Guest Post: The Power of Student Blogging

This week, for the first time ever, I have the privilege of hosting a guest blogger. This post comes from Jen Moyers, a phenomenal teacher (and, even more importantly, an awesome person) I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with here in Virginia. This has been Jen's twelfth year teaching, and during this past school year, she taught Dual-Enrollment to seniors, Honors English 11, and English 11. She is innovative and creative in everything that she does, and she constantly tries new approaches and new technology. She inspires her colleagues as well as her students, and it is an honor to share her ideas about student blogging here on this site.

Here's Jen Moyers' Post:

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Ironically, I suppose, this is my first blog post.  Well, sort of.  It’s my first “public” blog post that’s going on a for-real, accessible-to-everyone blog.

I have posted before, though, on a private blog that I maintain for my English 12 Dual Enrollment class.  I have used this blog for the past five years to great effect with my DE seniors, for whom the blog becomes the repository for some of their best writing.  I think it’s because I let them write in any way about any thing.

Normally, you see, I’m a bit of a control freak.  I try to plan every moment of every class, every outcome of every assignment.  With blogs, I finally started to let go . . . and it really worked. (I kind of hate exclamation points, or I’d use one here.)

Now, those student blogs have become something I look forward to reading, the way I truly get to know my students, the way that they develop their voices, the way they build confidence as writers.  Often, I find myself teary-eyed, awed at the beauty with which a boy describes his first broken heart or the vulnerability with which a girl confesses her fears about graduating and leaving her friends.  Oh, I suppose these topics sound hackneyed, clichéd, but for these kids, they’re reality . . . and they’re beautiful.

Even with blogs, I struggle with the details, with the control: Do I require them to post weekly?  Do I give them a word count?  Do I ask them to blog about something we’re discussing in class?  Should they be public or password-protected?  The more I use blogs, though, the more I realize that it’s the freedom of blogs that makes them empowering.  Given the choice, most students will post throughout the grading period (there’s always a procrastinator or two, but—as I found out this year—even a weekly posting requirement won’t change that).  I’ve found there’s something to be said for not worrying about the word count and just letting them express themselves.  And, while I’m certainly open to their continuing a class discussion online, requiring them to do so doesn’t result in inspiration but in frustration (for them and for me).

So, my new school year’s resolution is this:  Yes, we’re going to blog (and I’m expanding to all of my classes).  Yes, the blogs will be public.  Beyond that?  Well, I’m going to hand over control to the students.  That, after all, is what has made the blogging experience so successful thus far, so I’m trusting that it will only become better with increased ownership on their part.

* * * * *

This year, I taught 16 supremely talented students with vastly different voices, lives, and interests.  I was running behind on my grading (as I have all year. Ah, the life of an English teacher), so I was reading their blogs during exam week while scrambling to come up with an idea for their end-of-year gift.  Each year, I give my DE students something to commemorate our year together, to celebrate their graduation.  Some years, I’ve made a movie using footage or photographs of our class; one year, for a class of seven, I made a photo album for each student with excerpts from their favorite writing for the year and with a word cloud of each of their names composed of a list of adjectives submitted by their classmates. 

Anyway, this year, I had 16 students (so I couldn’t have expensive gifts) and not much time (so a film was out of the question—plus, I didn’t have footage or photos).  As I read their blogs, stressing all the while about how best to say goodbye, I was blown away.  They were gorgeous.  I laughed, I cried, I beamed with pride.  And I thought.  About poetry, of all things.  (And I’m definitely NOT a poet.)  But their blogs—which were unique, completely disparate efforts—somehow seemed to be circling the same topics, the same accounts of their year, the same thoughts of looking back, and forward, of yearning to leave and yet recognizing what they were leaving.

So.  I went through their blogs (some of them again—inspiration hit after I’d read through three or four students’ blogs).  And I copied and pasted all of my favorite lines into a Word document.  I ended up with six pages—about 160 separate “best lines”—of gorgeously written prose and poetry.  I printed them out, sliced them up, and then started organizing, literally laying out the lines on my desk. 

Disaster nearly struck with an unexpected cough (luckily, only a few lines sailed across my desk), but I finally had used MOST of the lines from students’ blogs.  I typed them into yet another document, and then continued shifting, moving this idea here, that line there, until finally I had something that made sense, to me at least.  I had labeled all of the lines with the students’ initials because I wanted part of their gift to be the way that they had come together unconsciously to form this (semi-)cohesive meditation on their senior years.  I also wanted, however, the final poem to look “poemy,” so I re-saved, inserted some additional line breaks.  And VOILA! (That exclamation point is warranted, I think.) I had a seven-page found poem written by all sixteen of my wonderful, lovely DE students.

I recorded an introduction so I could explain my process, then recorded myself reading the poem (‘cause the kids like to hear my voice—they love getting audio feedback on their essays a la Jim Burke).  I then sent them (via Schoology, a site I highly recommend) the Word document versions of the final poem, the draft of the poem with the kids’ initials, and my two recordings.  They loved it.  It made them cry, which made me cry, which made me realize all over again how much I’ll miss them.

Anyway, this blog post is reaching epic proportions, and I haven’t even included the poem!  (Sorry, Ashley.)  All of this comes back to the main point: I use blogs with my classes.  And I love it.

P.S. (from Ashley) Jen and I agreed to feature the poem on the writing portion of this site, and we also decided to include the audio of her reading the poem below. The text of the poem can be found here. I hope that it is inspirational for you; I know that it was for me. On the writing portion, there's another post about student blogs and Comments 4 Kids, an awesome site (and hashtag on twitter) that helps your students get more readers and comments. Jen also shared her assignment sheet with the rubric that she used this year (though, excellent teacher as she is, she plans to revise for next year). Enjoy!