What Teachers Reveal When They Blog

Fernanda Santos:

When she started a blog, she saw it as a venue to chronicle her daily dealings as a teacher, a kind of diary with no lock and key. She settled on a pseudonym, Miss Brave, "because when I tell people I teach in a New York City public elementary schools, many of them say, 'Whoa, you're brave,' " she explains on her site.

Three years later, her posts sound something like this: "Last year, alone in a classroom full of maniacs, all I wanted was for another adult to join forces with me to stop the madness," she wrote on Jan. 13. "Now, I'm ... not alone in a classroom full of maniacs, and all I want is for my co-teacher to disappear."

Miss Brave teaches third grade in Manhattan, and that is as much as she is willing to reveal about who she is. Anonymity is a means of self-protection, she said, but also a way to protect the identities of her students, colleagues and school, which happen to be her main sources of material and inspiration alike.

"I spent the day surrounded by a bunch of little kids," she said in an interview. "I can't step outside and take a break. I can't give myself a time out, so to speak. So I come home and write, and I feel a lot better afterward."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 20, 2011 2:39 AM
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