The Principal as a Writer
As much as I love technology, nothing replaces putting pen to paper. I may be revealing myself as a digital immigrant. Regardless, whenever I am in a book store I find myself walking over to the journal section. In the bigger book stores, Moleskine journals have their own shelf.
The draw for me is each one of these notebooks are a blank slate, new territory in which to be filled up with fresh ideas. With Moleskine, they tailor some of their journals for specific areas of interest, such as recipes, travel, wellness and music.
Here is the link to the Moleskine website: http://www.moleskineus.com/ As you can see, the sky is the limit for different purposes for writing. For me, I regularly use three Moleskine notebooks to help me document my thinking for later review and to reflect on actions I have made.
Red Moleskine: Read Alouds I spend about 10% of my day reading aloud in classrooms. I find it to be a great way to connect with kids, to be more present in the classroom and to share great literature. To help me recall how each read aloud went, I write out a brief lesson plan for the book. I follow the basic format a teacher would use for guided reading: Before Reading Aloud; During the Read Aloud; After Reading Aloud. On the back of each page, I mark which classrooms I read a book to and when, so I don't repeat (although rereads aren't a bad thing, especially when the book is good).
To better aid my organization, I keep my K-2 read alouds in the first half of the notebook and my grade 3-5 read alouds in the second half. I also "tag" the read alouds with special themes on the upper left hand corner, along with an approximate duration to read each book. Black Moleskine: Book Reviews Some of the classrooms in my building regularly post student book reviews on their bulletin boards. Great practice! To connect with classroom instruction, after I read aloud a title I write a review of said book in my review journal for the students. I model this type of persuasive writing using the document camera.
This is not the best example, as this was our first entry and we didn't actually write a review. Still, these 4th graders had lots of memorable quotes that they wanted to share and get documented in the book journal page we completed together via the document camera. To wrap things up, we voted on how good the book was based on our evidence and thinking. I was not surprised that Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein got five out of five stars. Moleskine Knock-Off: Memorable Quotes I got this calendar journal at a local book store around the time I signed up with Twitter last fall. Once I saw the amount and the quality of educational information that this social media helped send my way, I realized I needed a way to curate it before I lost it. It is not a Moleskine, but my wife was kind enough to spruce it up with a Moleskine pen.
Anything and everything goes into this journal. The only criteria is that it is interesting and important enough to remember. Many of my PLN's tweets have taken up space in this journal. As with all my journals, I regularly refer back to what I wrote to help current and future writing and decision-making.
Digital Journals Moleskine does have a journal app for the iPad and iPod Touch, but it is as bad as their paper journals are good. I do journal using a variety of digital tools, all with slightly different purposes. Evernote - Not so much a journal as a tool to store and organize information, such as conference notes with audio. This application has lots of potential for student portfolios. Notability - Somewhat similar to Evernote, but information is stored via Dropbox. Doesn't have the same accessibility as Evernote, but you can draw and handwrite within each note. One Day - A very simple yet effective eJournal app for the iPad. I keep more confidential information here because it is password protected. If anything I write had to be considered a diary, this would be it. WordPress - No description needed What's My Point? I hope I have not wrote a post without much purpose. As I reflect on my position as an elementary principal, I can think of a variety of reasons why I write and why all educators should be doing the same. - Writing is a reflective act. It helps me coalesce seemingly disconnected ideas into one focus. - All educators need to be modeling writing if they expect students to write. Kelly Gallagher, author of Write Like This, aptly stated that the teacher is the best writer in the classroom. To model this skill, we need to keep our own skills honed. - Writing is thinking made evident. Concrete thoughts such as goals and opinions are much harder to ignore than thinking alone. - With the Common Core State Standards, writing is expected to be taught across the curriculum. It's about time. - The medium for writing is not as important as the act itself. Some students are more motivated by pen to paper, while others prefer blogging. Ideas are ideas and should be shared regardless of the format. If technology can enhance this experience, I say go for it. - Writing needs to be regarded with the same level of reverence as reading and math. As an example, many schools (including mine) annually spend thousands of dollars on books but expect students to bring a $1 notebook for writing. - It is okay that different forms of writing demand different formats and mediums. - Writing is meant to be shared. What reflections do you have regarding writing in education? Please share in the comments as I am always looking for new ideas.