My Process

My Process

Journal entries published in a 1990 issue of the PhilWP Voice newsletter

by Michele Miller

I started keeping my pedagogical journal in January 1988 because I wanted to chronicle the varied teaching strategies I saw used by the teacher consultants I was working with. Starting and keeping a journal seemed like the natural thing for me to do because journal writing was going on in every classroom.

My first pedagogical journal was a small, standard diary. The second volume was larger and included teaching and learning strategies, letters (to me and from me), essays of application, bits of conversation, cards, agendas for presentations, listing of articles read or received, reflections, observations of students and teachers and so on. Other than having more to write about in the second year as a writing support teacher, I was becoming a writer. The journal writing tapped a part of me that I was vaguely aware of – the writer, me.

This year my journal writing expanded. I started keeping a personal journal along with an “on the spot” journal. I have combined my pedagogical and thought journals and now the entries look like the entry below that I titled, “The Reading Teacher.”

November 7, 1989

Suffering from completing the newest Stephen King novel, The Dark Side, I continued my professional reading. After completing any book for pleasure reading, I always feel alone, somewhat disoriented, or as my sister says. "I really do not like to finish a novel. It feels like you have just lost your best friends." I am glad they do not die. But with every reading – transacting with text, you are different, characters are no longer available for you to dialogue with, even though they have been an intense part of your existence when reading.

Enough of waxing philosophical. After reading “Putting Minds to Work: How to Use the Seminar Approach in the Classroom” and “Good Teaching: Do You Know It When You See It?” I was once again forced to reflect on teacher resistance to pedagogical approaches other than the traditional “chalk and talk” approach...I am bothered by teachers who seemingly do not engage in singularly, indeed the public measure of education - reading. Thus, as I was reading these professional articles, I was reminded of this anonymous quote, “Those who don’t read have no advantage over those who can’t.”

What I continued to grapple with as I mature as an educator is when presenting writing to learn, why teachers are so resistant to a leaning approach that attempts to engage/invite the entire classroom to participate in the learning process. The article on the seminar approach invited the reader to “imagine trying to switch fro playing tennis right-handed to left-handed, and you will have an approximation of the time, practice, and coaching needed t complete the task of leavening your didactic recitations with authentic Socratic instruction in which the students are the principal workers and thinkers.” (Dennis Gray, American Educator, pg. 23)

The aforementioned imagery to how old habits die hard seems to me to be only part of the answer. Teachers must practice what they preach about the importance and joys of reading.

As education moves into the age of instruction, we know what the students should learn; we must now focus on how to establish a classroom environment that allows for students and teachers to co-learn. If teachers read more of the educational literature available, they will start learning how to play tennis with the opposite hand. Teachers will be able to actively engage in the writing process and will begin to understand that the classroom belongs to the students. The classroom as a participatory climate helps to eliminate failure, Indeed, the classroom, more than ever dealing with a growing population of “at risk” students must encourage educational success of both teachers and students.

So what does this all mean? My teachers are hard put to relinquish the classroom to students: however, in the age of instruction, educators must view one another as collaborators to encourage students’ academic success and to understand through teacher self-assessment and observation that reading on a continuous basis allows the educator to try and play educational tennis with the other hand. If we as teachers do not read that which affects us professionally, we have no advantage over the students we teach who do not read.

References

Gray, D. (1989). Putting minds to work: How to use the seminar approach in the classroom.

American Educator, 13(3), 16-23.

Michelle Miller retired in 2011 after teaching for thirty four years in the School District of Philadelphia. During her career, Michele taught social science and computer science at Lamberton High School and Stetson Middle School. She was also the Instructional Reform Facilitator at Lamberton. As reform facilitator she was able to collaborate with staff on using writing to learn in their classrooms. She developed a partnership with school librarians to provide seniors with support through the writing and research process for the senior project paper and presentations. Michele joined the Philadelphia Writing Project in 1988 as a teacher consultant.

Over the years Michele has worked on numerous projects for PhilWP: participating in a year-long seminar for second and third teachers, giving workshop presentations with other teacher consultants, and co-facilitating Summer Institute I at Temple University and the Teach For America summer bridge program.

Michele originally published journal entries in a 1990 issue of the PhilWP Voice newsletter.