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
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.
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,
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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.