Making Things Clear

In “Taming the Beast” I suggested that as facilitators we may not be making ourselves clear even though we think we are. Just like our students who write vaguely, we know what we are talking about and, for a short while, think our readers must too.

But, I learned over the course of facilitating the first session of a course I had helped develop that things might not have been as clear as they could have been. When the mid term check assignment was turned in for the course, I was disappointed in the journals that were being turned in. I spent the greater part of a week “re-teaching” what the journal was supposed to have in it. At the end of that week, I decided that, perhaps, the directions needed some work.

The original directions asked them to keep a reflective journal and submit it after week three:

Old Journal Instructions

The activities in each session will allow you to consider some options for your final project. You will record your thoughts from these activities in a reflective journal which you will submit after Session Three and Session Five as part of the course requirements. You can create your journal as a Microsoft Word document to upload to the facilitator. You may construct the journal in a double entry journal style or in paragraph form. Make sure the journal contains all elements indicated by the rubric for the midterm project.

With these instructions I was getting journals like Sample A. This example does not come close to including details from the 3 course sessions. In this particular session, I sent back at least 80 percent of the journals for revision. Yes, they had a rubric.

The next time I facilitated the course I upgraded the instructions in the course content. I appealed to the English teachers knowlege of using writing to create learning, the 21st Century notions of reflecting on practice and creating a product that has concrete relevance.

New Journal Instructions

As an activity for this course, you will keep a journal that will allow you to consider some options for your final project. In each session you are given a journaling topic to reflect upon. You should consider how the topic you are asked to write about might be implemented in your classroom or into your final lesson project for the course. You should also plan to put at least 2 other ideas about anything else in the session that you think might become part of your final project or classroom next year.

As English teachers, you know that to process information, it is often beneficial to write about it. That is why you are asked to keep this journal. You have an opportunity to process some of the information a bit more thoroughly as you consider what to include in your final project.

You will submit the journal to me after Session Three for a midterm check. You can create your journal as a Microsoft Word document to upload to the facilitator. You may construct the journal in table, a double entry style, or in paragraph form. Whichever format you decide to use, make sure the journal contains all elements as indicated by the rubric for the midterm project.

Although you will only turn in the journal after Session Three, it will offer an end product for you as well. In addition to using it to reflect on ideas for your project, you will also have a nice collection of ideas to take with you at the end of the class about the items in the course that might become part of your classroom activities. So, plan to take notes in your journal throughout the course and consider both how the ideas might be used in your final project and your classroom next year.

With these directions, I was able to send back fewer than 5 journals for revision. Sample B shows the thoroughness of most of these journals. I want to believe that the improved directions gave a sharper focus to the expectations and gave participants a background for the importance of the journal.

This experience drove home for me the necessity of clarifying my thinking. Just because I understand what is expected, I must consider the learning styles of participants to know if they may need more detail to convince them that an activity is worthwhile. I think clarifying the rationale from the English teacher’s perspective made these journals more effective.