Post #2000

This is the 2,000th post on this blog, which coincidentally goes up just two days after the three year birthday of this blog.

I'm not a big fan of blogging about blogging, but it's good now and then to reflect on what you're doing. 2,000 posts are a big pile of posts, even if some of them are brief and/or not so special. Sometime today I'll also pass the 3,400,000 hits mark. It's humbling to imagine that many moments in which somebody thought it worth the bother to read what's here, and it has been humbling to have so many people reach out to say that something here has made an impression.

And as always, I consider the readership of this blog to be a measure of how many people really care about the world of US education. As of today, these are the top ten posts on the blog:

Stop "Defending" Music
So Sorry, Minneapolis Teachers
FL: Attacking Children and Teachers
North Carolina To Teachers: "F#@! Off
Directory of Anti-Teacher Trolls
FL: District Officials Lose Their Damn Minds
Obama's Testing Action Plan Sucks
Teacher "Shortage" Coast to Coast
[More Update] Ohio Gunning for Specialists
A Not Quitting Letter

Three years ago I was just starting to understand what the heck was happening, and I was able to educate myself thanks to the work of bloggers who came before me, and over the last three years I've seen other bloggers step up to help get the word out.

It's a great time to be a writer, a time in which the power of the word has been amplified again, a time in which an English teacher from a small town (and with a budget of $0.00) can reach out to a national audience about topics that really matter.

I started this first to organize and collect my thoughts, then progressively to vent my frustrations and amazement at the crazy things that are happening to one of America's most important public institutions. I never imagined that I would end up reaching out to so many people, and the lesson there, for all of us, is that we need to do what we can to get the word out and to keep getting the word out. Thanks for reading. Now I have to go get started on #2,001.