The End of a Season

Ecclesiastes 3:1 says: 

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven.

The Teacher then goes on to list a series of pairs that illustrate these seasons: 

• a time to be born and a time to die
• a time to plant and a time to uproot
• a time to weep and a time to laugh
• a time to search and a time to give up
• a time to be silent and a time to speak
• etc., etc., etc.

I've always appreciated the reminder of this passage, that seasons come and go, but God is faithful and sovereign over it all.

It's been a good season for me of blogging. But I think I'm reaching the end of that season. 

I started this blog in May of 2012, when I was first moving into my office at Dordt University as a shiny and new Instructor of Education. I thought--naively, and at least a little narcissistically--that because I was now a professor, I would have important things to say, and people would care to read them. It's funny to remember that season now, and to go back and re-read some of those early posts. It's not that they are so bad, or anything like that. But as I read them, I can call to mind the earnest attitude I had when I was writing them. And, because Blogger is so good at serving statistics about readership, I also can call to mind the deflated feeling I had when I didn't get the kind of readership I was hoping for right away. Silly, isn't it?

And yet, when I look at those statics today, 10 years later, it's sort of surprising. As of right now, as I write this post, iTeach and iLearn has had 446,401 views--not too shabby, if I do say so myself. I'm still getting about 1000 views per month, more or less. I've published 590 posts (this one makes 591) and had hundreds of comments in response to the things I've shared here. Some of my posts have had over ten thousand reads. My most-read ever was cheekily entitled "No More Crappy Homework;" it has had about 18,500 views. Another with lots of views--and the first post I ever had that went viral (for me, anyway)--was one entitled "It's not 1989" which had 1000 views in the first 24 hours. That was a bit of a rush for me, truth be told! Another one that took off almost immediately was "An Analogy to Help Teachers Understand Homework." This had nearly 3000 views in the first week...and still gets about 30-40 visits each week today. So it's not that I've not had some "successful" posts on the blog.

For the most part though, I shifted focus from those kinds of swinging-for-the-fences posts that would get thousands of eyeballs. Over time, the blog shifted to my own reflections about my practice as a professor: the things I was trying in my own teaching, the things I was researching, resources I was finding interesting or valuable, and my thoughts about all of this. Some folks seemed to faithfully read these as well; most posts on the blog have had between 100 and 200 views. (And, of course, the older posts have more views, as they've been around longer.) 

Many of the posts I have written on this blog were dashed off in 30 minutes or less, and published almost immediately. A few were more deliberately-written, thoughtful pieces that were slower in coming (like this piece from 2018, which feels incredibly relevant again this week: Schools and Guns and Brokenness) that took multiple drafts before I felt like I could release them into the wild. That shift from the earnest writing back at the beginning to more reflective writing that documented my own practice was what made this blogging more valuable for me. And the fact I would often get feedback from readers only helped; it often pushed my thinking into new directions, or gave me some sense of affirmation that I wasn't loony.

But over the past two years, I have had less time to write--or at least I haven't prioritized blogging in comparison to other scholarship I've been doing. I think there were two reasons for this, primarily. First, pandemic teaching took a lot out of me, and sucked up a lot of the time and attention I used to devote to reflective writing here. At the same time, I started podcasting with my friends, Matt and Abby, and the sort of reflection that I used to write here often now ends up spoken in our Hallway Conversations instead. That combination has meant fewer and fewer posts here. And, when I think about it honestly, I have felt guilty about not writing here more often lately.

And that is what's led me to this point of feeling like this season is coming to a close. I've been working on giving myself permission to let things go. That might sound silly, but I do feel a strong sense of responsibility for sticking with the things I've started, and I have a hard time letting go of good things, even to make space for other good things. But, as the Teacher of Ecclesiastes so helpfully reminds me, there are different seasons in life. And I think my blogging season is coming to a close, for now at least.

That said, I want to continue to engage with people around ideas related to education and keep doing some form of "public scholarship." So I'm shifting my focus a little, and starting a newsletter. If you're the sort who has regularly read this blog over the past 10 years (thank you SO MUCH, by the way!) you might be interested in subscribing to the Positivity. Passion. Purpose. newsletter. I'm planning on a bi-weekly publishing schedule at this point, and I hope that this will give me the discipline to write positive, passionate, purposeful pieces that will encourage, equip, and inspire educators (and non-educators for that matter.) It's a new adventure, and one that has me feeling a little more of that earnest, excited energy that I had when I started this blog in 2012.

I'm not planning on deleting iTeach and iLearn, at least not now. So if you have found anything here helpful, it will still be around. But I also don't anticipate posting new things here either, but I guess I've learned to never say never. 

It's been a good 10 years. Thanks for reading. Blessings to you in whatever season you find yourself in at the moment, and God's grace to you on the journey.