A Letter of Thanks to My Students

I would like to end our semester blogs together by thanking all of you for sharing so much of yourselves during our class.  I thank you for sharing your views, your knowledge, and your life experiences.  Your individual voices have enriched our course curriculum and have made our class discussions Socratic forums for respectful debate and inquiry.  I appreciate your open-mindedness and your willingness to explore new theories and insights.  For this maturity, I thank you.  I believe that it is only when we challenge ourselves that we truly grow as people, and even in one semester of writing methods, I can see true growth in each and every one of you as a teacher and as a writer.  You have ventured into the unknown at times and have succeeded due to your hard work and dedication to this course.  I am proud of the stellar work that you have accomplished thus far and am excited about all of the future successes you are sure to encounter along your teaching journeys. 

         I would like to further thank you for the energy that you bring with you to class every Tuesday.  Your energy is contagious and refreshing.  Your passions, your words, and your interests really do drive this course and make it what it has become. I have enjoyed this time as your teacher and look forward to the years ahead when I will see you all succeed as writers and as teachers.  Thank you for being THE REASON I enjoy coming into work each day.  It is because of YOU that I have become a teacher.  You have all become people in my life that I am truly grateful and honored to know.  Thank you for your willingness to learn, grow, and share with me this semester.  I wish you all much continued success as you continue on in your careers as life-long learners.    

                                             All my best,

                                             Nicole

P.S. A quote to ponder as the semester comes to a close:

“Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know—and what we don’t know—about whatever we’re trying to learn.”

    –William Zinsser, Writing to Learn 

 My wish for you is that whatever you choose to do, make it your own.

Thanks Giving

Writing Prompt:

1. Give thanks for one thing that's easy to be grateful for - something big and obvious that comes to mind quickly.


2. Give thanks for something tiny and obscure - something you normally take for granted.


3. Give thanks for something you aren't grateful for. Find one reason why this thorny thing in your life is actually a blessing.

I’m thankful for rainy days gone sunny, and the windows opening just wide enough to let the breeze in during suffocating heat waves.  I’m thankful for the smell of cookie dough baking when burnt dreams are wafting in the air.  I appreciate the subtle smile of a co-worker or a student who pauses just long enough to show caring but not too long as if to avoid imposing.  I am thankful for the family that I have supporting me every day, to hold me up when harsh winds try to knock me down.  I’m thankful for eyes looking into my soul and understanding my heart without ever having to hear me utter a word.  Sometimes words are too frightful or too intangible to be teetered off the tongue.  So I’m thankful for understanding without speaking.  I’m thankful to be sitting around a table with the people who love me most in the world, and no matter what, will always love me most in the world.  I’m thankful for safekeeping, for personal safeties of my heart and personal safeties of my physical well-being.  I’m thankful for our health, for the good report cards we receive from our doctors and for the precious prayers that are answered.  I am thankful that our prayers are heard and that, so often, they are answered.  I’m thankful for genuine emotion and the ability to feel tears and laughter and exaltation.  And, although the knots that tie and twist inside of us are setbacks, I am thankful for the untying afterwards, for the wonderful days when I can sit back and say: this has been a good day because it has been my day and one that I feel in control of.  I am thankful for feeling powerful.  I am thankful for self-appointed power, for the power to control my actions, my emotions, and my words.  And at the end of the day, if I can truly say that my day was so much more than just “making it through” then I can be thankful that I have chosen to make the most of my moments.  Here’s to making the most of our moments.

NCTE Please... Join, Connect, Grow

For the past five days, I have been attending and presenting workshops at the NCTE convention.  With a masters degree and half of a doctorate completed in education at this point in my life, I still realize that I have much that I can learn from my colleagues in the field of English education.  I think that some people have the perception that a degree makes one an expert.  Some make the assumption that they have learned all there is to know to be successful teachers, but as the common philosophy of education goes: teachers are life-long learners.  After teaching high school and college courses, I continue to revise my curricula to make it more engaging and accessible for my students.  I listen to the suggestions of my students and my colleagues year after year and revise methods and topics as necessary.  The NCTE conference provides me with another avenue for revision.  By participating in workshops created by English and writing teachers around the country, I am able to adapt some of my teaching strategies to better fit the needs of all of my students. 

On Saturday, I had the good fortune of getting to hear Kelly Gallagher speak.  He is the author of our Teaching Adolescent Writers text.   Just as he writes about in his book, he talked about the fact that we must write beside our students.  We need to write the same assignments that we assign to them whether they are essays, papers, speeches, or in class free writes.  We need to edit in front of them.  He said that when our students see us struggling with writing it can almost be more valuable to them than when they see us write with ease and eloquence.  They need to see that we do not write perfectly all the time, especially in our first drafts.  This shows our students the importance of drafting and being willing to change/ edit/ cut our work.  It also shows our own willingness to experiment with new writing strategies that could create less than perfect writing.  No writer creates perfection in the first draft, and he wants our students to become comfortable with that idea. 

At this conference I had the privilege of hearing notable authors (such as Chris Crutcher), experienced teachers, and insightful researchers speak.  Each year I continue to grow as an educator and as a student at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference, and I strongly encourage any English educators or future ELA teachers to attend to enjoy the same career-changing experience that I have been enjoying over the past five years.  Please feel free to ask me any questions you might have about joining NCTE and about the 2012 NCTE Conference in Las Vegas. 

I'm sorry... I am not going to apologize for keeping my last name...

As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in his New York Times best seller, The Tipping Point, hairstylists have a unique ability to be connectors and mavens spreading and sharing important information and ideas about life to their clients.  In Gladwell’s example, a hairstylist is able to share information with hundreds of clients at her beauty salon about pertinent health issues that her clients should be aware of and checked for regularly.  As a result of her word-of-mouth epidemic, this hairstylist was able to share an important message with a lot of people in a short amount of time.

Today, my hairstylist shared a message with me too.  When I checked in at the front desk, my hairstylist asked me for my maiden name since I had started going to him before I had gotten married.  I replied that my maiden name is actually still my last name because I did not change my name when I got married.  Therefore, there was no need for him to change the information in the computer. 

To this information he replied, “I do not like that at all.”

I came right back with, “Well, I do not care at all.”  Shocked and perturbed at his comment on my life choice, I wanted him to know that his opinion about my last name really did not matter to me.  It was my choice not his.  “I’m a feminist.  I don’t believe in changing my last name.”  He chuckled, which irritated me further and obviously elicited a longer explanation from me about why I chose to keep my last name when I got married.   I have plenty of educated reasons, so he got more than he bargained for I’m sure.

What I wanted to say was I don’t care at all what you think.  I don’t tell you what decisions to make with your partner, so don’t tell me what decisions to make with mine.  My husband knew who he was marrying years before we said “I do.”  My feminist state was not a newsflash to him.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that one of the reasons my husband loves me is because I never do anything without having a reason for doing it.  And, I stand up for what I believe in.  It’s a good thing I’m married to a man who is not threatened by a strong woman. My husband doesn’t need me to deny my own identity by taking on his. (Not that all people who take their spouse's last name are denying their own identities.  I completely respect a person’s right to choose what s/he does with his/her last name upon marriage.  It is his/her choice and his/ her name.  However, this is just what I wanted to say to him because I was angry. Okay, back to my ranting hypothetical response.)  We are two individuals who share an important common value: each other.  I’m married to a man who appreciates my individuality and my tenacity to stand up for what I believe in. He does not take my lack of traditional practices as a form of disrespect towards him, his family, or our marriage.  He loves me for me.  So I’m sorry that you don’t like it at all that I did not change my name when I got married, but my husband-- the man that I’m married to—does like it because that is what makes me me—the woman that he fell in love with and the woman he is still married to today.

I wanted to say all of those things to this small-minded person who thought he could change my behavior by announcing his disapproval with my life decisions.  But, I didn’t say most of those things for two reasons: (1) I did not want to denounce his lifestyle the way he was denouncing mine and (2) my hair was in his hands.  Instead, I opted for the academic argumentative approach and provided him with all of the historical, research-based reasons for my decision. He did not have to like them, but while I was sitting there he really did not have a choice but to listen to them.  Today, my hairstylist may have set out to send a message to me that he thought people should preserve prehistoric traditions of marriage, but in the end, I think I sent a stronger message: Don’t edit the life choices that people make.  As long as their choices are not physically causing you harm, keep your unasked for opinions to yourself.  If you are planning to share your opinions, be prepared for some refutation.  After all, you started the debate from the moment you said “I do not like…”  

A Place Where Two Rivers Meet-- STAR Applied

A place where two rivers meet—my lungs and my heart—meet quite often to make me work essentially.  I work essentially because I am the joining of two systems—theirs and mine.  I take from them what I find applicable, and I take from me what I feel is right.  I’ve never done something just because someone else said it should be done. I analyze; I improvise.  I work it out in the place where two rivers meet to make me whole.  My lungs who take in and let out and my heart who circulates my passions.  The taking in occurs everywhere—amongst peers, around superiors, alongside students.  The lessons I take in are circulated by my being, filtered by my guards, mixed with my beliefs, and then are let out in the same midst.  Through lungs and heart two worlds collide to fuse lessons that are beyond the grasp of some.  Yet, where two rivers meet, a cycle completes and resolves to start again.

Showing Students How to Consume One Advertisement at a Time

As a culture we are constantly being inundated with signs; some messages more overt than others. These signs are present in many forms, ranging from traffic signals to advertisements, which may seem more subliminal. When we see a stop sign as a culture, we almost always interpret that sign as an instruction to stop. The form, a red octogonal metal road sign, signifies the idea that one should stop driving a car upon reaching that sign. While we as an American culture collectively know the way we are meant to interpret road signs, we do not collectively know how we are meant to interpret the advertisements that we are inundated with every day.  Furthermore, the message intended by the advertiser may not even be the message that we receive as consumers. As an English teacher, I feel that it is my responsibility to teach my students how to read the world of advertising through a more analytical lens so that they may be more educated consumers.

Through the use of semiotics, students can be taught to analyze advertisements through a system of signs that is dyadic in nature.  This dyadic system of signs was developed by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in order to analyze language and the sign systems present within it. Since words are signs, and many advertisements contain strings of words, then it is important for students to realize that depending on their context, the same words can signify different things. For example, if the word or form “massive” (the “signifier”) is placed on an advertisement of a resort in the Bahamas, consumers can probably assume that the idea or “signified” connected to that word is that the resort is very large and expansive.  This word will attract vacationers who are looking for an elaborate vacation complete with many grounds to explore.  However, if that same word were used on an advertisement for a dieting program, interpretation of meaning would more heavily depend on the placement and context of such a word.  Is the food amount permitted “massive?”  Is the diet center facility “massive?”  Does the diet center host a “massive” amount of clients?  Or will someone become “massive” if s/he does not follow this diet’s plan for healthy eating?  The multiple interpretations of one word or form necessitates an analysis of context as well as content.

 On a larger scale, the same is also true of advertisements. The decision to place an advertisement on television, on the radio, in a magazine, on a billboard, on a bus, or on a park bench can all lead to different interpretations of meaning of the advertisement.  The context of the ad placement will dictate the audience that will see the ad, thus influencing the types of people that will buy the product or service being sold. The trick to understanding the signs within the advertisement and the signs surrounding the advertisement is understanding Saussure’s system of signs first.  Only then can content and context be interpreted at an evaluative level of understanding.

Story Starters: Halloween Theme

Another way to help students generate ideas for creative writing is to provide them with story starters.  The free write may get students to think about certain characters they might want to include and certain settings that they might place their characters in.  Here is a sample of some free writes for Halloween story starters.  Rather than telling students "Write a story about a haunted house," it is often beneficial to give them a specific starting point.  Then they can develop the ideas from the free write or come up with their own Halloween stories.  (Notice that #10 has a connection to the characters that we started to develop in class.  Perhaps there is a story there? If you have not written your story yet, feel free to try out one of these story starters.  Be sure to use the planning page when you are starting to plan out your structured story.  Free writes, however, do not necessarily require a planning page first.  The free write might help students fill out a planning page later when starting to structure the story.)

Activity: Students should write a Halloween Happening (short story) of their choice.  The Halloween Happening should have a beginning, middle, and end.  There should be a plot, setting, and characters.  Here are some story starters:

1.) "What is that AWFUL smell?" I asked. Then I saw the cauldron full of bubbling purple liquid ...


2.) I took off my Halloween costume, washed the paint off my face, put on my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. I was almost asleep when I first heard the sound ...


3.) One dark and rainy Halloween ...


4.) It was the night before Halloween ...


5.) The black cat twitched its tail twice. It hissed. Then ...


6.) Everybody said the old Bosworth mansion was haunted ...


7.) My brother/sister and I were walking through the woods one Halloween day when we saw what appeared to be a short cut. "Let's go that way," my brother said ...


8.) Ugh. I think I've eaten too much Halloween candy ...


9.) Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound came from inside the closet. Quietly, I crept toward the door ...


10.) When Amy met Henrald she was only six and he was 600, but they had more in common than one might have thought.  Halloween was their favorite holiday and.... 

Web Resources for Teachers

Based on some conversations that we had last week, I thought that some of these resources would be helpful to those just starting out in their teaching careers, those who are already engrained in their teaching careers, and those who are curious about the teaching profession.  Some of these resources are more useful than others depending on your needs, but these are just some of the internet resources people have recommended to me over the years.  I hope some of them are helpful to you.  

The Teachers Page

Web Resources for Teachers

Hot List of Teacher Web Sites

http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/pages/listteacherma10.html

  

Landmarks for Schools

with Rubric Builder

http://www.landmark-project.com/index.php

  

NEW YORK STATE 

Learning Standards

http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/ls.html

  

NEW YORK STATE

English Language Arts

Resource Guide for Instructional Materials

http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/ela/pub/elaim.pdf

  

NEW YORK STATE

Math Practice Tests

Grades 3-8

http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/3-8/math-sample/home.htm

  

NEW YORK STATE

Mathematics Core Curriculum

Revised March 2005

http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/3-8/MathCore.pdf

  

Scholastic

Helping Children Learn...

http://scholastic.com/

  

Mathematics Toolkit

Curriculum Guidance Materials and Resources

  

Kathy Schrock

Discovery School

http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/

  

Read*Write*Think.org

http://readwritethink.org

  

SmartTech Lessons

for the SmartBOARD

http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/Lesson+Activities/Notebook+Activities/Browse+Notebook/United+States/

  

RVC Infogram

  

Library of Congress

The Learning Page

http://rs6.loc.gov/learn/features/index.html#activities

  

K-8 Math Curriculum Maps

Diocese of Rockville Centre

http://infogram.edrvc.org/info/bm~doc/916-revised-mathematics-c.pdf

  

Project-Based Learning 

Rubric Maker

http://pblchecklist.4teachers.org/checklist.shtml

  

St. Joseph College

http://www.sjcny.edu/page.php/prmID/1600

  

MarcoPolo Tools

http://marcopolotraining.com/Partner%20Site%20Tools.htm

  

Scholastic

Net Explorations for the One Computer Classroom

http://teacher.scholastic.com/professional/profbooks/technology/netexplorations/index.htm

  

Power to Learn 

Lesson Activities

http://www.powertolearn.com/teachers/lesson_activities/index.shtml

  

Google - for Educators

http://www.google.com/educators/index.html

  

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

http://free.ed.gov/

  

TheatreWorks

Class Trips

http://www.theatreworksusa.org/

  

High Point Furniture- North Carolina

http://www.highpointfurniture.com/

Best Revision Practices

This week I have thought a lot about the way that I like to revise my work the most.  The reading this week spoke about many different revision strategies, and I realize that I have different preferences for revising my work by myself and for revising my work in groups. 

On my own, I prefer to revise my work by reading aloud and editing as I go along.  When I get slowed down in my reading, I know that there is something missing for fluency in meaning or that there is a grammatical issue.  In the moment, I go back and correct the error in my paper before I continue reading.  This is really my initial editing strategy.  Then I prefer someone else to read my paper and provide comments about flow and content.  If there are any blaring grammatical issues, I also appreciate feedback on that too.  However, in my first round of drafts, I am more interested in getting the content of my paper perfect. 

In groups, I prefer instructor directed peer editing.  I think it is important to make all members of a group aware of the specific ways the paper should be improved.  Positive and constructive feedback is important side by side so that the writer does not feel defeated by all negative feedback.  I think color editing has been my students’ favorite revising strategies because the use of colors allows them to see what is missing from their papers and what is present.  Many of my high school students have even told me that they chose to use color editing on their own and with their friends in college. 

My goal as a writing teacher is to help my students find their “best revision strategies” and to teach them how to use these strategies on their own one day when I am not there to orchestrate the steps for them.  This revision independence is a skill that I believe all writers and readers need to be able to develop before entering college in order to be successful.  

Pre-Writing Strategies for Critical Lens Essay Writing

Many students are accustomed to brainstorming for writing assignments on graphic organizers.  For this reason, I usually supply as many graphic organizers as possible for students in the beginning of the year so that they can see what their planning options are moving forward.  I do not provide graphic organizers for every assignment throughout the year, but for the first two to three months, I usually give students choices of formats that might help them organize their writing effectively.  This teaches students to be metacognitive about their writing processes, and the planning stage is a very important part of the writing process. 

For the critical lens essay, I provided you with an outline structure for writing this type of essay.  However, I would also provide my middle school and/or high school students with a graphic organizer on which to pre-write their responses.  While the response to the prompt might be basic on this planning sheet, it is still a way for students to outline their ideas before starting to write the entire essay.  Below you will find the planning sheet that I provide for my seventh through twelfth-grade students when we first start out working on critical lens essays.  Perhaps you will find this helpful to use with your students, or you may want to develop your own pre-writing worksheet to use with students.  Students that do not think in this format can also be encouraged to develop their own planning pages that match with their specific learning styles.

Name ________________         

Do you agree or disagree with the quote?                    

Critical Lens Essay Writing         

QUOTE/ Prompt	Agree? Why?	Disagree? Why?

Books that Prove This (with examples):

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Literary Elements that Show This (examples):

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Voice of Choice

When I first started teaching high school, I taught 2 sections of ninth grade interdisciplinary English and 3 sections of SUPA English, which was a twelfth grade college level course through Syracuse University.  Over the summer before my first year teaching, I went to Syracuse for two weeks to get trained to teach their program.  If any of you ever get the opportunity to teach these courses, I highly recommend doing so.  The first semester was a writing course, and the second semester was an English literature course that included critical perspectives.  These courses changed my life as a writer and as a teacher.

One of the highlights of the course for me was the opportunity for student choice in all of the writing assignments.  This, I felt, was the real deal.  This is what writing should be for students—innovative, original, and self-directed.  It is really what writing should be for all of us.  While each unit was centered around teaching different styles of writing—analysis, argument, discourse analysis, and research writing—the paper topics were completely up to the students.  I was excited.  However, when the school year began, my students were not.

            I learned quickly that my students needed guidance when picking their topics.  Prior to my course, they had never (or rarely) been given the opportunity to decide their own paper topics.  Furthermore, they had often been given formulas or templates to work from during the writing process.  The first three weeks of class were challenging for my students and for me.  It took me some time to realize that I needed to take the training wheels off of the bike and hold on to the back of the bike for a time while my students learned how to ride on their own.  To help students adjust, I provided numerous models of what students had done in the past.  I brainstormed with students and provided them with research and writing strategies that might help them find their topics and their own formulas for writing.  The entire time, I continued to stress that my rubrics were designed to be open to student originality.  By the third paper, my students became very self-sufficient in the new style of writing and grew to appreciate the choices given to them.  Just like Barry Gilmore states in “Is It Done Yet?”  my students did “come to take more pride in and ownership of the entire essay-writing experience” (13).  As a result, the essays and papers written by my students were inspirational, creative, and relevant.  It is with this SUPA method in mind that I now design most of my writing assignments for 7-12 and college students.  Choice allows for ownership and power to reign supreme.  It allows my students’ voices to be heard over the voices of the texts that they analyze and use in their research.  

Words Power My Fight Against Injustice

As I sat by my grandmother’s hospital bedside this weekend, I found myself wishing that I had become a lawyer or a doctor or another profession that would seem the slightest bit intimidating to the people at the hospital giving me short answers about why my grandmother’s surgery needed to be done again.  The simple answer was they had done something incorrect during surgery that caused a severe infection; this needed to be rectified.  The complicated answer included how it had happened, which medicines could help to heal the infection, and how much longer she would need to be in the hospital she had been admitted to in August.  On many of these issues, multiple doctors could not agree.  This was supposed to be a fairly routine procedure.  If done correctly, she could have been out of the hospital in a week and then onto rehab.  However, this was clearly not the case.  So, at 5am on Friday, I found myself catching a train into Philadelphia to be there with my grandmother before her surgery. 

            As the doctors explained the results of the surgery to me, I listened carefully, trying to remember every detail and medical term to report back to my family. My mother was on her way to the hospital, but since the nursing staff had told my family that the surgery was not going to be until 9pm, everyone thought they had plenty of time to get there. As luck—or scheduling mistakes made by the hospital staff—would have it, the surgery was actually 9am. Thus, I was the family representation since I had taken an early train to avoid rush hour in New York City.  I listened; I asked questions and then listened some more.  Everything reportedly went well.  I felt a sense of relief come over me. 

Then, a few hours later, that relief was taken away.  My uncle who is a doctor/ surgeon in the Philadelphia area arrived at the hospital a few hours after the surgery to check on my grandmother.  She was in a lot of pain, but that was to be expected.  What we did not expect was a report from my uncle that the doctors at the hospital where she had the surgery had lied… about a few things.  I will not get into details about these lies right now, but I will say that these lies made me wish for power to expose the untruths being told.  I instantly wished that I had stuck with my plan in undergraduate school to become a lawyer; a lawyer would be intimidating to surgeons and to one of the top ten hospitals in the country. Medical malpractice suits could certainly ruin their rankings.  Then I thought more; if I was a doctor or a nurse, I could fix the problem myself.  I have often felt that if I want something done right, I have to do it myself.  This is not to say that delegation of responsibilities should be avoided, but many times taking on a responsibility and carrying it through alone is necessary. 

After wishing for a new degree, or additional degrees, I realized that in light of all of this injustice at the hospital, I became a teacher and a writer for a reason.  I love being a teacher.  I love working with people who have committed their lives to helping others through education.  I love working with children who are eager to learn, and even those that are not.  It is rewarding to see a student succeed in my class and then again to see them succeed years after they have graduated.  Education is the grassroots of all change efforts, I believe.  If we can educate students both morally and academically, then our reach is far greater than many others’ in other professions. 

As an English teacher, I am also a writer, and I realize that my words have power.  Sitting there in the hospital, I realized this weekend that I don’t have to be a lawyer or a doctor to have people hear me. I am a writer.  I have my words to fight injustice, and I certainly plan to use them.  Determined to take on the role of a muckraking journalist, I jotted down some notes in my notebook about all that I had seen and heard, and I got to work drafting a letter to the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer.  I may not have a medical degree or a law degree—not yet anyway—but I do have a teaching/research (half doctorate) degree and a writing degree.  I will use my chosen profession to power my fight against injustice, and I will make an impact.  Of that I am certain, and I give my word.  This is just one of the many examples of how I choose to mind my voice and speak my mind.  

Written Words

Words have the ability to empower us.  They breathe life into our values and give legs to our beliefs.  Without words, we are left with minimal ways to express ourselves universally.  Yes, there are physical and visual perceptions of how we feel and what we believe, but words give us the ability to articulate the specific ways that we feel without being misunderstood.

Context in writing allows for a reduction of misunderstandings; however, misunderstanding still does occur from the written word.  How can we help our students to be empowered by words—words that we write, words that they write, and words that their peers write?  How can we get students to see that their words have lasting impacts, especially when written? 

I believe one venue through which students can see the impact of written words is on Facebook.  Status messages and wall posts give students open forums to post thoughts and messages for others to read.  Whether the messages are intended for an audience of one or an audience of 500, people read what is written.  Whether it is out of curiosity, care or malice, Facebook has caused a culture of public sharing and publication.  Facebook has been a medium for praising, collective praying, and bullying.  It is a written, public venue that can empower, or disempower, depending on its use.  While Facebook can be a very dangerous tool for our students to use, it can also be a place where students can practice and apply their writing skills.  As teachers, I believe it is our responsibility to educate our students about the proper use of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.  We need to show them how these public words can be used to hurt or help others.  Hopefully, we can encourage a culture of students that seeks to help and improve the status quo.

As a teacher, I always begin each school year with the same goal for each of my students: that s/he may develop her/his own distinct voice as a writer.  I believe that individual voice is more important than any other byproduct of writing education.  I want my students to be confident in their own voices and convictions.  I want them to feel comfortable with themselves and in my class.  It is for this reason that I always require students to keep journals, no matter what their grade or level of education is.  Journals allow us to be reflective learners not just about what we are learning academically, but also about ourselves.  Here’s hoping this electronic journal will be another reflective tool in my own personal and academic journey.