Thoughts on Journals
(Bruce Nordstrom-Loeb, 9/24/08 CILA Panel)
In what sorts of courses are journals likely to be useful?
In my experience, journals are most useful in courses in which students are likely to
experience a lot of personal challenges and growth, and have a wealth of
experiences to process over time (such as study abroad programs or some
internships). Journals are also useful in courses where significant connections
might be made between the course materials and students’ personal lives and
experiences (such as my women’s studies courses, or courses on race and class).
But other courses, including science courses, also use journals to good effect.
What are journals good for—what might they do that other sorts of
assignments, or just good class discussions, might not?
There are a variety of benefits in using journals with students, which can vary from
class to class and student to student. For example, some of my best students have
also been the quietest, and have amazed me the first time I sat down with their
journals—what hidden riches had never been revealed in class!
Similarly, a journal can sometimes be a safe or private/confidential space in which
to share information with me—students who are in the closet, for example, or white
students struggling with prejudices they fear to disclose in a diverse class setting,
or students of color whose struggles as immigrants or with racism are too close to
the surface to share, or Muslim students torn between their faith and their
affection for gay friends. (My hope is that such students will eventually feel ready
to disclose some of this in class, but of course that’s up to them.) I tell students
that their journals will be private, read only by me (I haven’t tried on-line journaling
in which students read each other’s journals).
Part of my experience (and philosophy) as a teacher is that students are more likely
to understand and retain course material that they can relate to their own life in
some way. This doesn’t always happen, of course, but part of what I ask students
to do in their journal is to make specific connections between the course and their
experiences: what does this course (on GLBT issues) help them understand about
being heterosexual (for example, if they are) in a society that takes
heterosexuality as “given”? what does this course (on race) help them understand
about experiences they’ve had with people of ethnicities other than their own?
What does this course (on gender) help them understand about how they’ve grown
up as a male or female (or their confusion about growing up, in their own heart, as
neither)?
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As students wrestle with such questions, I also can see more clearly what they
understand about the course and the concepts we are learning. If they don’t
understand a concept like “institutional racism” they may have a harder time
thinking about the way their lives may be tied up with racial inequality beyond
whatever personal prejudices they may have. Sociology courses will often help
students see ways in which what they’ve usually regarded as personal problems are
(also) social issues rather than only individual troubles or failings. As they talk in
their journals about what they now understand better about their lives and
experiences, do they use the ideas in our class in an appropriate and empowering
way?
Do students need guidelines for their journals to be most productive?
I think so. In my experience, some students will create wonderful journals without
guidelines, but others will simply accumulate descriptions of their experiences,
feelings, and opinions often only tenuously related to the course. For my courses,
journals are both academic and personal, and my guidelines try to help students
bring those together. (Some other instructors, such as on programs abroad,
require an academic journal and an optional personal journal for students to
separate their two purposes.)
Usually my guidelines include things like the following:
(1) journals should not be just an alternative version of class notes (don’t just
summarize what we did in class or what you read);
(2) journals should include new insights you may have about your own life and
experiences growing out of what we’re learning in class, and may also include new
insights into the course as you bring your life experiences to it;
(3) you should write once or twice a week, while your thoughts and feelings are
freshest, rather than hoping you’ll remember what you wanted to say three weeks
later, when your entry will be in danger of lacking immediacy, detail, and feeling, and
you wind up writing something just to fill in the pages (boring for both of us!). On
the other hand, it’s fine to return to an ongoing theme you’re wrestling with from
time to time, especially if you’re thinking about it is changing;
(4) you can include your feelings, but go beyond them—if you find you are growing
angry in class, or sad, where is that feeling coming from? A strong feeling can be a
sign that we are touching on something especially important, frustrating, hurtful, or
hopeful for you, and it can be the beginning of a great journal entry;
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(5) towards or at the end of your journal, look back over what you’ve written, and
write about a page reflecting on what you’ve learned or how you’ve changed over the
semester;
(6) you may either keep your journal on your computer or laptop or write it by
hand, but if you write by hand your writing must be legible to someone else (me!);
(7) consider the kinds of comments and questions I write in the margins (leave
some room on each page) when you make future entries;
(8) your journal is confidential, and you may also decide later that something
you’ve written in a bound journal is too private to include. I won’t read that page if
you indicate you’d rather I didn’t. You need to make connections between the
course and your life, but you should not include personal things you’re
uncomfortable disclosing.
(9) you will sometimes include a description of an event or experience, but you
also need to include an analysis or interpretation of it in light of our course; tell me
what you can now “see” that you might not have noticed before, how it may now
make better sense; how you see yourself changing or growing (or, sometimes even
better, why you are “stuck”).
(10) your writing should be clear and accessible to the reader (me), but it need
not be formal (such as in a term paper), with “proper” punctuation, complete
sentences, paragraphs, and so forth. Content matters more than form here.
My students sometimes procrastinate in making entries in their journals, and
try to “catch up” towards the end of the semester. Is there a way to avoid
this?
The best way I’ve found is to collect and give feedback on journals on a regular
basis, at least a couple of times during the semester. Students aren’t allowed to
make up for an empty month with a lot of entries at the end, or by back-filling
entries they should have made at a later date. This can involve a bit more work, but
I do require they turn in the earlier entries I’ve made comments on with their later
entries, so I don’t have to re-read the earlier ones as carefully when trying to
figure out a grade at the end.
Should journals be graded?
I think so, and the grade should be a substantial part of their overall course grade,
at least 20-25%. Students need a signal that their journal is important.
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Aren’t journals (too) hard to grade?
Maybe. Journal writing may seem to be more subjective in nature, harder to grade
consistently than the more standardized or objective writing that is conventionally
required in essay exams or term papers. I do probably give higher grades on
journals than I might on other kinds of writing. Some students may be sensitive to
the possibility that I’m grading their lives in some way.
This is a second reason to give students clear guidelines about their journals, and
what a “good” journal entry might be—you as the instructor benefit from guidelines,
as well as the student who might otherwise flounder. For me, if the student shows
a clear understanding of course ideas, but without ever making connections with her
own life, it’s not a good journal.
Do you require journals in all your classes?
No, and I don’t even require all students in a class with the option to keep a journal
to write one. Currently, in my courses, I offer students a choice of 4-5 kinds of
writing experiences, one of which may be a journal (other options might be a
conventional term paper, an analysis of several off-campus events related to the
course, an autobiographical paper related to the course issues, and so on).
Do journaling assignments tend to favor women students?
Probably. It always seems like it’s the introspective women students who have
already had some experience keeping a journal, especially a personal one, usually a
hand-written one, and women are encouraged in our culture to think and talk about
their experiences more than men. On the other hand, it’s likely that many kinds of
assignments might be more accessible to one gender or the other, and journals may
encourage some men to develop social and communication skills they may need. And,
for example, I’ve sometimes had men write movingly about the difficulties they’ve
had living up to cultural and peer group expectations for being male—which they
might not admit to peers.
Do journaling assignments offer the possibility of a different sort of writing?
Probably. Some students blossom when journaling who would otherwise struggle
with a formal term paper; some immigrant students with less confidence in their
English (written English in particular) can sometimes move me to tears in a journal.
Including journals as at least one writing option in a course can improve the chances
that a student can find a form in which to express themselves most successfully.