Patrick A. Velardi
I Journals
Student journals have become a regular part of my classroom exercises, as I am sure they have become part of many teachers’ classrooms. Indeed, I have of late encountered reactions from students stating, “Oh, we did journals in Ms. So and So’s room.” Of course, that does not eliminate the importance of journals in my class, but it does keep me alert for ideas to vary the basic format of daily journal entries. The daily journal is essential for developing the students’ sense of self, and, for those students who want to share, a sense of camaraderie and empathy for one another. Incidentally, it is rarer in my experience for a student to not want to share his writing but those private entries do occur, and it is elementary good taste to respect a student’s wishes. However, it is also important to point out to students at the outset that I, as their teacher, will be reading all journals on a regular basis. While reading in preparation for this unit, I came across an article by Maurice J. O’Sullivan entitled “The Group Journal,” and it struck me as an idea that might help me get my students to view journals in a different light. The article describes a journalistic process in which the writing is a group project and students shared a single journal. Through trial and error Mr. O’Sullivan found that keeping the group journal in an easily available central location worked best. His students wrote their entries on the odd-numbered pages, and the even-numbered pages were reserved for responses. Furthermore, O’Sullivan found that he had an open journal where students were free to write whatever they would, and a group project in which topics were suggested by him and students were allowed to respond in the journal rather than in class. In the group projects in O’Sullivan’s classes, students actually wrote novels, and he felt that the group project, as well as the open journal provided a valuable vent for reluctant or less imaginative students.
O’Sullivan is using group journals for college students, but I believe I can adapt the idea for middle school students. As previously stated, I find it usual to have students want to share their journal writing. The group journal seems an ideal vehicle for allowing entries that are meant to be shared and reacted to in writing. The open journal idea speaks for itself as a means of getting students involved in writing. For middle school students parameters of good taste would have to be firmly set and clearly understood before embarking on the project. Once begun, the open journal, with its page for entries and its page for responses, should generate energetic writing by a class. A single spiral notebook, kept where students have easy access would facilitate the writing. Time set aside in class for the open journal may be necessary, but ideally a student should feel free to write in the notebook when other classroom assignments are completed.
The group project journal can be used as a means of getting additional feedback from students as we are reading the selections from this unit. Here I speculate, but after reading a section of Dave Winfield’s book that talks about a childhood trauma, students will want to write about accidents or close calls they have had, and that they want to share. The students will have their private journals for anything that they would prefer to keep private, the open journal for anything they want to share and the group project to react specifically about the reading going on in class at that time. The open journal and the group project give a different slant to an excellent idea, journal writing, that may lose some of its appeal through overuse.
II Interviewing
I have used interviewing as a writing exercise in my classes many times, and I feel there are several aspects of interviewing that appeal to students. First of all, the students enjoy the increased freedom of being able to “talk” to each other, so immediately they are more relaxed than in a more formal classroom activity. Secondly, the students really enjoy the role playing in an interviewing exercise. We work in pairs, and each member of a pair takes on the role of interviewer and then interviewee. At times students are asked to assume the role of a famous individual in history, or a well known personality, and proceed with the interview as that person. By assuming the personality of someone else, a student may get new insights into the chosen person, and begin to develop a better sense of empathy. Thirdly, through interviewing exercises students can just talk and write about themselves in a friendly and relaxed manner. Usually interviewing exercises are marvelous icebreakers at the beginning of the school year, as well as a means of getting to know each other better.
In this unit I hope to develop the interviewing skills of my students, and develop a sense of autobiography that arises from interviewing. With this in mind, and in keeping with my initial emphasis on baseball, I want to have the students read an interview taken from the book,
Me and DiMaggio, A Baseball Fan Goes in Search of His Gods
by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (Pages 66-72). In this excerpt the writer, Lehmann-Haupt, is interviewing the baseball player, Rod Carew. Initially, Lehmann-Haupt is nervous and tense about approaching the star and we, the readers, get a feeling of Lehmann-Haupt’s personality, fears and uncertainties about what he is doing. It is a very insightful piece of writing which is then followed by the actual question and answer segment in which Lehmann-Haupt blunders along seeming to antagonize Carew, more than to draw him out. What follows the interview is what I found, (and I hope to get my students to also find), to be the most revealing about the interviewing process, even on a professional level. Lehmann-Haupt analyzes his own interviewing techniques, pointing out where he feels he made mistakes. Slowly we, the readers, see Lehmann-Haupt come around from the position of feeling inept because the interview didn’t go well, to recognizing the shortcomings in Rod Carew’s attitude that made the interview less than it should have been. We see the initial lack of confidence on Lehmann-Haupt’s part develop into a newly found certainty that he had done the interview well. The whole incident becomes a wonderful autobiographical insight into the interviewer himself, Students should be able to see that we can learn something about ourselves from interviewing, as well as learning about the person being interviewed, The kinds of questions asked reveal something about the person asking the questions, and in this sense interviewing becomes an exercise in autobiography as well as biography.
Students must learn some of the basics of interviewing in order to make this exercise beneficial. They must first learn that preparation is an essential ingredient to the successful interview. I usually begin by reviewing some stock questions such as the following:
1.
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Where did you live as a child?
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2.
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What was your neighborhood like?
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3.
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Who were the most important people to you in your childhood?
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4.
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What are your hobbies?
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5.
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What do you hope to accomplish?
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From this point the interviewer can ask questions that he feels would be important to him to know about the interviewee. As a follow-up writing activity students would then compose the data from the interview into a story, newspaper article or even a fictionalized account using the facts of the interview as the basis. They should begin with what they feel is the most important part of the interviewee’s story, and develop their writing from there. Sharing each other’s final product, and trying to match stories to the person in the classroom will emphasize the autobiographical flavor of the entire exercise.
III Retrospective Autobiographies
I first came across the idea of retrospective autobiographies in an article titled “Retrospective Autobiographies as a Teaching Tool” by Kim M. King. In the article, King is talking about the technique as it is used in a sociology class in college to get information about students. The information ranged from career choices to the number of children desired, and was used in a variety of ways in the classroom. I made a connection with retrospective autobiographies and the book
A Gathering of Days
because of the letter at the beginning of that book. The letter is from the writer of the ensuing journal to her great-granddaughter, both of whom share the name Catherine. Why not introduce both the book and the importance of personal writing in a journal with a writing exercise in retrospective autobiography?
To begin, the teacher would set up the situation with an introductory talk, lecture, or written paragraph that would say something along the lines of, “You are now 80 years old and you are writing a letter to your great-grandson/ daughter. What are your favorite memories? What did you do that you are proud of? What would you have liked to have done, but never did? What happened to your family and friends? What are happy and sad things that have happened to you?” If I can be allowed the liberty of anticipating student responses, I foresee sentences written in answer to the lead questions, and as a first draft, this will be an excellent start. Following up, the students can then revise and edit their initial responses and develop the information into a story about themselves. This next writing will help students recognize what is important to them, and hopefully help to develop a sense of self, and a sense of family, which is the aim of our autobiographical reading and writing exercises. The retrospective autobiography will also emphasize why journal writing is so essential in helping us remember what is important in our lives, not only events, but emotions and feelings, reactions to people, and relationships among people. Many of the retrospective autobiographies will likely be very general, and might even be responses that students think that the teacher wants to hear. For this reason the need to keep an account becomes more apparent. As we read the book, and see the generalities of the initial letter fill out in beautiful detail, the value of journals becomes clear. In the end, a retrospective autobiography will have served two very beneficial lessons.
IV Putting it All Together
The book,
Sister
, by Eloise Greenfield, is a wonderfully moving account of a thirteen year old who is spurred into reading a journal that she has kept for the previous four years by the sudden departure of her older sister. Doretha, the main character, feels some responsibility for her sister Alberta’s leaving, although there are many factors which have been leading up to it. Doretha’s journal provides her with the details she needs to help her remember those factors, and in so doing, help her to get the perspective she needs to deal with the emotional upheaval she is experiencing. The book is a marvelous reinforcement of all the reasons teachers give to convince students why writing about ourselves on a regular basis can be so important. Furthermore, the writing is strikingly real.
Sister
is written in the third person and reads like a story, rather than a diary. Because of that fact, it is a good counterpoint to
A Gathering of Days
in which the story emerges from the first person narrative. Dialogue in
Sister
helps move it along in a natural, comfortable fashion, and for no other reason than its magnificent story, it is an extremely worthwhile book to read.
How to use the book,
Sister
in this unit is the question. Besides the previously mentioned value the book has as a reaffirmation of all the good things a journal does for its writer, and other than the intrinsic value of the book as good literature, what kind of writing can a book like
Sister
help students learn? After reading excerpts from
Winfield
, an example of an “I was born . . .” autobiography, and
A Gathering of Days
, a journal,
Sister
demonstrates perfectly in the next step for my students. Not all of us will become famous, but all of us have a story to tell. The writing I want to work on with students after our journals, autobiographies, and interviews have been practiced is the creative story-writing using their own experiences as fodder. The book
Sister
would be read and discussed in class, and since the book is neatly divided into sections that are short stories in and of themselves, students will practice writing stories based on sections of journals, whether the source is their private journals, the open journals or the group, journals. In these student stories we will work on third person narrative and dialogue in the mode of
Sister
. The students’ sense of self will transform into a creative process with a source that has a rich past, a continuing present and an endless future.