Journal writing via cyberspace

I have worked with students and writing for more than twenty years and before that with my own children.  Journaling, for me, is a way of life.  I write on scraps of paper, in notebooks, and now online.  I encourage my students to keep journals while they are in my classes and to continue the practice when they leave me.


My granddaughter, Maggie, has had a journal for most of her six years and has written sporadically in the journal during visits to G's house.  A storyteller, Maggie tells fantastic tales about princesses and dragons that sometimes mimic fairy tales and some of the Disneyfied versions.  And, because she is a talker and a storyteller, Maggie is still much more in the telling phase than in the writing phase of her stories.  This summer we have let the journal drop until swim team is over and my work schedule lightens.  


A couple of days ago, my grandson, Henry, who lives quite a distance away, opened up a Skype video call to ask me to help him with his journal writing. A rising second grader, Henry's school assigned journal writing as a summer project.  He has been fairly diligent about writing in the journal over the summer, but was in need of new ideas.  So we talked.


First thing we dispelled the idea that a parent person should draw lines on his paper for him to follow.  Then we had to talk about what to write about.  The weather seemed like a good place to start and we started there:  "It is hot today."  But Henry's ideas went to a visit to the park, an opportunity to observe and perhaps collect some caterpillars, and a short record of how the present caterpillars in captivity are faring.  All in all, a fruitful journal writing time.  Later, Henry asked if we could set up a weekly appointment for his journal writing.  

And we will do that.  I was fascinated with the whole idea of Skyping a journal session and with watching Henry's thoughts develop on the page.  My help was limited to asking questions that might lead to writing, somewhat like questioning students in conferences to help them expand their pieces.  I wonder if the questions will lead to Henry thinking about what could go next without prompting.  And I'm wondering about this long distance cooperative journal writing.  I can see this working on so many levels.



  

What to Keep, What to Let Go

The UNCC Writing Project's Summer Institute comes to an end on Friday and I already am missing the daily conversations and the excitement as we make connections, scribble notes in our daybooks, and think--collectively and alone.  This always is the time of year when I realize how important it is to be "in the conversation."  Even if it's just sitting in the same room with others who are thinking and working, there is some kind of connection that takes place.

I never would be writing in this space if I had not attended the summer institute.  To say what I think is difficult for me probably because for so many years I have opened my mouth and inserted my foot.  I have had to learn the hard way that silence sometimes is golden and to remember Abraham Lincoln's advice to write a letter, put it aside and read it the next day before deciding whether to mail it.  Now here I am putting my thoughts right out here, hitting publish when I finish and not thinking that I might ought to wait a day before saying what I'm thinking.

For a couple of days we have, off and on, talked about hoarding and holding onto things we should let go.  They always turn to me since for three years I've been working on a self-discovery video about my own hoarding of books and other things that I don't need but am afraid to let go.  I pulled out the dusty storyboards again and vowed to finish that video before school starts this fall.  The unfinished video cluttering my computer's storage space is another example of my not finishing what I start and I've been pondering that trait as well.  I am packing up things to sell or give away and I am tying up loose ends with things in my house--organizing, sorting, pitching.

So today I invited the group to think about what to let go and what to keep as we begin another school year.  Here's what I have decided to let go and what to keep and I hope somewhere in this listing is a key to my holding onto stuff way long after it should have been recycled or loved by someone else.

Here's what I'm letting go:
The fear that I'm not good enough.
The fear that if I can't do it the first time people will think I'm stupid
The idea that everybody knows more technology than I do
All my insecurities
(and clothes that I'll never wear even if the price tag is still attached)

Here's what I'm keeping:
The technology I'm using in my classroom and some new that I'm adding
Ideas for papers I want to write--particularly one on complex texts and one on women (rights, discriminations, bodies, and so on)
My work and my writing and my determination to write every day and to write with purpose and conviction
My friends

I have let go so much and every time I let something else go I feel a great weight lifted from my head.  I love the energy that comes from a clean empty space.

The Picture of Tomorrow

17 July 2012

 The photograph handed to me as part of an exercise in journeying and guiding got me thinking about sense of place.  I'm wondering how—and if-- that sense of place works in virtual classrooms as I continue to sort out my own feelings about students, the internet, and the effects of social media.  The photograph foregrounded an empty eating area just outside Fretwell Hall.  The tables were empty and the trees were bare, indicating that the picture was shot in winter.  One member of our group saw the setting as institutional and sterile.  I saw the lights in the building's windows as warm and inviting—a beckoning to come in from the cold outside.

In the photograph some twenty or so tables sat waiting for people to sit and talk, reflect on a lesson or book, or just be still with each other.  But there were only four people in the picture, all appearing to be walking toward a destination other than the tables and a conversation.  Obviously, the tables would not be so empty in warmer weather; and perhaps leaves on the trees and flowers around the edges of the patio would soften the starkness of this winter scene.  With little thought or imagination I could switch that scene to one of noisy students laughing and talking at one table while those at another pondered weighty academic subjects.

I have followed the physical construction of the campus of UNCC since it was Charlotte College on Elizabeth Avenue in downtown.  I have watched the architecture change from squat cement buildings to the imposing brick and glass structures that pervade the ever-expanding landscape.  My alumnus head swells with ecstasy as I view that photograph and the lights inside the building wrap me with the security of learning I found in those buildings.  Others in my group did not see the same thing.  One of them saw the starkness and the institutionality of the scene—there was not that pride and joy that I felt.  So as I wonder whether all this beautiful brick and mortar rising up among the trees and shrubs will last, will continue to be a mecca for learning.  Or will it become something else as students and professors opt to learn and to teach in front of a computer screen rather than a real classroom.  Will the tables be tweet decks and facebook pages, conversation flowing from fingertips on keyboards rather than mouths and breath? 

Evolution?