Teachers give so much of themselves in their daily work. This giving can be fulfilling, but also draining. As an elementary and middle school principal for 10 years, I knew that my job was not only to support teachers' development, but also to take care of them when they needed space to process what went on in the classroom.
Through my longtime work as a trainer with Abydos Literacy Learning, an organization that teaches educators to be better writers, revisors, and editors, I saw the positive effect personal writing could have on well-being. That's why I began the regular practice of journaling with my own teachers—a surefire way to tap into their emotions and re-energize them.
The process of seeing our thoughts more clearly changes us. I started each school year by giving teachers a blank composition book with a quote from E. M. Forster on the cover: "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" I explained that we would carve out about 10 minutes to write together at the beginning of our monthly staff meetings, and I hoped they would use the journals when they wrote with students, too. Journaling would be a way to reflect on their feelings and experiences to improve teaching. As editors Audrey Friedman and Luke Reynolds write in Burned In: Fueling the Fire to Teach (Teachers College Press, 2011), "It is through such reflection that teachers re-collect and re-create themselves and, in the process, regain their sense of direction."
When I first implemented journaling with teachers, they often behaved like student writers: avoiding the task, whispering to a neighbor, taking a restroom break, or sneaking a peek at their cellphones. But in time, each teacher would have a breakthrough with a piece a writing that touched him or her deeply.
Here are a few ways school leaders can make journaling work:
See journaling as a priority—and realize its power.
It would be easy to write off journaling as an extra. But devoting just 10 minutes of a staff meeting to write is enough time to make the exercise meaningful. It was often the first item on my meeting agenda. Once, when I asked teachers to write from their students' point of view, a teacher came up to me after the meeting with tears streaming down her face. She'd been having problems communicating with one student, but trying on his perspective was powerful. "Now I know why you've asked us to write all this time," she said. "What I wrote today has changed me, and I will be a different teacher tomorrow."
Use meaningful prompts that elicit emotion.
Whether it's writing six-word memoirs (sharing a life story in six words), answering questions based on a poem or a book excerpt, or reflecting on letters from former students, providing some direction gets teachers in the writing mindset. Try reading the poem "In Color" from Put Your Eyes Up Here by Kalli Dakos and have teachers write three things they would do to change students' lives from "black and white" to "color." Or read a section from the children's book Silver Packages by Cynthia Rylant and ask teachers: What gifts have you given and received as a teacher?
Allow time for sharing.
The option to reflect publicly on a writing exercise—either in small groups or with the entire faculty—can be an instigator of connection. In my own school, teachers' willingness to share their joys and difficulties through writing, both personal and classroom-related, deepened conversations in smaller team and department meetings. The process made us all feel more connected as a community. We were honest in a way that we often couldn't be in regular conversation and developed better understanding of our shared goals.
Teachers need support to become the best they can be. Sometimes, the most effective encouragement is not an expensive professional-development program or the latest gadget, but a simple piece of paper and a pen. As literacy coach Penny Kittle writes in The Greatest Catch (Heinemann, 2005), "Writing releases pain and often brings hope. … Not answers, but strength to continue." You'd be surprised what a blank page can do.
