About a year ago I set up my first blog, Serendipity, because one of my colleagues suggested we should start blogging with the pupils in school. Since then blogging has become a central part of my everyday life. I have tried to update my blog regularly, I have managed (or perhaps forced is a more correct word) to make my pupils write their own blogs, and I read various blogs everyday about all kinds of topics. For some time now I have wanted to set up a new blog in which the focus is on English teaching only, and here I am.In August 2006 I started teaching English and Norwegian at Sandvika Videregående Skole. The school was brand new, and our school was to be different. All our students have had their own laptop computers from the first day, and the computers are central in our teaching. I therefore had to change my own teaching. Ever since I started teaching, the textbooks available have decided which text we read and the topics. We were now asked to make our own "digital textbooks". I must admit that it has been, and still is challenging working this way, but after working without using an ordinary textbook for roughly 2 1/2 yeards, I do not regret taking up this challenge.
So to the name of my blog and the title of this entry, "The Road Not Taken". Why did I chose this as the name of this blog? First of all because this poem is one of my favorites and a poem I believe everybody should read. Second, I chose this title because I feel that the decision I made in 2006 was a choice to take the road "less traveled by". I left a well established school which had a lot of good qualities, and started working at a school where not even the classrooms were ready when the first pupils came. I left the "ordinary" classroom, traditional teaching and textbooks, and began teaching differently. I left plans and outlines set up for me by others and started with a blank sheet. I left all that was known for the unknown. To me, "that has made all the difference", and I have not regretted this for one minute!
Photo: "One Less Traveled"
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