by Blade Hall
Mr. Ogle started his teacher blog two years ago to try and extend the classroom and its discussions. He had wanted to try and reach out to students that needed help outside of class. This past summer he started to do his Adventures in Fatherhood blog as a hobby and hopes to use it as a rough draft for a book he wants to write about his life and, as the name implies, what he has experienced as a father. He also wanted to build a relationship with his students on a more personal level and show that teachers have families and lives outside of school too; they aren't just robots that go on the charger after 3:20 and get off at 8:10.
Mr. Ogle also teaches a creative writing class that’s meant to prepare students for college and designed his lesson plans and class work to resemble those of a college class. One of the things that he has his students do is frequently write a blog. So far he’s been surprised by the knowledge that his students show through their blogs and how passionate they are about the things that they write about. These blogs have been viewed by people from fifteen different countries, but he wants to get these literacy works viewed by a bigger audience of viewers. The topics of these blogs range from school life to things like hunting and mechanics. Then, there are some that are modeling Mr. Ogle’s own blog and talk about their home lives or what it’s like to be a brother or sister.
Mr. Ogle wants his students to take the skills that they learned in class and apply them to whatever career they choose so they “can go beyond English.”
