Reflection on Teaching Blog

Andrea Edbauer
July 27, 2019

What is it and under what conditions was it created?

I created this blog in the summer of 2013 while switching classrooms within my school. I was
initially planning on keeping track of how long it took me to move everything, and set up my
classroom. I was frustrated with people complaining that teachers have it easy because we
have the summer off. I wanted to show that a lot goes into setting up the environment for
students. Then I had the idea of creating a blog, where I would not only track the time spent in
my classroom, but I would write about the decisions that I made along the way. I thought this
might be helpful for new teachers who had not set up a classroom before. When I created
Setting Up for Second, Pinterest was beginning to take off, and many of my posts were pinned
and shared. Because of this, I was motivated to write some additional posts throughout the
school year. Switching to “alternative seating” in my classroom is one of the most popular
entries. Other websites and blogs have also picked up some of my posts.

Why did you select it for this section?

This artifact is an example of how I have been a Change Agent in my teaching career. My main
motivation for starting the blog was to show the public how much time and care teachers put
into creating an environment for students to feel welcome and successful. Creating a blog
helped me become a better Change Agent, because it gave me an audience for educating
someone other than the students in my classroom. I was sharing my knowledge and creativity
with teachers, and other members of the community.

Growth and change?

When I began seeing that others were interested in my blog, it was very motivating. Setting Up
for Second has received over 500,000 pageviews since I first created it over 6 years ago.
Although I updated the blog a few times throughout the school year, I did not know which
direction to take it from there. I was worried that sharing lesson ideas would take away from
my planning time. I created a few posts on alternative seating, and one post on how I organized
Daily 5 in my classroom (a requirement at my former school). In the future, I would like to
revisit the blog. When I return to teaching, I would like to share what it is like to return to
teaching after taking a break to stay home with my children. I would also like to share more
information about how I prepare the curriculum for the upcoming school year. The blog has
focused mainly on setting up the environment, but there is obviously a lot more that goes into
preparing for students.

Sub-areas addressed: ​Content, learning, curriculum