Philogging Assignment #9

In my search for teacher blogs I came across this link to Scholastic's Top 20 Teacher Blogs. This list is from 2009, however, most of the blogs seem to still be active. I skimmed over several of them and all seem to have very helpful ideas and information for daily use in the classroom but ultimately I chose to follow "It's Not All Flowers and Sausages", which Scholastic named as the best "tell it like it is" blog. Browsing through her posts, creative organization seems to be a big focus of this teacher. She has several posts about creative uses for office supplies and organizing her classroom, including an entire post on the numerous uses of manilla tabbed folders (I found this very useful and will definitely be tucking it away into my teaching toolbox). I am a big believer in organization and feel that good organization, both for yourself as a teacher and also for your students, can allow for so much more classroom time to be dedicated towards learning.
She also has links throughout her blog, which I found extremely useful(truthfully it made me feel like I could spend hours and hours clicking away). There are links to educational resources for teachers, links to educational news, links to other teacher's blogs and more. I really appreciate blogs like this because they give me the opportunity to explore more than one person or source's ideas and information (almost like a 2 for 1 deal).
It is obvious that this teacher truly enjoys her students and job but can also find the humor in the absurdities that come along with it. While I find the majority of her posts helpful and applicable to my own classroom, I do think that referencing a blog with the expressed purpose of "venting" can be a slippery slope towards a negative perspective of the educational system and/or burnout. I do truly think though, that the amount of helpful links and information outweigh the sometimes sarcastic tone of this teacher. I would say, that judging by some of the links she has provided on her blog, she sees the value in creating partnerships between teachers and parents as paramount to student success. It also seems that literacy plays an important role in her classroom.
One of the   "Ed blogs I'm currently digging" she has linked to is Education Rethink. I haven't had time to explore the whole blog but this teacher's latest entry about changing how to approach behavior management seems very practical. The "unknown" behavioral issues I know I'm bound to face from my students and the feelings of being unprepared for how I can effectively manage those is a big fear of mine. I really appreciate how this teacher approaches dealing with disrespectful behavior from a "how can I teach students to be more ethical" perspective rather than simply "fixing the behavior". I found the examples of how he communicated with his students to be realistic and could see them being met with less student resistance than trying to deal with behavior through write-ups, referrals, etc.