I'm not alone

Instead of lesson planning this afternoon, I somehow have managed to waste two hours cleaning my office and fiddling on the Internet.

Most shockingly, I did a search for the name of my school on search.blogger.com. I've never done this before, and can't believe what I found.

My findings:

1. A blog written by a clever Senior at my school. It's not the usual myspace.com sort student blog (indeed, this one's on blogspot), rife with grammatical errors and polls. Instead, it's funny, political rants about pop culture and life in Baltimore from a kid who obviously has some writing chops, and who is busting at the gut for his voice to be heard. There's also plenty of teenage angst and an obsession with a girl who I know very well as I had her as a student as both a freshman and a junior and have written her a number of recommendation letters. I've never had this student blogger in class, but have heard stories from colleagues.

2. And, more shockingly, a blog written by another teacher at my school. She doesn't update as much as I do - last update was in November - but the updates have been steady for a couple of years now. I don't know her well, and haven't decided what I should do about this new knowledge. I'll probably, like when I found the blog of the mother of one of my former students (and currently a senior at my school), e-mail her and tell her. It's not really fair for me to get that window into her life and not recripocate the opportunity. But, I'm not sure. The thing about her blog is that she does not strive for anonymity; her blogspace name is her actual name, and she obviously mentions the name of our school in her words because otherwise I would not have been able to find it. From my cursory glances, her blog isn't as personal as mine, either. Although there are plenty of personal stories. She has MS and uses a wheelchair, and a lot of what she writes is about dealing with a career and life with a disability.

Anyhow, both are interesting. I can't point you to them from here, but they're worth seeking out if you can do any reading between the lines of this post.