I think that it helps you to remember your best and worst
A teaching journal could be very useful, especially if you will be teaching the same course more than once. This journal will allow you to use your own reflections to make changes to differen aspects of the course. These changes might be teaching style, materials used, or classroom set up.
A journal allows even more organization throughout the course. As a result, the students will benefit as information is communicated to them.
The variety of teaching situations is so large, and the urgency of preparing for the very next class often so intense, that it is easy to rationalize foregoing some time to self-evaluate the experiences of past classes. A teaching journal can help us use our personal teaching experiences to recognize similar class situations, and then be more conscious of an approach we want to apply, avoiding repeated incompletely-thought-through reactions.
In my case it would help me keep track of what I found to be effective or not as the case may be. This in turn would allow me to adjust my method as appropriate.
Good afternoon, Barry! I think that keeping a teaching journal can be beneficial for more than the obvious instructional improvement focus. Granted, such a journal (which would be electronic for me) helps to see what strategy works with a particular group of students and what doesn’t. However, I think that a teaching journal addresses a more serious, if not important, legal matter: it’s a record of instructor activity to document his or her efforts to reach students so that any complaint from them can be dismissed.
If this sounds too litigious, I suggest that faculty need to be constantly aware of this aspect of teaching. After all, this isn’t 1950 any more; it’s 2011, and students are eager to complain about this and complain about that—which discourages faculty as much as it manifests anger on the part of the complaining student. So, a teaching journal helps to alleviate the stress caused by such complaining students. This, in turn, may help the faculty member be as calm as possible when confronted with angry students. The course material suggests as much when it focuses on how to handle aggressive students. The worst thing is to point to a syllabus as though the heavy hand of the law would come down on a student; on the opposite side, ignoring a complaining student just creates more anger.
Showing the student some portions of the teaching journal, however, would mollify the complainer, I think, because the faculty member would show the complaining student not so much what he or she (the student) didn’t accomplish in the course, but what the faulty member him- or herself tried to do to reach the students—all students, not just the complainer. It may be that the complaining student doesn’t realize that he or she isn’t the only one in the class who needs assistance. It may also be that deferring to the teaching journal helps the student to see that the faculty member is indeed concerned about his or her progress.
Finally, I like a teaching journal because I save almost every post or response for workshops like these on the principle that one never knows when one will be able to use the reply or post in a future conference paper.
Though I have not kept a teaching journal in the past, I see that it might be beneficial.
First, it would help me to reflect on student learning styles. It might also help me to reflect on problems that I have encountered with students, and brainstorm ideas for handling similar problems in the future.
Secondly, a teaching journal would help me to reflect on the activities, lessons, and assignments that I have planned for each course. If a course is only taught once in awhile, it might be difficult to remember which activities worked well and which activities were "flops." Several times, I have forgotten to write down new ideas for activities only to realize it half way through the next course.
A teaching journal will help with constant classroom and self-assessment so a plan for improvement and growth can be set into motion.
On the rare occassion that I had to miss a class because I was out of town, I have had a substitute teach the class. I have been able to review my journal with the substitute which has been very helpful. Reviewing my notes from previous classes that covered the same course content the substitute would be teaching was valuable.
I have found that using a teaching journal has helped me when new editions of the course textbook is published. Often times, the chapters are rearragned. What may have been in chapter 2 is now located in chapter 5. Since I use a lot of exercises to show how the content presented in the chapter is operationalized, using my journal I can easily adapt the content of my lectures/course activities to the new book.
As a new instructor I feel that I need all the organizational skills that I can find. The more preparation that I do, the more success that I feel that I will have. A journal will help me in every thing that I do.
Thank you
Rick
A teach journal would enable you to keep track of different teaching methods that would work with different students, and would enable you to become a better instructor.
A journal will allow you to see what approach you took towards instruction and how the class reacted. In reviewing your notes, you can then determine the best technique to use.
It allows me toi see how and what I did from semester to semester and make improvements along the way in terms of my approach or how the material was organized
Keeping notes on each day has been very helpful to me. Sometimes it is 12 weeks or longer before I am teaching the same material again. By looking back at my notes, I can remember what went well and what I need to change the next time around. This way, I don't end up making the same mistakes again.
I think that a journal in teaching allows you to write down thoughts about what type of information was presented, how it was presented...what worked, what didn't work so that you can always improve on future presentations of material to your classes. You can expand on materials as well as change areas of your presentation that may have not worked as well to engage students more effectively.
