Journaling helps teachers engage students better

For Triveni Nagaraj, journaling was a way of life even before she got into teaching. As a young adult, she kept a diary, recording her personal triumphs and travails. This early-years teacher in an International Baccalaureate (IB) school in Bengaluru believes that journaling is an integral aspect of her craft. She now maintains a journal for every child in her class, recording her observations and meaningful tidbits. 

Both Triveni and her co-teacher have ready access to a sheaf of papers and a pen. If a child makes an intriguing comment or displays an unusual behaviour, either positive or negative, subtle or blatant, one of them usually jots it down. Whether it’s a child who shows greater sitting tolerance, decodes a digraph for the first time or is unable to wait for their turn in a game, teachers try to record these moments. At the end of the day, they transfer their comments onto an Excel file, with a sheet for each child. 

Triveni maintains a daily journal for two children in her class who have special needs as she sends a weekly report to their parents. For other students, she makes entries around once in two weeks, so she has enough material to compile a detailed term-end report. She finds that parents are gratified to see these personalised reports that capture their child’s progress in rounded and authentic ways. 

Akshatha Belludi, a Nursery and Grade I teacher in a CBSE school in Kalburgi, uses journaling as a form of self-reflection. Every night, she looks back on her day, trying to identify what clicked and what didn’t during a lesson. This process allows her to critique and better her own teaching practices. For example, while journaling one night, she felt she hadn’t reached every student during a lesson on writing poems with first-graders. So, she asked herself what else she could do to draw the attention of children who weren’t engaged. 

She also observes and takes notes on children during free play. These jottings help her prepare for parent-teacher meetings where she tries to provide a holistic picture of a child. For example, she noticed that one child initially refused to share toys but, after three months, began to do so readily. 

Geetha Viswanatham, a special educator with 26 years of experience, avers that journaling is essential for documenting the progress of children with learning difficulties. As educators need to both notice and acknowledge the small steps of progress these children make, it helps to maintain meticulous records of what transpires in each session.

Whether it’s a child’s ability to identify individual sounds, blend them, recognise sight words or words with different spelling patterns, Geetha keeps a tab of every detail and also makes notes on their attention span, behaviour, mood and conversational skills.  Since she works one-on-one with a child, she is able to document each child’s progress in various academic domains. She then refers to these entries while writing weekly and quarterly reports for parents or schools.  

For Sreelekha Ramachandran, Headmistress at Omega School, Chennai, journaling is a form of “professional development” because it helps her reflect on and critique herself and her practice. Every night, she pens down her thoughts, feelings and experiences of the day. Every once in a while, she reads through her entries and gauges her own ‘progress’ as an educator.  Because memories are fallible and selective, journaling provides a record against which you can assess yourself. Journaling also helps her understand what falls within her control and makes her more self-aware when similar situations arise in the future. As a result, she can regulate her responses and be more deliberate. 

She also encourages teachers in her school to take up journaling. As reflection usually allows you the time and space to consider a situation from multiple viewpoints, you become less judgmental of others.  Difficult conversations with students, teachers or parents are easier to handle when you are more centred and balanced yourself, says Sreelekha.

While there is no one right way to journal, this practice can be beneficial for educators, as it is meditative, cathartic, and can also provide a record of events. If you are a teacher and haven’t tried it, it might be worth giving it a shot. Given the educators' experiences in this article, you might get hooked, too.