One Year Blogging Anniversary

In the past few days I have enjoyed reading New Year or reflection blogpostsfrom some of my favorite bloggers. I was amazed at the statistics a few people shared, including the total number of page view sper day and overall for the year. One blogger shared that she averages close to 20,000 page views per day.  As a relatively new blogger, 20,000 views in a day sounds remarkable, especially considering I was happy to reach a yearly total of just over 20,000 views for Learning to Muse.

While most of the blogs I read are education related,I also follow a few who write about parenting, and homemaking because I have plenty to learn about these topics too.

While the numerical statistics for my blog are an okay starting point for me, I, of course, hope to have a larger reach in the coming year. Today marks the one year anniversary of my blog, so I thought I’d spend some time considering my reach and reflecting on what I learned during this first year in the blogosphere.

Global Connections.

 Pretty cool.  Learning to Muse had multiple page views from readers on four continents.  This is exciting to me because I like the idea of being globally connected to the world through my blog but also through social media, another goal of mine this past year. I've met many fine educators from all around the USA and even some from other countries. Some I've met only virtually through twitter and others I met during my travels. A few are friends and former students, and some are long time family friends with whom technology has enabled me to stay connected across many states.

 

Popular Posts.

My most popular post was titled Why I Left Teaching, and I suppose it was most popular because an Ed Week blogger linked to it when she told the world--anyone who says he/she loves teaching should stay in the classroom and teach or not expect veteran teachers to beg them to stay.  If you’ve read many of my blog posts, you will know this is an issue with which I have struggled because I do love teaching, but I also think educators who believe in teachers and students are needed as leaders.  It’s taken me a while to get to this line of thinking, but when I think about what it would be like to have people who no longer love teaching in a position like mine, it makes me sad. I think it would be terrible, actually.

Other popular posts were common core related, and that’s certainly no surprise, given that I’m in the USA where the common core has captured the attention of not only the education world, but certaint opics have even reached main stream media as well.

I love, love, love the fact that two of my popular posts are related to curiosity and wonder because, really, those ideas are part of what drove me to start this blog in the first place, and they are ideas that feed my goals as an educator and parent. Curiosity and wonder must become more a natural part of public education if we want genuine learning happening in our schools (and with that statement, I’ve circled back to where I started last year on January 2, 2012—with this blog).

Thanks for reading—I hope you experience peace and joy in the New Year!

 

Renee