What's in a name?

New Blogger Initiative

A group of experienced folks in mathmagic land decided that it would be awesome-sauce to help kickstart others into the world of blogging and put out a challenge. I responded to that challenge committed to the new blogger initiative to help get me on the road.  Each week for four weeks newbs like me will respond to a prompt (or prompts) emailed to them.

This week the prompt I picked was: Where does the name of your blog originate? Why did you choose that?(Bonus follow up: Why did you decide to blog?)

I originally set up my blog last summer (2011), but as I generally feel more comfortable keeping myself to myself, I really never got up the gusto to actually put anything out there.  My original intention was to use my blog like a personal journal of sorts to help reflect upon what was happening in my classroom.  I thought that by documenting what was or wasn't working in my classroom, I would be able to improve upon my practice.  Also, I felt that the act of writing (typing) things out might help to clarify my thinking.  

image from
http://studentweb.wilkes.edu/jennifer.werner/FinalProjectWerner/reflections.html

With the intention of the blog really meant for personal reflection, I wanted a name that incorporated that idea and was mathy as well.  The blog is like looking in the mirror at myself and looking at the reflection with a critical eye.  This idea made me think about axes of reflection in geometry.  And so a blog was born and named.  

And that was all the blog was for a loooooonnnnnggg time. It wasn't until Made 4 Math Monday that I actually put anything into the blog.  I felt that I had been lurking and reading and benefiting from the marvelous mathtwitterblogosphere and that perhaps it was time to contribute something back to that community.