The power of journaling

By Melissa Larson, Middle School and Upper School English Teacher

I love to write.  Shocking, I know: an English teacher who loves to write!  But I do. I love to write short stories; I love to write narrative nonfiction; I love to write grocery lists. I love it all.  When I reflect upon when my love for writing began, the first memory that comes to mind is a weird little story that I wrote in the fourth grade. The story traced my fictional journey across a desert with my best buddy, a dinosaur. I think it was the last sentence of the story that earned me a visit to the guidance counselor: “We were friends for many years, before he ate me.” But no, that’s not the moment that established for me that writing was an essential part of my DNA. It was journal writing. Good old-fashioned, daily journal writing.  

In the seventh grade, I had an English teacher named Miss DeBisco, who had the most fabulous permed brown hair that the 1980s could offer. Early in the year, she announced that we would write daily journal entries in a notebook; she would write a prompt on the board, and our job was to write for ten minutes about the prompt. Some of the kids groaned. I was secretly intrigued but knew enough to feign disinterest (I was still trying to get a spot at the cool kids’ lunch table). 

I quickly grew to love that first ten minutes of class. Miss DeBisco would ask us about our favorite type of car or our favorite character from a book, and I would happily write about my love of Jeep Wranglers or why Stacy from The Babysitter’s Club was the bomb. Through Miss DeBisco’s feedback, I learned that my writing was funny (at least to her). “Ha!” she would write.  “You are so funny!” I’m funny, I would think. She thinks my writing is funny.  Between her positive feedback and the joy that I felt when I was able to express myself through the written word, I began to see the magic in writing.

This is a personal reason why my seventh and eighth graders keep a daily journal in English class. However, there are many more pragmatic reasons why I believe in journal writing. Over the years, I have done research, and there is data to support that something as simple as writing in a little journal on a regular basis can make somebody a better writer. Like Miss DeBisco, I don’t assign overly personal prompts. I might learn what a student’s favorite time of the year is (usually July), or who her first friend was (always adorable), or perhaps how her Monday morning is going (always tired). Nonetheless, responding to regular journal prompts is a form of “writing to learn,” a practice in which short, informal writing tasks help students think through ideas. According to Columbia University’s Center for Professional Education for Teachers, writing to learn “includes low-stakes writing assignments that generate authentic responses to prompts on a variety of topics. The goal of writing to learn is simply to unpack a subject, and the primary audience is the writer him/herself” (“Write to Learn: The Power of Personal Writing,” 2024). This form of writing helps a student to find her voice, to express herself, to process her emotions, and to define her perspective on a topic. She can discover that she is an insightful writer, or a flowery writer, or a funny writer.  She can process her feelings over her pet who recently crossed the rainbow bridge.  She can take a stand on why Italy would be the best place in the world to live. (I concur.)  

Keeping a journal also helps young writers with fluency. Writing fluency refers to one’s ability to quickly and competently express herself. Nancie Atwell, whose work in middle school writing instruction is renowned to the point of hallowed, recommends journal writing as a “powerful strategy for students to gain writing fluency…and freely generate ideas” (Atwell, 1998). In other words, though the students might appear to simply be writing about their favorite car or proposing a new nationwide holiday that does not yet exist, what is happening is much deeper than that. They are improving their ability to express themselves in writing.  Writing becomes a habit rather than an intimidating task. 

In keeping with Stuart's Cor Cordis, keeping a regular journal also supports a student’s health and well-being. We Are Teachers recently published a list of 18 reasons that journal writing is beneficial. A few reasons that I will mention here are as follows: Journal writing reduces stress, encourages creativity, can improve immune function, helps process negative thoughts and worries, regulates emotion, supports critical thinking, encourages goal-setting, and even strengthens handwriting (Staake, 2023). That last reason especially jumps out at me because we don’t write by hand anymore!  That is why I like for the students to keep their journals in a good old-fashioned black and white composition notebook. Their fine motor skills benefit from the workout! As I watch them put down their pens and shake out their cramping fingers, I feel for them, but I also feel like a track coach who is guiding her athletes through a 400-meter interval workout. It might hurt a bit, but their muscles will benefit in the long run.Track metaphors aside, when one considers all of the health benefits from 10 minutes, a writing implement, and a notebook, what’s not to love?

We are living in a time when the screen is more dominant than the page. It’s hard to compete with TikTok and ChatGPT, but in many ways, those platforms are doing our brains no favors. To me, bringing back simple habits such as journaling in a 99-cent composition book is where it’s at. In the same way that we should “make new friends but keep the old,” we should not be afraid to resurrect the tried and true teaching practices that benefit children. Sometimes it’s OK to get in the proverbial DeLorean and bring back something that feels a little basic, a little antiquated. Aside from perms (sorry, Miss DeBisco), some of these practices are what’s missing from education in 2024.