This year I’ve begun all my classes with Journal writing. I get students to begin by taking some prompt that is very nebulous and listing whatever comes to mind. I’ve focused these journal prompts in three areas Mind(M), Practices (P), and Ethic/Morality/Spirit (E). So, you may have a prompt that says “Justice (E)” or “10 Weeks (P)”, or “Schooling (M)”.

Students listen for a couple of minutes brainstorming whatever comes to mind. After which, I have the students write more completely and deeply in ONE of the items from their list. They will circle that item and write.

This has had a number of important effects. It has calmed students down. It’s focused their ideas on the class itself and it’s started to push their beliefs about tasks and internal thinking.

Students struggle with the idea that they aren’t given a very clear prompt. They want me to define “What do you mean by 10 Weeks? 10 Weeks of what?” When I leave it open-ended I get a variety of choices. Some students talk about ten weeks of summer they wish they had. The first ten weeks of hockey camp. Ten weeks to learn a skill. Ten weeks away from their Father. The answers are wildly divergent, at least I hope they are. As a teacher, you get to recognize the very practical students who write about how many days ten weeks include and how many weekends that means they have to do what they want. Getting students to go more deeply has been the key challenge because they are so programmed to be force-fed answers and questions. They have difficulty recognizing that the process of writing itself opens them up to internal thought.

Today I was considering how this form of writing leads to discover things about themselves. From discovering, the second step is uncover. From discovering things they hadn’t considered, students are often uncovering their likes, interests, needs, loves, hates, joys, and sorrows. But is simply uncovering the end of the process, I asked myself? It didn’t feel complete. What other word might suffice? From the first two, I settled on recover. I consider this as not just covering over that which was uncovered but rather being able to apply a healthy understanding of what the uncovering process provided. Integrating this knowledge and recovering from harms and even choices that we as people may not even be aware of.

This process of journalling certainly has a therapeutic value- discover, uncover, recover.

What could you learn about yourself?