In Which The 7 Year-Old’s Blog Post Gets More Comments Than Mine #TeacherMom

Last week, my daughter came home commenting about a new bathroom rule at her school: all girls now have to use the restroom 2 at a time due to the fact that girls keep writing on the bathroom walls. As a teacher, I understand why the rule was implemented. As a parent, I understand why she feels frustrated.

Since she just recently asked me to help her set up her own “real blog” (ie, can be read by a real audience), I asked her how she would feel about blogging on the subject. She took to that idea right away — especially once we figured out the speech-to-text feature so she didn’t have to keep fretting about spelling (teacher note: I really like the way speech-to-text requires the kids to pause & reflect to figure out exactly how they will verbalize each sentence).

Once she had her post written, “Fair School,” I, of course, went ahead and shared it with my PLN.

She was amazed to watch the comments pour in, and even took action on a couple of their ideas. She has since shared the post with her teacher, and she plans to try and see if she can meet and then introduce her classmates to their custodian(s) to create more empathy (Thanks, Abe, and everyone else!!)

This has also led to a lot of discussion about how we can inspire people to do good things rather than just try to get them to stop doing bad things. Not an easy task for anyone, that’s for sure, but a very rewarding approach!

Once again, I have found this whole experience to positively reinforce the concepts of digital citizenship, flattened classroom walls, and #StudentVoice. When we provide opportunities for students to share their authentic voices on things that matter to them, powerful learning happens.

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

4 Replies to “In Which The 7 Year-Old’s Blog Post Gets More Comments Than Mine #TeacherMom”

    1. That’s awesome, Monte!! I will definitely watch for those–I’m always inspired by the student pieces my PLN shares, especially when it’s clear those kids have been taught that their. voice. MATTERS! It’s apparent that they recognize the gravity of the words they share.

  1. Lizzie’s post was the best thing I read all week. Well done to you too, Mary.

    I was wondering about how she wrote the text. Voice to text is amazing. I’ve had students in the past who were incredible storytellers, but didn’t see themselves as writers because they struggled with the writing (ASD, Dysgraphia, Dyslexia etc). Such a powerful tool and great use of technology in schools.

    I hope the solution all works out!

    1. Thanks, Abe! It was a little tricky because the Weebly app does not have that little microphone button on the keyboard that most other apps do. I showed her how she could overcome that by writing the text in a Google Keep note, and then copying/pasting over to the Weebly app. I also showed her how to verbalize the punctuation. It took some support, but I think kids in the classroom could definitely handle it, as well! Such a great tool for differentiation!

      Thanks, again!!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *