**Our 4th grade readers have begun blogging. Their blogs are currently only public to themselves and their parents. I look forward to helping them release them to the world at some point. I’m sharing my post from our kid-blog today regarding why we as teachers should not hyper-edit our students.**
As teachers, we always want the very best from our students. We want them to learn and grow as readers and writers (as well as artists, math wizards, athletes, musicians, historians, and citizens) but we also need to create boundaries for them to make their own mistakes and realize them. When we have students blog it is very important for us as teachers to step back from the process at some point. We allow them to form their posts, edit them collaboratively, encourage the use of spell check, promote diverse word choice, and emphasize excellent grammar. However, there are times when our instruction may not be heeded and it is very important in that moment to allow the child to make the choice to publish or save as draft. If they publish a minor mistake or we don’t love every aspect of their content, we must refrain from editing their work. Their blogs are their own. They must take ownership of their work and we, confidently knowing we have done all we can to help shape their work, must allow them to take this ownership. This is not always the easiest task, to let our birds fly from the nest and occasionally make mistakes, but we will be better teachers, and they, better students for allowing them to do so.
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