Dear Reader,
I want to take a few moments to discuss a phenomenon that I have experienced over the summer of 2009: Marshall University’s Summer Institute (SI). During the three and a half weeks that I have been part of the SI community, I feel as though it has significantly impacted me as a writer, learner, colleague, and individual. Primarily, SI has taught me that everyone needs opportunities to grow no matter where they are in their life: as individuals, we must realize that learning is a lifelong process. To me, as a writer, the continuous journaling every morning for the length of SI has been like exercising the body—only we exercised our minds and hands! Due to the incessant practice of writing every day, I have better learned how to let my thoughts flow rather than “editorialize” or worry about as Natalie Goldberg, author of Wild Mind, calls it. SI first of all taught me that I am not perfect, and I still need to grow and mature as a writer.
Another lesson learned from SI is the value in sharing your work. Actually, this value is twofold: I, as the reader, become less self-conscious of my writing and more eager to share, and I also learn about my colleagues’ personal and professional lives through their own readings. As a result of our Sacred Writing times, a community forms, a community that allows us to feel comfortable around one another and become more willing to reveal more and more about ourselves, our hardships, our pain, our happiness, our joys. I feel that this is one of the most powerful tools of Summer Institute.
Moreover, I think that SI has helped me become more open to the opinions of others. It is not always easy to have your hard work critiqued, but considering the comments of others is really the only way that we can grow and improve ourselves. My writing group members, Laura Bentley, and even the “open mic” forum on the National Writing Project’s website have all contributed to my personal growth as a writer because they all considered the strengths and weaknesses of my writing; consequently, in the spirit of community, they wanted to see me grow. Even the comments provided by my colleagues during my demonstration helped me to see that we can never be perfect, but we can always improve ourselves. I now understand that all the critical feedback from SI has been designed for my individual growth as a writer, learner, colleague, and even an individual participant in this great community called humanity.
In addition to my personal life, Summer Institute has impacted my future teaching methods as well. Before coming to SI, I had just completed my second year of teaching. Over the past year I was given the job of teaching eighth grade English, and along with this job came an actual classroom and real content standards (the year before I was the drama teacher and didn’t have a classroom). I thoroughly enjoyed this year, designing engaging activities, differentiating instruction, addressing multiple learning styles, and discussing literature. Yet I still realized that I had by no means reached the limit of what I could achieve in the classroom. And Summer Instituted helped me to understand this more fully.
One of my first discoveries came when I realized I didn’t use enough writing in my writing classroom! Although my students did, of course, write— for example, a Halloween narrative, business letters, a research paper, and a literary analysis paper—I till didn’t use it enough. I addressed the content standards, but didn’t really delve beyond them. After experiencing Sacred Writing, I now want to incorporate more personal journaling in my classroom where students and I sit physically close to one another (in a circle?) and share our writing. During this time, I want to emphasize the need to write, not check for grammar errors or wonder how your writing will sound to others. I feel as though I have learned through Summer Institute that journaling is time to capture a memory or write down your thoughts, not produce the American masterpiece. Students can do this later once we begin revising.
In addition to Sacred Writing and the revision process, I have also gained a wealth of knowledge from my own and my colleagues’ demonstrations. Namely, I am now going to use more reflective writing in my classroom—perhaps on major projects—and an I-Search paper instead of research paper. However, I may also use the multigenre project as outlined by William Strong in Write for Insight instead of the I-Search paper. Regardless, I believe that my research standards will be managed and taught very differently in my classroom in the future, a change that both I and my students will certainly appreciate.
Now, this brings me to the contents that you will find in the rest of my e-portfolio. First of all, I want to mention that all of the pieces in this portfolio were written and revised exclusively within the confines of SI. Although I tried to use past pieces of writing, I decided that I really wanted to start fresh and with a clean slate. Secondly, I included each of these pieces because I value them and want others to hear my stories, whether they are personal professional, technical, humorous, etc. Even though I love all of the pieces within this portfolio, I am especially proud of my personal and professional pieces because they went through more revisions (although the deep revision piece did as well—I’ll talk about that momentarily) than the rest.
I love “Place of Escape,” one of my personal pieces, because Laura Bentley really pushed me to use sensory details, and this particular piece was the perfect vehicle for sensory details. As she read the piece over and over, she made suggestions and comments, always wanting more sights and sounds. I am appreciative that Laura pushed me to what I consider new heights: description is an important part of writing and allows the reader to really live vicariously through your writing. I think the end result is almost poetic, thanks to our writer-in-residence, Laura Bentley.
As previously mentioned, I enjoyed writing the professional piece, “A New Leaf,” a reflective writing based upon my experiences with a student named Steven during my second year of teaching. In “A New Leaf,” I tell the story of how Steven taught me an important aspect of teaching: let students be themselves. This piece reveals an important part of me, particularly that I am willing to learn and even change (hence the title “A New Leaf”) as a result of what my students teach me. I feel empowered by the fact that I can drop my garb of being the All-Knowing Being within the classroom, kick back, and let my students teach me a thing or two about life, the classroom, and writing.
The deep revision piece entitled “Letter to Susan Walker Morse” was written after my visit to the Huntington Museum of Art. This revised writing was part of an earlier piece that can also be found within my personal writing, “Susan Walker Morse.” I really wanted to use the original paragraph because I thought it was an insightful glimpse into young Susan’s life; after all, I knew nothing of Susan, but I was able to muse about the possibilities of her life by merely viewing a picture of her as a young child. For my deep revision, I took the original paragraph written at the Huntington Museum and turned it into a letter to Susan Walker Morse. The end result, I think, was effective because I was able to address my concerns and insights directly to Susan Walker Morse. In addition to using the deep revision process at SI, I will try to incorporate this into my own classroom as well. I think my eighth graders would love to be able to think about different genres and how they may or may not affect the content of their original piece.
My demonstration document, “Building Bridges Between Writing and Science,” is based upon the demonstration that I presented with Beth Wireman, a teacher in my school building. It shows research on the subject of project-based learning, in addition to what I learned and how I can implement projects into the writing and science classroom. Another piece that was written during Summer Institute was my ethnography, which is essentially a retelling of that day’s events. In my own ethnography, I attempted to write a play that included all of the leaders, facilitators, and fellows as actresses and actors. I believe that my ethnography shows that I can write creatively and imaginatively, something we all want our students to display as well.
Finally, I have included my informal writings in my e-portfolio. These are mostly a compilation of Sacred Writings and exit slips from SI. My exit slips discuss using technology in the classroom; they range from frustrations over not being able to use technology efficiently to dreams of one day using blogs and wikis with my classes. On the other hand, the Sacred Writings reveal different aspects of my life, from my love to books to summer memories. Overall, these Sacred Writings reveal my newfound love of journaling and sharing with my group of SI fellows, and the need to incorporate journaling more often into my personal and professional life.
Overall, SI has been a wonderful process of maturity for myself as an individual, a writer, a student, a colleague, a professional, and a teacher. The effect on my life will continue to resonate throughout the years.
Sincerely,
Bethany Hunt
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