Image: sweetapathy
Blogging (whether as reader or writer -- most often both!) can be a pretty fast-paced thing. It can sometimes feel like a week or two away from the blogosphere leaves you deprived, as posts pop up and then disappear from retweets or else slip down and off the end of the "recent posts" roll on any of a variety of your favourite blogs.
Not so long ago, I blogged about my belief that (from the blog writer's position), your posts are like boomerangs and don't ever truly go to waste even if they don't appear to pick up a lot of initial readership.
However, you might like to engage in a little challenge I'm going to set out here... Some might call it just another exercise in the usual narcissism they feel characterises blogging and bloggers, but I would like to imagine that regular readers of ELT blogs -- and especially those who end up busy or pulled away from time to time my day-to-day work and family commitments -- might actually appreciate you doing what I'm about to suggest you do.
In a nutshell, show us your blog's hidden gems!
You know, one or more of those posts that you personally really enjoyed writing and/or responding to readers about. It's probably tucked away in your archives by now, potentially getting readers through the boomerang process I alluded to above, but essentially invisible to your current browsing visitors.
Notice I didn't say "show us your BEST posts". I'm sure I'm not the only one who would struggle with applying that sort of criteria, and end up feeling more than a little uncomfortable with using that in the title of a blog post!
I'm talking about the posts you really enjoyed. Whether it was a post that did a lot for you personally just by writing and presenting it, or really got you thinking through the comments and discussion it generated (or quite possibly both).
To get this "hidden gems" ball rolling, here are some posts I've personally enjoyed writing and then engaging with blog readers through:
This was a real "centering" post for me personally, and has created a motivating roadmap for the sorts of things I have started doing this spring (in Australia -- could be your autumn/fall). I also really enjoyed finding a picture for that post, and (sort of interestingly) I sometimes like to go back to the post just to see and reflect through the picture.
A challenge to teachers: Trying upside down and inside out
This was a challenge for teachers to try (what is for most teachers) a completely different approach to their teaching. It generated a great discussion which I think I (and many readers) found interesting and motivating, along with some great follow up posts from people which made for fascinating reading. It's a very flattering feeling to think you might have challenged teachers and helped them experiment with their teaching from new angles. Ceri Jones' post Taking the Plunge was a fascinating extension of that post, as was Cecilia Coelho's guest post on the same blog, titled The Day Nothing Became Everything (and not long after that Cecilia blessed us by starting her very own blog Box of Chocolates -- and it is already, a few posts in, absolutely brilliant!). Finally, I and other readers walked away with a great quote from Jim Scrivener "I am very prepared – but unplanned", which I think summed up my own and several other people's feelings quite brilliantly.
What's your approach called? Mine's called 'EmLT'
It was enjoyable to chart out -- even if in fairly general terms -- an approach to teaching English that I feel best characterises my beliefs about effective and motivating teaching and learning. But the response from other ELT bloggers was amazing, leading to a special guest post from Ceri Jones about her 'SLIL' approach, and some outstanding follow up posts from other bloggers documenting far more creative approaches than mine (for example, C-elt -- Cooking ELT, DJ (Disc Jockey) ELT, and The FlexiMoti Approach).
Of those three posts, I count the first as a hidden gem because it was personally a very motivating and guiding post that I am still referring back to and trying to work towards. The following two posts are gems because they are fantastic examples of how other members of the ELT blogosphere took some (rather flimsy, I guess) ideas of mine and turned them into something much more interesting and special.
So the challenge is out there, folks!
Show us some of your blog's hidden gems!
Can't wait to read them.
:-D
