I am sure you have Googled yourself before, haven't you? Well, I have. The funny thing is, I first started Googling myself out of necessity. It was my first day at school and I was nervous. I was anxious to prove myself. I was determined to find out how my students thought of me. Thus, I started asking my colleagues if there was a review system in place.
To my dismay, there was none, however my colleagues suggested that perhaps I should Google myself. This was nearly 9 years ago and many of my students had blogs that were public. All their rant and unhappy comments about me was public. I have to say that I wasn't thrilled, but it was necessary for me to find out what about my teaching needed improvement.
Over the years, I have started Googling myself as a way to gauge my teaching performance.
They Love Me, They Don't Love Me
Ok, I'm being a bit dramatic, but what I meant here is to know how my students perceive my teaching so far. To give a bit of a background, my students were all in their teens and were all rather tech savvy. They were unwilling to tell me how I was doing but have written their thoughts all over their blogs.
As such, upon Googling myself, I found out about what I was doing right and what I was not. It was through this that I discovered that my handwriting was the talk of the class. I used the whiteboard for the majority of the time but my handwriting was akin to a work of art. An abstract form of art that no one really could tell what it meant. In other words, as one of my former student put it, it was the worst handwriting she has ever seen. Upon finding out, I started using more handouts and Powerpoint slides.
At times, it felt almost like I was spying on my students. Although they never disclosed who they really are on their blogs, I could tell who they were from their style of writing. This was in part due to their countless essays that I have to mark. It was through reading my students' blogs that I found out how some of them were facing problems at home. This was especially useful when one of my students yelled at me in class. As I knew that she was going through a tough time, I did not punish her and instead counselled her on her situation.
The Unofficial Online Resume
A teacher is often not graded by how well they perform in the classroom. Very often, the administrators or the powers that be would assess a teacher based on other aspects including their ability to write academic journals. Some administrators may even resort to Googling a teacher to determine if he/she qualifies for a promotion. The basis for this is to see how many academic journals can be found on sites such as Google scholar or any other notable academic journals.
In other words, it could serve as an online resume that could help you in your next promotion or job interview. Of course, the same goes for any bad reports or feedback about you. As such, better tidy up that unofficial online resume a bit.
Conclusion
When tidying up your online resume, why not try having a great Steemit blog and link Wordpress blog to it? My work on Steemit now dominates the front page of Google. Since I write mainly on all things education, hopefully, this helps in my next job interview. Come to think about it, I think this will make a great opportunity to tell my would be interviewer what Steemit is.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://alvinauh.vornix.blog/2018/06/20/teachers-should-always-google-themselves/