POST #4 BERLINER

       The article, The Capacity to Reframe: A Crucial Attribute of Reflective Practitioners, discusses the act of maintaing a journal as a teacher. Keeping a teaching journal gives you a space to generate teaching ideas, work out pedagogical problems, reflect on your successes and struggles in the classroom, and put your past insights to work in planning future courses.
      The article analyzes how a teaching journal is a valuable resource when creating documents.  Having a consistent and detailed record of your insights and particular thoughts and successes will make the task of telling stories about your teaching substantially easier, and will make those stories more persuasive. Keeping up with a teaching journal will continue to help you through your academic career as you move toward tenure review, where detailed and polished teaching materials are key.
      While people may end up with lots of material to use in formal, public writing, keep in mind that the teaching journal itself should be a private document. Keeping your journal private allows you the space to fret, whine, rant, and about all the amazing and difficult things being a teacher allows. A private journal is also important should you write about any concerns you have with particular students. These entries need never see the light of day in their raw form, and keeping them that way protects you and your students.
      Ms. Ramos encourages her students at the beginning of each lesson to write a journal entry.  This gives students extreme freedom in their writing and gives them a sense of responsibility.  I find this to be a great technique.  Journaling will definitely be a method that I will employ from Ms. Ramos in my own classroom one day.  I want my students to feel independent with their writing.  I also think journaling is a good idea because it can help me, as a teacher, see where the students are at, and see how the students feel about certain subjects.  
       Journaling also works for students.  One of the best things about daily journal writing is that it can take so many forms. Teachers can use journal writing to meet specific goals, or the purpose can be wide open. Some teachers check journal writing and work on polishing skills; others use journals as the one "uncorrected" form of writing that students produce. Some teachers provide prompts to help students begin their writing. Others leave decisions about the direction and flow of student journals up to the students. When reading something, many kids are not going to come out and say how they feel about what it is they are reading.  In a journal, they know that it is theirs and that they can freely express themselves. I feel like I will be able to learn a lot about my quieter students through reading their journals.