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Dear Dr.

Hartman,

Thank you for creating this assignment and allowing me to discover more about my

history of writing. I honestly was dreading this at first, because I was afraid that I have not had

enough writing experiences to really talk about. But when we started working in the Daybooks

and I started thinking about journaling, I realized that my history of writing really is centered

around my journals. I have a collection of journals that I have written in throughout the years. I

even wrote journals to my children when they were first born. It is something that I think helps

me to document my life in a better way than pictures do. Pictures are many times staged and

faked, but my journals are real and they remind me of times that I had long forgotten. I loved

looking back on my life and discovering how writing affected my philosophy of teaching.

I have many abstract ideas dealing with my philosophy of teaching, but I am not sure

how those ideas will connect to how to teach writing. As I wrote about my experiences, I

realized that the way that I teach is developed from my own experiences. I felt that I was not

adequately prepared for college writing, so I try hard to make sure that my students are

prepared for this level of writing. As I am reading Inside Out, I realized that I have not been

allowing the students to be the authors of their own writing. I have them follow a formula, thus all

the writing looks the same and is boring. I really appreciated the peer feedback handout that

gave us pointers on how to give feedback. I am going to use this with my students and try to get

them to describe each others voice in hopes that they will find their own voice in their writing.

This assignment has made me realize that I need to stop placing my own insecurities in

writing upon my students. I am looking forward to developing this idea and seeing where this is

going to lead in my own classroom. Writing is something that students have become afraid to do

and I want to change this attitude and culture. Writing should be freeing and empowering and

should teaching.

When I first began to think back to my years of writing experiences, I thought I did not

have any positive experiences. I was not a very good writer until I became a teacher and could
not even remember any major writing assignments that I was given as a child. I felt inadequate

as a writer in college when I would read other peoples writing. I knew that my writing was not at

the level of theirs, but I did not know how to get my writing to that same height. As I started to

brainstorm experiences, I realized why I was so poor at writing, because I had very little

opportunity to practice writing. Therefore, growing up, my writing experiences were few and far

between, but they were instrumental in shaping who I am as a writer today.

Childhood years: Dear Diary

My mother was my model of writing growing up. I admired her handwriting most of all. I

loved watching her scrawl out her name carefully and beautifully across the page. My

handwriting is horrible, mostly because I do not take the time to write carefully. I am a messy

thinker and a messy writer. So watching my mother write out her grocery lists and to-do lists

was a work of art. However, most of her writing consisted of writing lists. Unless, she was

writing out responses in her journal devotional. She wrote notes in her Bible reminding her of

Gods wisdom throughout her day. So, it is not surprising when I say that my writing experiences

started in a diary. My first diary was given to me by my aunt at Christmas time. She was the kind

of aunt that all of the cousins wanted to receive her gifts at Christmas. She always gave the best

gifts because she knew us and was younger, so she knew what we would want. I loved that

diary. I took it with me everywhere and loved to write down what I was thinking and feeling. One

entry that I remember was when I was riding the bus home and just watched the boy that I liked

get off of the bus and turn around and wave at me. You would have thought the world had

stopped the way that I described it, but also questioning whether that really meant he liked me

or was he waving at someone else? The diary became my own secret place for all of my private

thoughts, because I knew that no one else was going to read it. There was something wonderful

about writing down thoughts and feelings that were just for me. Before this time all of my writing
had been for school and for the teacher, so this diary was now my own and my writing also

became my own.

School years: School Writing Projects

As I developed throughout the years, another type of writing experience I had were

projects. Book reports were given in 7th grade and something that I really enjoyed. I liked

reading and I loved writing about the book I read. It was supposed to be just a summary of the

book, but I remember writing three pages and giving almost every detail imaginable, shy of

rewriting the book myself. One thing I liked about these reports was the fact that the teacher

would record us reading the report aloud in class. For most students, they hated this part.

However, I loved reading aloud and I really enjoyed being on camera. I felt that it was my own

version of a one-woman show. Being able to share my love of reading with my classmates,

helped me to develop my own voice.

Another project that helped me to develop my voice was a poetry project in 7th grade

where we had to write different types of poems about one main subject. I chose to write about

my Grandma. I was very close to her and I really enjoyed the time I got to spend with her. So

the poems were short, but heartfelt and a way to show someone else how much I love them.

The words I love you were not stated openly in my home as I grew up. So, this was a way to

tell my Grandma how much I appreciated her and loved her without actually having to say the

words myself. I discovered that I could express my thoughts and feelings through poetry very

effectively.

In 9th grade, my teacher focused a lot on grammar in writing. We did very little writing of essays,

but I do remember diagramming sentences. She actually would assign different parts of the

sentences to students in the class and we had to come up to the front of the room and put the

words in the correct places. She had tape on the floor to indicate where we needed to stand.
The method here was effective in teaching sentence structure and placement of words, but I am

not sure if I actually used this in my writing.

The final writing experience that I remember from high school is in my 11th grade

English class. My teacher had us create journals to write in every day. We placed many pieces

of paper inside a piece of construction paper, folded it over, and stapled it together. Then we

were able to draw on the front and make it our own. I enjoyed these journals because I again

felt ownership over these. She usually had us answer prompts that helped us to write every day

about something that was going to occur in class. But I liked that she did not grade for

perfection but for our ideas and that we would write every day. I learned that writing every day

can help me to discover my own opinions, empower me as a writer, and develop my own writing

style.

College years: Hitting a moving target

When I got to college, my writing experiences were varied. My Freshman English class

analyzed mostly nonfiction and political discourses, but I did not find these interesting, so my

essays were varied and had very little analysis. I remember doing a lot of discussion with the

other students in the class, but there was very little instruction on how to structure an essay.

Throughout this time, I was also keeping journals. I wrote in my journals whenever I felt

stressed, frustrated, tired, happy, or excited about what was happening in my life. For instance, I

wrote in a journal when I went to France with the choir. We traveled to many different towns and

sang in churches throughout the country. It was a life-changing experience and I wrote about

each day in my journal. There are many things that happened on that trip that I dont remember

but I am able to look back on what happened through my journal. I read about the time that we

stayed in a hotel with an open-air courtyard in the middle of the hotel. We were told not to leave

the hotel at night because we were staying in the Red Light district and needed to be careful. It

was an experience that, due to my writing, I will never forget.


When I transferred schools to Indiana and decided on English education, I realized

quickly that I did not have a very solid foundation of literary analysis. Most of the classes that I

took were literature courses that required literature analysis essays for their assessments;

however, I did not really have a strong grasp on what that should look like. When I look back at

some of those early essays I wrote they had very short paragraphs with very little evidence from

the text. It was more of a book summary than really analyzing the literature for themes and

character development. However, due to my earlier writing experiences, it is not surprising that I

was not prepared adequately for this type of writing. So, to solve my inadequacies I went to the

Writing Center and spent a lot of time looking at examples of literary analysis essays. One

particular professor, Dr. Buck, who was the English Department Chair at the university, was a

very tough critic of my writing. He gave me one A on an essay that I wrote in the World

Literature class I took when I first transferred. As soon as I declared my major English Ed., no

more Mr. Nice Guy. I continually received Bs on my essays that I wrote for him. Now a B is not

a bad grade, however, to me it is like getting an F. I worked hard on revising and editing before

turning in the final essay, but no matter what I did I received Bs. I read all of his feedback on the

essay and just tried to figure out what he was looking for in the essay, which Im not sure if I

ever discovered the missing element.

When I took my only writing course before I graduated, I was exposed to the Writing

Group philosophy. We were placed in groups for every reading assignment that we did and

every writing assignment. We read nonfiction essays that were similar to the type of writing that

we would do and then we tried to emulate that style. It was a challenging course for me and I

struggled with sharing my writing with peers. I had low self-esteem when it came to my writing. I

knew that I could be better, but I could not figure out how. So, the writing group gave feedback

and then I went to the Writing Center and took the advice of the tutors there. However, I

remember specifically on one essay for that class, I went to the Writing Center to receive help
and the help that the tutor gave me, turned out to be actually the opposite of what the instructor

wanted. I received points off for the changes that I made with the tutor in the Writing Center, so

after that, I had a hard time going back there. They had lost my trust and I had completely lost

my confidence on my own revision skills. I had a hard time taking the risk necessary to work on

my writing.

Thus, when it came to the Final Writing Portfolio each English major had to complete for

graduation, I was a complete wreck. I had to revise four major writing assignments that I had

done from any of the English classes I had taken throughout the years in the department. I

stayed up until all hours of the night revising, fixing, changing, and editing until I was blue in the

face. However, I had no idea how to revise or even if I was doing it correctly. I did not know

what I needed to change in the essays, but I know that they needed to be changed from the

original. I went through every sentence in each of the essays meticulously revising sentence

structure, word choice, and grammar until I felt that I could not look at the essay any more.

When I finalized it and turned it in, I knew that I was not going to get an A on it, but all I was

hoping for was a B. I wish that I would have sought more help on the revision process and the

writing process altogether. I know that if I had gone to my professors about my struggles they

would have tried to help, but I was too embarrassed about my shortcomings. The experience

helped me to be able to empathize with my students when they are frustrated about their writing

and do not know where to turn. I just say, I understand and dont worry, it will get better.

Because for me it did.

The Teacher Years: Older and Wiser Colleagues

Thus, when I began teaching 11 years ago, I was still unsure about what to look for in

students writing. So, of course, my first year of teaching, I had to teach a Senior Composition

course. I was so nervous about this class, because these were students that would be going to

college the next year and they were expecting me to help them write better. I remember the first
essay that I graded for that class, a student had a question about her grade and why she had

received the grade that she did. It was a B- but she was concerned. I looked back at the

comments I had given her and tried to show her the downfalls, but I remember thinking, I have

no idea what I am talking about. After that experience, I decided I needed to delve deeper into

grading writing and writing instruction.

So I sought the help of my colleagues who had been teaching for more than 20 years.

After talking with them, they shared many resources that could help me, including the beloved

Rubric. I learned that creating a rubric for what I was expecting out of the students on the essay

and then using it to grade, helped me immensely. After I graded the essay, I was able to look

back at the rubric and knew exactly why I gave them the grade I did.

My older, wiser counterparts also helped me to develop and hone the instruction of the

literary analysis essay. I learned that if you gave the students a very specific outline for each

body paragraph it would help them know how many pieces of evidence from the novel to use

and how to structure their ideas. It was brilliant and a life-saver. The more that I researched

techniques into teaching writing, the more I was learning how to write as well.

One conference that was held in Indianapolis, Indiana where the entire English

Department were allowed to go every year, helped me to look at writing differently as well.

There were other teachers there discussing how they had never believed that they could be

writers, but given the proper motivation soon found out that they were better at writing than they

thought. So, this inspired me to try out my hand in writing as well. Whenever I would assign my

students a writing assignment, I would attempt it with them. I would write example paragraphs

and give my students something to work towards. It took time for me to be confident enough in

my own writing to be able to share it with my students. But I believed that it was important for

me to be able to do this, especially if I am going to require my students to share their writing

with me and their peers.


Looking back now, throughout the years, I realize that my writing has developed not

because of what I was taught, but because of my own search for understanding. I had to

continually pursue what it meant to be a writer if I was ever going to be able to call myself one. It

took time and is still a growing process. I still waver when it comes to sharing my writing with

others, nervous of the feedback that I will receive. However, I know that the more vulnerable I

become within my writing, the better writer and teacher of writing I will be.

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