Journal 20

October 26, 2003

The Paley essay touched me. The question in the end of the section didn't probe the feature of the essay that I was most interested in, so I have decided to use a journal entry to expand on this. Paley says that its important for teachers to write in journals about their teaching. She contrasts this this with Jane Austens perfectly balanced cultures of people and conflicts.

The cultures in classrooms are by no means balanced and do not make sense, therefore we have to "create" them out of the classroom. We have to "balance" them on the pages of our journals or on the back of Wal-mart receipts. That is the only way we can make sense of them and understand them as we are able to make sense of a Jane Austen plot.

Writing is the best way, she says, because we need to ask ourselves questions honestly in order to understand more fully. Talking is helpful but we are often interrupted or sidetracked when we share ideas verbally.

She suggests that principals give teachers time off to do nothing but write. Write and reflect. This parallels what appears to be an important feature in the MATL program at USM: reflectivity. In every class I've taken we are required to keep journal entries of one sort or another. In Methods we study Action Research and Reflectivity.

I agree that writing is important. My undergraduate degree was in Creative Writing, and I have used writing as a practice to understand events throughout my life.

I like that the Paley uses writing as a sort of sub-classroom. So many things happen inside the classroom that are morally ambiguous that she needs to flesh them out in another (safer)world similar to the way Jane Austen constructs her fiction worlds.

I really liked this essay. It is obvious by the quality of the essay as well as the subject matter that the author has a great love and respect for writing as a craft. I do as well. I agree with her that we can use this as teachers outside of the classrooms to become better teachers.

However, I also think that we can move it into the classroom to help our students understand their own moral questions and opinions.  In addition, I feel that our role as language teachers is to introduce moral conflicts to students. Actually, not introduce conflicts directly, but indirectly through the introduction of new cultures and moral frameworks. If we succeed, then student journaling could be very helpful as a means of sorting out the ambiguity as it develops.