Tag Archives: Marcus Blair

The act of writing

Twitter inspired my to write this morning. The first tweet is by Marcus Blair, but let me share some tweets by him before I get to the one that originally inspired me.

Marcus has become one of my favourite educators on Twitter. He shares tweets about what he does in the classroom and he reflects on his teaching and his interactions with his class. In a time when there is so much stress and anxiety, he shares tweets that I find uplifting, and that remind me why I wanted to get into education.

Here are 3 recent tweets by him:

The tweet that inspired me to write now was this one where Marcus reflected on his own writing:


I responded:


Then almost a couple hours later I read James Clear’s 3-2-1 weekly email and wrote this about one of the 3 quotes he shared:

The act of writing makes me a better writer. The commitment to this act every  single day is itself a reward, making me feel like I’ve accomplished something before I even start my work day.

Yes, some mornings it is really hard to get started. There have been days that I’ve spent more time thinking than writing. Yes, there have been days when I’ve had to rush or even postpone my morning workout because I was too slow to get my writing started, or too long winded to finish what I was writing in a timely manner. Yes, some things I’ve written should have been left unwritten. But sometimes… sometimes my writing speaks to me. Sometimes it is metaphorically a song I had to sing. Sometimes the act of writing is a form of expression that leaves me feeling like I’ve added something worth sharing with the world.

For those moments I write. Not for the actual contribution I’ve shared, but for the feeling I get sharing it. Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.

Share your work

Here is a wonderful (first) blog post by Marcus Blair (@MrBlairsClass):

Teaching Ancient Greek Philosophy in a 21st Century Classroom

The lesson shared is on Stoicism for Grade 12 Philosophy, but there is a bigger lesson: Share your work!

I’m sure that to create this post Marcus had to reflect far more on his lesson than he had any time before writing. So, in the process of writing, he not only helps others, but helps himself too.

He made a fan out of me, but even if no one read the post, it still would have been a valuable exercise to write it. The fact that others like myself get to benefit as well is a positive by product of sharing work on a blog.

Keeping Derek Sivers idea of ‘Obvious to you, amazing to others‘:


I think one of the best professional development opportunities educators have is to share their work… so get blogging!