard St.John’s Eight Secrets of Success – Made with http://www.wordle.net/
I blog for all these reasons:
- I blog because I want to be an excellent educator (Excellence)
- I blog because I want to share my ideas (Serve Others)
- I persist even when I am tired; good results need hard work! (Work!)
- I blog to focus more on my interest and learn more about it (Focus)
- I blog because this makes me think and learn new things (Push Yourself)
- I get more ideas by trying to explain my ideas to other people. (Ideas)
- I blog because I love my job and I am passionate about teaching (Passion)
- I persist because I believe communicating your ideas is important for learning (Persist)
What should you blog about?
Blog about something you love, something you are passionate about. It may be using songs in the classroom, using Web 2.0 tools or it may even be a blog about the English language!
If you love your subject, you will find more things to write and you will also find the time, no matter how busy you are.
It takes time but it’s worth it!
May be you will find it hard at the the beginning. I found it hard too!
But with time, it gets easier. Remember! You won’t get better by waiting! You will get better by trying!”
Go beyond your comfort zone
Challenge yourself and you will surely be amazed by how much you will learn by communicating with the world!
And if you would like to listen to this great talk which inspired this post, here is Richard St John’s talk, one of the great TED talks.
[ted id=70 lang=en]
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Dear Marisa,
Thank you for taking the time to blog (hard work), thank you for blogging because you believe in Excellence, (you want to be, let me say: “You are” an excellent educator) I learn so much from you, remember the day I asked you about how you handle time management? :-), thank you for your passion, and the list goes on …
Why do I blog? I guess I started as a way to thank you and so many generous teachers sharing their ideas and experience, I was becoming a better teacher and person because of you. There are so many reasons why I keep on blogging, some are similar to yours, yet at a beginning level. But the truth is, now I just can’t stop.
Hugs
Debbie
Dear Debbie,
Very thankful for your kind comments; they make this blogging effort all the more worthwhile.
Marisa
I was going to agree with everything you said except for the crazy idea of maintaining three blogs, then I suddenly realised I have three blogs too (TEFLtastic, JapanExplained and Tips for Brits in Tokyo). So, seems I agree with everything! More blogs always very welcome, be it more people or more blogs by each of them.
Hi Alex,
I’m afraid I haven’t told you the whole truth
I also maintain http://discoursematters.posterous.com/ (very poorly I must confess) and http://www.eltchat.com with Shaun Wilden – that one is a lot more work than any of my other blogs but well worth it
Thanks for stopping by 🙂
Marisa
I suppose I kind of have five too, but as the two I didn’t mention haven’t been updated for years I think you beat me on this one…
I am about to start the blog for my business (which I am passionate about) and would like to say thank you for this post. I have been putting off writing for too long now – but you have given me the \’push\’ to sit down and do it ….
I really have no excuse – in 2007, I did my MA on the use of blogs in promoting autonomy in the ELT classroom. My university students were all encouraged to have blogs as part of the project …. now I know how they feel 🙂
Thank you for sharing all your work with others.
Irene Cros
Don’t put it off any longer, Irene. And do send me the link here or on Twitter when you get it going
Marisa