Morgan Evans

ED 199: Exploring Educator Identity

Professor Knipstein-Meyer
11/3/2021 “Show Your Work” Chapter 3

The first piece of advice in this chapter is to focus on days instead of focusing on months
or years when it comes to building a portfolio. I appreciate this reminder to not worry about
having the big picture of a portfolio at once. Many people tend to not want to show off
something because they’re worried that they don’t have enough of their work to show people (I
know I do). However, as Kleon tells us, it takes a very long time to build up that large portfolio
or other body of work. However, if we go day by day, then we don’t have to stress about it
being enough since we will ultimately build it up to that point. I like his idea of a daily dispatch:
finding something at the end of every day that you can share. For us, this could be like putting
these discussions and our write-ups on our online portfolios. Or it could be an Instagram post,
or a Youtube video. It doesn’t matter as long as you send something out.
I like Kleon’s thoughts about new platforms, however I have some worries. He suggests
that we not be afraid to jump on new platforms. This would be very cool because there
wouldn’t be many other accounts and/or much other work on said platform to compete with,
and people would be attracted to or impressed by the new platform and how you figured it out.
However, how many people would be using this new platform already? If people are not on the
platform you’re using, then they won’t be able to see your work. I think that using a new
platform would be a good idea, but also make sure to use a separate, more well-known
platform alongside it.
However, this chapter starts to bug me when Kleon suggests we “all have the same 24
hours,” and that “you might have to miss an hour of sleep” in order to do your work. Uh, no. As
for his first point, I think Kleon is not thinking about different kinds of people. Yes, everyone’s
day is 24 hours. But no two people’s 24 hours look the same. Your twenty-four hours are not
the same mas my twenty-four hours. Neither of our twenty-four hours are the same as the
twenty-four hours of a businessperson who has an assistant. And their twenty-four hours
DEFINITELY aren’t the same as the twenty-four hours of a single mother. So yes, we all have 24
hours or whatever, but that twenty-four hours isn’t just easily open and accessible for some
people. As for his second point, what Kleon is suggesting is unhealthy, physically and mentally.
There are studies that show that not getting the required amount of sleep every night is
detrimental to our health. We talked about burnout in this class, as we all identified where we
fall on the burnout scale. I was told I have mid-level burnout, and quite honestly, I’m surprised
it wasn’t considered higher than that. It has not gotten better since we did that work about a
month ago. And guess why? Because I never get any sleep and I never have time to do the
things I enjoy. Because I spend my time doing my work, thinking “I’ll go to bed at 1 even though
I need to get up at 7 tomorrow,” or “Yeah I won’t spend much time doing [insert thing I enjoy
doing here] today, but I’ll get some work done.” I do exactly what Kleon suggests, and now I’m
burnt out. There are also studies that show when our mental health starts deteriorating, our
Morgan Evans
ED 199: Exploring Educator Identity
Professor Knipstein-Meyer
11/3/2021 “Show Your Work” Chapter 3

physical health will begin to deteriorate as well. The fact that Kleon suggested something
unhealthy like that makes me feel…icky, for lack of a better word.