Carl Lovitt\u2019s inspiring essay on journaling makes me want to try journaling again with my own students. Lovitt\u2019s piece has also encouraged me to try my own hand at journaling (once again for the umpteenth time). I am incredibly impressed with the self-reported results the students share toward the end of Lovitt\u2019s essay. Those quotes are priceless. How I\u2019d love to achieve those same great learning outcomes with my students \u2013 and for myself.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, I\u2019ve tried journaling with my students and things didn\u2019t turn out as well for us as they did for Lovitt and his gang .With rare exception, my students put precious little effort into their journal entries, writing only what they felt was the bare minimum to fulfill the assignment and appease me. In some journals I saw what looked like bunches of journal entries dashed off in a single sitting. I even saw journal entries that looked remarkably similar to those of classmates, suggesting either lots of discussion or outright copying\/amending. So many of the entries I read in student journals were shallow and brief. I found the exercise of collecting and reading them to be a huge let down.<\/p>\n
In fairness to my students, I have to admit that I have tried my hand at journaling and have never found a way to stick with it (hence the umpteenth time<\/em> reference above). I\u2019ve started many a journal with gusto and great intentions and then life happens; I don\u2019t keep up with the writing. I put journal writing up there with doing situps \u2013 they\u2019re good for me and I should do them, but when I\u2019m tired, busy, or lazy, I don\u2019t. When I\u2019ve been writing a lot for work and school, the last thing I want to do is write some more in a journal. Perhaps I, too, am a victim of schoolish behavior when it comes to journaling. I will produce good writing when I know others will read it and that it \u201ccounts\u201d for something (it will be published, graded, seen by my boss). When it\u2019s just for me or just to get a checkmark from the teacher, well, let\u2019s say the writing probably isn\u2019t my A priority.<\/p>\n Our ENG 610 blogging seems to me to be a pretty decent way to stimulate the kinds of writing Lovitt seeks and to give students a reason to do a better job of it than my students did. Yes, as Lovitt suggests, having teachers (and peers) read and evaluate journals (or blog entries) has the potential to add a communicative dimension in the writing situation (p. 242). That isn\u2019t what Lovitt was after, I know. But it seems to me to be a small price to pay to get students to produce journal entries of quality, entries that reach for deeper and more meaningful connections with the text. Public journaling may be what most of us need to give the writing our best effort. <\/p>\n Something else I might also do differently next time is to devote some class time to journaling and to journal in class along with my students. I think even the most schoolish among us will pony up and give a greater effort if the activity is done in class and even the teacher is doing it. I see my students putting great effort into pair and group work that\u2019s not graded or to written exercises. Why not journal writing? \u2013 Laura Hills<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Carl Lovitt\u2019s inspiring essay on journaling makes me want to try journaling again with my own students. Lovitt\u2019s piece has also encouraged me to try my own hand at journaling (once again for the umpteenth time). I am incredibly impressed with the self-reported results the students share toward the end of Lovitt\u2019s essay. Those quotes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[55,88,87,85,86],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}