One of the founding aims of the National Blogging Collaborative was to help support and empower teachers to take back the national narrative on education through the power of blogging. Now, eight months into our work, we are equally excited and humbled by all the thoughtful teacher-writers who we have had the honor to support and all of the amazing pieces of writing that teachers in our community have produced. However, we still remain troubled by one thing: how might we continue to elevate individual voice and simultaneously leverage the power of the collective voice of our teacher-writers and how does that further impact the national education narrative?
The landscape of education has no shortage of bloggers, but they currently operate with a degree of isolation; telling their stories in silos that make it seem as if the national narrative is comprised of a million unwoven fibers as opposed to one beautiful, story-filled tapestry of commitment and passion. We need to expose the connective tissue that binds these powerful narratives by so many mindful practitioners together.
To this end, the National Blogging Collaborative aims to unify these unique and passionate voices around common themes in education.
Starting September 1st, the National Blogging Collaborative is proud to announce the launch of our “Blog a Month” campaign. It is our hope that writers from around the country and the world will take up their pens and pencils (or put their fingers onto their keyboards) to join one another in blogging about a similar theme or topic, which we will provide monthly.
At the beginning of each month , we will launch a new topic. The topics will be intentionally open-ended and allow for a vast degree of interpretation, and we hope you will join us in sharing your story. The more the merrier. Then we will have a “contest” in which we will pick the best blog submitted to the NBC to be chosen as blog of the month, with that winner becoming the “Featured Blog” on our NBC home page and in our new NBC Blog A Month Publication. To be considered for the contest, we must receive your entry by the 20th of the month (you can email it to [email protected]); however, you need not submit your blog with us in order to join the story-telling fun that will be taking place across the country around each month’s topic. That said, we’d love to read your stories and share them with our community. Share your post in a tweet and tag it with #nbcbam or tweet your link to @natblogcollab.
Think of it this way, one story has the power to inspire, but connected stories by connected bloggers create a participatory culture with the power to transform.