When I was in the ninth grade Mr. Sommer required that we journal everyday. Those journals changed my writing and helped me discover myself. Later my journals helped me through difficult times and became a place to record and remind myself of my hopes and dreams. As a teacher I have continued to journal with students. Journaling with my students gives me the opportunity to reflect on my teaching practice. I often write about what is working in my classroom and what isn’t. Through my journaling I develop new ideas and rediscover old ones. My journals have been such a transformative force in my life that I have required every student I have ever taught to keep a journal.
At the end of each year I ask my students to reflect on their journals and how their writing or attitudes about writing have changed. I have found it difficult to get my students to engage in this activity. They write final journals that says things like, “I can write more” or “I can write faster” there is no true reflection in their comments. During Summer Institute we created a found poem by taking a phrase from each participants reading. The found poem turned out to be an interesting snapshot of how the participant’s ideas and feelings intersected and diverged. It dawned on me one day that I could use the same technique to have my students engage in a reflective activity with their journals. I ask them to re-read each of their journals highlighting the best phrase or sentence from every journal. Then they took those phrases and create a found poem. Generally, they place the phrases in the order in which they appeared in their journal but they are allowed to move them around if they wish.
As I watched them reread their journals I noticed they were sharing the sentences they highlighted with their neighbors. They laughed at what they wrote and engaged in “do you remember when…” conversations with their friends. They were truly engaged and having fun looking back and reading what they had written. The found poems they create are amazing. The students think that they will turn out completely random and uninteresting, but they are funny, often profound, and always a chronicle of their junior year experience. After writing the found poems I ask my students to analyze the writing they have done during the year. The answers I receive from my students are thoughtful and truly reflective of their journaling experience.
