Journaling
Since beginning my Master’s program at Penn in July, I have written journal entries regularly about my experiences in the classroom. I was already in the habit of journaling, but I keep a separate journal specifically for teaching and learning. Throughout this year, my journal has been a place to record questions I have about teaching, about specific students or situations, or about content. I also used my journal to make connections between what I was learning in class at Penn and what I was seeing in my student teaching. If the questions are answered, that goes in my journal, too. I periodically reread my journal to see if I still have lingering questions and to remind myself of what I have learned.
I journal both about my student teaching experiences and my coursework at Penn. The image to the right is a clip from a "journal" of sorts that I kept about ideas we were discussing in class at Penn. Since I didn't have my journal with me, I wrote myself a quick email of the questions and thoughts in my mind. Then I went back and read them later, when I had enough time to think about them.
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Artifact 1
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What makes journaling so helpful for me as a tool for metacognition and reflection is that it is written for a limited audience – namely, me and whomever I decide to share it with. In my journal, therefore, I am free to write down every thought, including questions I feel embarrassed not knowing the answer to, interactions with students or peers that trouble me, and thoughts that carry value judgment. As Roger Hiemstra writes, “There also is the potential for a journaling technique to promote critical self-reflection where dilemmas, contradictions, and evolving worldviews are questioned or challenged” (2001, p. 20). My journal then becomes a space to wrestle with those questions and thoughts, synthesizing them into an evolved philosophy of teaching and learning.
In a simpler sense, I often find that as I journal my thoughts become more clear. Putting them on paper somehow gives them a concreteness that creates clarity and gives voice to ideas I had not been able to articulate previously. In that way, journaling aids my reflection by helping me organize and form my thoughts cohesively, and it allows me to easily track the progression of my thoughts and beliefs over time. Interspersed with these journal entries are entries simply documenting what happened on a given day, a lesson or book I found particularly interesting, or a new pedagogical technique. This type of journal entry creates a context for the deeper, more personal reflections.
The journal entry that follows is an example of how I synthesized my learning over two days in the classroom. I had attempted a guided reading lesson with very limited success, and as my journal entry notes, I was able, through reflection, to figure out what could have made the lesson better. Then I re-taught the lesson, incorporating the changes I had come up with based on my reflection, and had much more success with the lesson. Finally, I was able to identify two main pedagogical takeaways from the lesson for me as a teacher: to always give students a purpose for reading, and the importance of differentiating between a student’s independent reading level and instructional reading level.
In a simpler sense, I often find that as I journal my thoughts become more clear. Putting them on paper somehow gives them a concreteness that creates clarity and gives voice to ideas I had not been able to articulate previously. In that way, journaling aids my reflection by helping me organize and form my thoughts cohesively, and it allows me to easily track the progression of my thoughts and beliefs over time. Interspersed with these journal entries are entries simply documenting what happened on a given day, a lesson or book I found particularly interesting, or a new pedagogical technique. This type of journal entry creates a context for the deeper, more personal reflections.
The journal entry that follows is an example of how I synthesized my learning over two days in the classroom. I had attempted a guided reading lesson with very limited success, and as my journal entry notes, I was able, through reflection, to figure out what could have made the lesson better. Then I re-taught the lesson, incorporating the changes I had come up with based on my reflection, and had much more success with the lesson. Finally, I was able to identify two main pedagogical takeaways from the lesson for me as a teacher: to always give students a purpose for reading, and the importance of differentiating between a student’s independent reading level and instructional reading level.
Artifact 2