My Touchstone Writing Moment - Under a Magnifying Glass

    Looking back over my three touchstone writing moments I wrote about last week, I realized that a one of them stood out the most. The way I used to hide all my diaries and journals when I was younger is most likely the way that the majority of children (and adults too) still feel today. I know I do, and I'm an English major - I should be able to get past this fear of sharing my work. It's not that my teachers while I was growing up put down my writing necessarily, I think it's the fact that many of them didn't encourage sharing it. As a future teacher, I see a need to instill confidence in students.
   
    I am currently assisting a 6th grade English teacher at Lesher Middle School for one of my courses here at CSU, and so far I have found the school to be very impressive. At Lesher, they believe that an effective learning environment is centered around positive moral and a mentally/physically healthy student body. Many teachers spend the first week of class simply getting to know their students and letting the students become acclimated to others around them. They spend more time talking with the students like they are equals, asking them what they think the classroom rules should be, and creating a positive vibe within their four little walls of a classroom. Personally, I think this mentality is a fantastic idea. Approaching education like it is a project to tackle and learn together, giving students the opportunity to be heard and express their feelings, creates a more positive environment to teach in for the rest of the year. Someday, I want my students to know I am on their side. I want them to be able to be honest with me and each other, because they will know I will always be honest with them. My classroom will be a place filled with confidence and teamwork, where students can throw themselves into their work without being scared of what others will think.

    I want to be able to use my past experiences/feelings for good, and learn from them when applying them to becoming a teacher. I want to be able to remember how it felt to write something in 7th grade and worry that it wasn't good enough. And again, remember how it was in 12th grade looking out towards my future, and worrying that people would laugh when I told them I was majoring in English. My desire is to help cultivate and encourage my students into becoming fearless learners.  

The World of Blogs

The three blogs I visited fall under the following genres: education, lifestyle, and interior decorating. All three of these genres are of interest to me, and I had a great time browsing through them.

I have been keeping up with Lauren Conrad's blog for quite some time now, and it's one of my favorites! She posts a perfect mixture of fashion, motivation, lifestyle, and fitness. Her intended/implied audience is women, most likely between the ages of 17 & 30, seeing as her content deals with a somewhat modern day lifestyle. The overall tone of all her posts is very motivating, which implies that the readers are desiring some sort of change in their lives. Her posts are written in assumption that the audience needs help with some aspect of their lives, whether it be fashion, cooking, DIY, decorating, ect. There are many writers who contribute to this blog who are all a part of the "Lauren Conrad Team", and a technique they use in many of their posts is a short personal narrative. For example, if they are explaining how to make DIY hand soap, they will start out by saying how fantastically it worked for them in their personal lives, and how everyone else should try it too. As with any other form of social media where people have control over how their lives and words are perceived, these writers do seem like they want to be thought of as hardworking, creative, beautiful, and even slightly "perfect". Everyone naturally writes about their own best attributes, and while there is nothing particularly wrong with that, there are also a few issues. When women who truly want to improve on the subjects written in Lauren Conrad's blog read these personal narratives of "perfect" women, it ironically ends up bringing them down rather than motivating them as it is supposed to. As long as the reader understands this to be the case, and reads through the lens that no one is truly perfect, then there is no issue with writing this tone.

While browsing education blogs, I came across this one called Edspresso. Naturally, I thought the  name was cute, but as I kept reading the content began to peak my interest as well. I found it was neat to read about breaking news going on in the education world, because I think it is important to be well informed, especially within your field of work. Seeing as this blog is somewhat of a portal to many other smaller, more local blogs, I think the intended audience is teachers everywhere. On their home page is a drop down menu with multiple different references to more specific blogs, which I think is a great tool to reach so many teachers. This blog is formatted like a news source, which is nice and pretty easy to navigate. I think the writers of this blog simply want their readers to view them as informed, and a reliable source.

Lastly, I found a blog centered around interior decorating, called Coco + Kelley. I am so passionate about decorating, and creating the perfect little space that this blog was one of my favorites I found so far. It contains cute DIY home projects, like this desk organizer  as well as "room of the week" inspiration pictures. The only thing that bothered me about this blog was the format; I think it could have been more organized and easier to navigate.  I think the writers of this blog are simply speaking to anyone with even a spark of a passion for decorating, and they want others to see them as creative, smart, and good at what they do. These days, there are so many different options when it comes to home decor (as seen here below), that anyone can take a gander at it and personalize it in a way that fits their lifestyle.      

Now that I have sufficiently gone over my word limit for this post, I will sum it up as briefly as possible: 

Blogs as a form of writing are unique in comparison to other genres because they are more casual, personalized, and unique. They can cover such a wide range of topics, yet still be classified as a "blog". Blogging gives everyone equal opportunity to show the world their thoughts. Through my own personal blog, I desire to write words that are motivational but not demeaning, thoughtful but succinct, and truthful without any doubt in my own confidence.  

Morning Pages 1.21.16

While watching the short YouTube video, an idea from the reading we did in "Why School?" came back to me.  Nobody ever asks students what they want to learn, how they learn, or why they want to learn.  Year in and year out, teachers use the same lesson plans, same lectures, same teaching styles for different groups of students, assuming that it will always be effective. Sure, students will always need a basic elementary education to build upon; full of the classic standards. But once they move on and up into high school, they should be able to have more of a say in what they want to learn and how they want to do it. This could be why so many generations of students have come to have the mindset that hating school is "cool".  If they are not interested in the topic or how it is being taught, they will never have that desire to study and follow it further. I don't think the problem is necessarily the topics being taught as much as it is the amount of freedom given to students.  By giving students the freedom to find their passion and pursue it in it's entirety, you would also be filling them with the motivation and true desire to continue learning not only in school, but also in life.   

Touchstone Writing Moments

    As I think back over my past experiences and encounters with writing during the twenty year course of my life, four important instances stand out in my mind as being true "touchstone moments". The following memories are dear to me, especially now, as I am able to look back and see the progress I have made.  

    When I was between the ages of 6 & 7, my grandma gave me what I deemed from that moment on the greatest birthday present in the universe: a create your own storybook kit.  It really was a box full of fun, especially to me.  It provided the resources to write and illustrate my own little book - even including an envelope to send away my work to be "published".  So that birthday, my grandma and I sat down to compose a children's novel of our own.  Granted at this age, my grandmother should really have gotten credit for the story line, the correct spelling, the punctuation, ect. . . . but as loving grandmothers do, she simply donated her ideas to my own creative process.  The end product? The beloved story of "Mitsy the Kitsy", which I'm sure you all know very, very well.  Or at least little girl me believed you would come to know and love quite dearly, since it was an actual hard copy book that I wrote on my very very own! (and even illustrated too). Double feature, my friends . . . 

    If you sorted through all my belongings, you still (hopefully) wouldn't be able to find those that I have held most dear since my mid-elementary school years - all my diaries.  And there's a reason for that: ever since I can remember I would write and record my thoughts in a little book that I would put large amounts of effort into hiding.  Looking back I have a much better understanding on why I struggle with people reading my words today, and it is because of how I acted when I was younger.  Hiding my words from the world became a habit, and to this day I still keep a secret diary hidden somewhere in my bedroom. 

    Nowadays, 20 year old me has been trying her best to keep up with writing a personal blog and sharing it with whoever wants to read it.  I want to be able to gain confidence in my own words, thoughts, and ideas - enough confidence to the point where I wouldn't mind if every stranger I met on the street read my blog.  On my blog, I try to write whatever comes to mind at the moment.  Or I will be out somewhere, and little details of the world around me will inspire such ideas that I feel compelled to write about them.  Sometimes I write about ''the life and times of Lauren McCrillis'', or simply about the way I felt when I visited the Grand Canyon for the first time. My goal is to become fully confident and unashamed of my words, because then I will truly be able to grow in my writing.