Daybook Reflection Essay
When I decided to major in English education to be a high school English teacher I was worried about having to teach students how to write. I have always been a decent writer when it comes to content, but my time as a student has been plagued with a constant battle between grammar/punctuation and myself. Now, as I am about to enter my semester of student teaching, I am still nervous about my weaknesses in this area. But, I have learned a lot about myself as both a writer and teacher, which will help me to teach my future students to be successful writers.
This semester was the first time that I have kept a daybook. I have heard about the concept of a daybook previously, but I was really able to see the progressive benefits of keeping one. I learned a lot about myself as a writer through the in-class writing assignments and I loved having my notes to look back through from class discussions and articles that I read. My daybook also became a teacher’s resource book for me, because I began to make list of websites, apps, and books that we talked about in class. It is really a great tool to have all of this information stored in one place to look back on. As the semester is coming to a close, I looked back at some of my entries and I choose several of them that I feel really stood out to me as representations of myself as a growing writer and teacher of writing. My daybook gave me the opportunity to evaluate my writing, my teaching style and myself.
I have always enjoyed writing as both a creative outlet and method of expression, whether it was educational or personal. This semester, I found a lot of strengths and weaknesses in myself as a writer, which I plan to use to help me with my teaching skills. There was on particular entry that stood out to me as particularly enjoyable and that was the “100 things I love list.” I found the writing task to be exponentially more enjoyable when I was writing about things that interest me. It was great to take this piece and expand it by choosing one item to elaborate on. This was a really hard decision as it was evident to me that I could write a lot about any one item on my list. I chose snow, probably because we experienced a lot of this semester, and I really surprised myself about how many details that I could come up with for a snowflake. I learned this semester that detail writing is an aspect that I really enjoy in writing and that I feel very comfortable with. I loved the task of bringing something to life and making the image seem so vivid to the reader. I also found “the bag” activity to be a lot of fun. This activity required us to create a character that would be associated with the items given to us in a brown paper bag. I really enjoyed coming up with the appearance, back ground story and use for the objects for our character “Walt.” I loved this task and I found it to be a great brainstorming tool for beginning the writing process. I can’t wait to use this activity in my class and see what creative characters my students come up with.
I have also learned that I really enjoy the informal writing process and I found it to be a very productive way for me to refine my writing skills. Which is why plan to use the daybook system in my classroom for the purpose of allowing my students to become comfortable and confident writers. I found a progressive increase in the amount that I was writing from the beginning of the semester to the end. I discovered myself actually thinking on the larger scale of writing at the end of the semester, meaning that these small writing segments would not be written in isolation, but I would write them with the intent to expand on them later. I think that the writing process naturally began happening in my writing, which was an exciting observation.
I want to take these experiences of being a student writer and apply them to my teaching style. I learned this semester that as a teacher of writing my biggest goals would be to help my students to find enjoyment in writing and to help them to understand the importance of writing. As I have mentioned before, I really loved both of the list task as well as the brown bag task and these are the types of assignments that I would like to do in my class. What I like most about these small writing assignments is that they provide me with the some informal assessment information about the student’s writing skills and style, while also helping students to practice the writing process less stressful scale. My hope would be that these activities can lead to some great stories, poems or other writing pieces that they will want to expand on and take pride in. Looking back at my daybooks entries the ones that stood out to me as really applying to my teaching style were the ones that focused on teaching writing through choice and application outside of the classroom, such as my free write about what my future classroom will look like, my notes on multi-modal pedagogy and my notes from the video about teaching audience.
I really loved re-reading and evaluating what I plan for my room to look like, because even after taking this class I would not change much. The room that I have created in my mind is a communal space where students can physically walk through the writing process, but at the same time it leaves a lot of room to be a free writing space. I have created in my head this ideal room that will provide all types of students with a place that they will comfortable to write, such as including a library area with comfy floor pillows for the students who prefer to write in that kind of setting. I will also set my classroom up so that student can work on their writing at their own appropriate pace, so there are stations for each stage of the writing process so that they can produce writing pieces through out the year. I really want to create a room that will enable a writing community within the classroom and help students to succeed.
My notes on the multi-modal pedagogy and teaching writing for audience are both centered on this idea of choice and relevance. I learned about this idea of the multi-modal assignments this semester and I really love this idea. Multi-modal allows for a lot of choice and room for student to learn new skills. Although this type of assignment offers a lot more challenge through evaluation, I think that it is an effective way to help students to be competent in multiple-literacy. When teaching writing to students I am really going to express this idea of flexible writing, and to help students learn a plethora of skills to help them to become flexible writers. For example, when it comes to audience, from my notes it was evident that I want to help my students to learn to write for multiple audiences. So often students and teacher wills get into this system of writing for one teachers preferences. I loved the idea of expanding the writing community to the rest of the English department and the outside of the school. I think it would be a great idea for teachers in one school to work together to grade the papers of students from different classes. This would give students the opportunity to learn to write for various audiences and to avoid what Peter Smagorinsky would call “bullshit in academic writing.” I think that this system would also provide the teachers with the opportunity to read work from other students and learn from other teaching styles. I believe that this system would really build up a solid writing community between the teachers and students in the school. I also really like the idea of coming up with writing assignments in which they students have to write for outside audiences, such as persuasive letters to send to the school board or children’s book for the local elementary schools. By branching out to teach to writing for multiple audiences, students can learn to write for new genres and find relevance in their writing outside of the classroom.
When it comes to evaluation and assessing students writing, I am going to try to remember what it was like to be a high school students, which is why I found my entry to about my reaction to receiving a paper back to be very valuable to my teaching writing style. My ultimate goal for evaluation is to help students to understand the evaluation as something positive and not a negative. This has always been one of my greatest challenges as a writer: my fear of evaluation. I plan to evaluate my students on both a formative and summative scale, using each piece that I read (formal or informal) as means to gather information about their writing competency. My plan for evaluating a students writing piece is to focus one or two corrections for each draft and not to bombard them with multiple errors. I want to evoke a simple system of evaluation that will build up their confidence while also improving their skills, which will occur through a system that for every correction I will find two good things about the paper. I will most likely develop a very basic rubric to help my base my evaluations off of, but there will be a lot of room for individual evaluation. Each work that I grade will be treated on an individual scale and will have specific comments for that work. I have been in the place of that terrified student who hated to have her work read. The marks of read upon my paper felt like a personal attack against my intelligence, and as a teacher I will take this into consideration when evaluating my students. I think this will be one of my greatest assets as a teacher, my desire to reflect on my experiences as a writing student.
Looking back on this past semester and on my daybook entries, I have really come to understand myself as both writer and teaching of writing. There were several quotes from class reading that I really connected with, but one that stands out to me the most is from chapter one of the text Teaching the Neglected ‘R’, “I am an apprentice of two crafts that I can never master: writing and teaching” (14). This quote really struck me as words to live by. I will never be able to master writing or teacher despite my best efforts. I will remember these words upon the evaluation of myself as a writer and teacher, as well as on my evaluation of my students writing. All I can expect and hope for from my students and myself is that we to continue try our best and never stop writing.
This semester was the first time that I have kept a daybook. I have heard about the concept of a daybook previously, but I was really able to see the progressive benefits of keeping one. I learned a lot about myself as a writer through the in-class writing assignments and I loved having my notes to look back through from class discussions and articles that I read. My daybook also became a teacher’s resource book for me, because I began to make list of websites, apps, and books that we talked about in class. It is really a great tool to have all of this information stored in one place to look back on. As the semester is coming to a close, I looked back at some of my entries and I choose several of them that I feel really stood out to me as representations of myself as a growing writer and teacher of writing. My daybook gave me the opportunity to evaluate my writing, my teaching style and myself.
I have always enjoyed writing as both a creative outlet and method of expression, whether it was educational or personal. This semester, I found a lot of strengths and weaknesses in myself as a writer, which I plan to use to help me with my teaching skills. There was on particular entry that stood out to me as particularly enjoyable and that was the “100 things I love list.” I found the writing task to be exponentially more enjoyable when I was writing about things that interest me. It was great to take this piece and expand it by choosing one item to elaborate on. This was a really hard decision as it was evident to me that I could write a lot about any one item on my list. I chose snow, probably because we experienced a lot of this semester, and I really surprised myself about how many details that I could come up with for a snowflake. I learned this semester that detail writing is an aspect that I really enjoy in writing and that I feel very comfortable with. I loved the task of bringing something to life and making the image seem so vivid to the reader. I also found “the bag” activity to be a lot of fun. This activity required us to create a character that would be associated with the items given to us in a brown paper bag. I really enjoyed coming up with the appearance, back ground story and use for the objects for our character “Walt.” I loved this task and I found it to be a great brainstorming tool for beginning the writing process. I can’t wait to use this activity in my class and see what creative characters my students come up with.
I have also learned that I really enjoy the informal writing process and I found it to be a very productive way for me to refine my writing skills. Which is why plan to use the daybook system in my classroom for the purpose of allowing my students to become comfortable and confident writers. I found a progressive increase in the amount that I was writing from the beginning of the semester to the end. I discovered myself actually thinking on the larger scale of writing at the end of the semester, meaning that these small writing segments would not be written in isolation, but I would write them with the intent to expand on them later. I think that the writing process naturally began happening in my writing, which was an exciting observation.
I want to take these experiences of being a student writer and apply them to my teaching style. I learned this semester that as a teacher of writing my biggest goals would be to help my students to find enjoyment in writing and to help them to understand the importance of writing. As I have mentioned before, I really loved both of the list task as well as the brown bag task and these are the types of assignments that I would like to do in my class. What I like most about these small writing assignments is that they provide me with the some informal assessment information about the student’s writing skills and style, while also helping students to practice the writing process less stressful scale. My hope would be that these activities can lead to some great stories, poems or other writing pieces that they will want to expand on and take pride in. Looking back at my daybooks entries the ones that stood out to me as really applying to my teaching style were the ones that focused on teaching writing through choice and application outside of the classroom, such as my free write about what my future classroom will look like, my notes on multi-modal pedagogy and my notes from the video about teaching audience.
I really loved re-reading and evaluating what I plan for my room to look like, because even after taking this class I would not change much. The room that I have created in my mind is a communal space where students can physically walk through the writing process, but at the same time it leaves a lot of room to be a free writing space. I have created in my head this ideal room that will provide all types of students with a place that they will comfortable to write, such as including a library area with comfy floor pillows for the students who prefer to write in that kind of setting. I will also set my classroom up so that student can work on their writing at their own appropriate pace, so there are stations for each stage of the writing process so that they can produce writing pieces through out the year. I really want to create a room that will enable a writing community within the classroom and help students to succeed.
My notes on the multi-modal pedagogy and teaching writing for audience are both centered on this idea of choice and relevance. I learned about this idea of the multi-modal assignments this semester and I really love this idea. Multi-modal allows for a lot of choice and room for student to learn new skills. Although this type of assignment offers a lot more challenge through evaluation, I think that it is an effective way to help students to be competent in multiple-literacy. When teaching writing to students I am really going to express this idea of flexible writing, and to help students learn a plethora of skills to help them to become flexible writers. For example, when it comes to audience, from my notes it was evident that I want to help my students to learn to write for multiple audiences. So often students and teacher wills get into this system of writing for one teachers preferences. I loved the idea of expanding the writing community to the rest of the English department and the outside of the school. I think it would be a great idea for teachers in one school to work together to grade the papers of students from different classes. This would give students the opportunity to learn to write for various audiences and to avoid what Peter Smagorinsky would call “bullshit in academic writing.” I think that this system would also provide the teachers with the opportunity to read work from other students and learn from other teaching styles. I believe that this system would really build up a solid writing community between the teachers and students in the school. I also really like the idea of coming up with writing assignments in which they students have to write for outside audiences, such as persuasive letters to send to the school board or children’s book for the local elementary schools. By branching out to teach to writing for multiple audiences, students can learn to write for new genres and find relevance in their writing outside of the classroom.
When it comes to evaluation and assessing students writing, I am going to try to remember what it was like to be a high school students, which is why I found my entry to about my reaction to receiving a paper back to be very valuable to my teaching writing style. My ultimate goal for evaluation is to help students to understand the evaluation as something positive and not a negative. This has always been one of my greatest challenges as a writer: my fear of evaluation. I plan to evaluate my students on both a formative and summative scale, using each piece that I read (formal or informal) as means to gather information about their writing competency. My plan for evaluating a students writing piece is to focus one or two corrections for each draft and not to bombard them with multiple errors. I want to evoke a simple system of evaluation that will build up their confidence while also improving their skills, which will occur through a system that for every correction I will find two good things about the paper. I will most likely develop a very basic rubric to help my base my evaluations off of, but there will be a lot of room for individual evaluation. Each work that I grade will be treated on an individual scale and will have specific comments for that work. I have been in the place of that terrified student who hated to have her work read. The marks of read upon my paper felt like a personal attack against my intelligence, and as a teacher I will take this into consideration when evaluating my students. I think this will be one of my greatest assets as a teacher, my desire to reflect on my experiences as a writing student.
Looking back on this past semester and on my daybook entries, I have really come to understand myself as both writer and teaching of writing. There were several quotes from class reading that I really connected with, but one that stands out to me the most is from chapter one of the text Teaching the Neglected ‘R’, “I am an apprentice of two crafts that I can never master: writing and teaching” (14). This quote really struck me as words to live by. I will never be able to master writing or teacher despite my best efforts. I will remember these words upon the evaluation of myself as a writer and teacher, as well as on my evaluation of my students writing. All I can expect and hope for from my students and myself is that we to continue try our best and never stop writing.
