Fed up with the bad press the teachers often attract?  Don't just sit there and despair - blog.
I've been blogging for a while now but have been keeping it firmly within the family - the teacher family.  My blog attracts a worldwide readership and in turn I read blogs from Cork to California, Texas to Tenby and Melbourne to Mayo.  Most importantly I gain a lot in the professional development sphere and hopefully give a little.
But education is a complex set of relationships and our bad press rarely is a spill over from the
teacher - teacher dynamic.
With long summer holidays just around the corner we'll definitely be the focus of a few talk radio shows and a vocal anti teacher brigade.
In reply we tend to bite our tongues and  just wait for it all to blow over but aren't communication and marketing the key to every profession's success?  Why do we teachers tend to keep some of our best efforts all within the family?  Blogging, tweeting and pinning to each other around the clock and around the world is just not enough anymore.   We're getting things done in new, dynamic ways and hardly letting the news outside the virtual staff room
Making a brief foray outside that virtual staff room I recently blogged while in a five day school trip.  Understandably the parents of the 11 and 12 year olds, some of them on their first nights away from home ever, were a little nervous of sending their babies off to the wilds of Donegal on a short Irish language course in the great Coláiste na Rosann
Yes, and despite advice to the contrary, they had their mobile phones firmly in hand but still.......
Well, blogging filled that gap.  Reassurance straight from the horse's mouth so to speak.  The blog gave them a daily blow by blow account, with the photographic evidence, of what their offspring were up to and yes, they still had all their limbs!

The blog was hugely popular and as our school has quite an international flavour it went global.  In less than 100 hours it had 1,400 page views across 11 countries and still growing!  Tweeting leading up to each post at the day's end gave the whole process an enormous energy.
For those few days we were most definitely a community.
Communication is key for every profession and so is marketing.  The teaching profession never more so.  We are proactive, dynamic and working all hours so let's tell the world outside the staff room.
Blogging ticks all the boxes and it's fun!
You can read the Donegal blog here.