Everyone in my fifth grade class kept a journal. Our teacher told us that we would write daily journal entries in it, and then we would come back and read them later on. We would see the improvement in our writing. I was skeptical, mostly because I hated boring work, and a popular punishment at my house was writing sentences over and over again, because that is good discipline or something.
As an aside, I wonder if I am even going to teach Clover how to write by hand. Susan probably will, and that is good, because she has much better handwriting than mine.
Anyhow, I dreaded the daily journals. Looking back is it hilarious, because I’ve written about three or four times as much in this post so far, than I did on any day back then. I used a fat pencil and paper that approached being classified as cardboard. The lines were probably an inch or more tall, with about half an inch of leading.
The first time we read them was six weeks after we started. I was one of the first children to do so. It was embarrassing, I couldn’t even read what I had written half the time, and my spelling was lacking. I would leave out words (which I still do), but for the world of me I couldn’t figure out what I had left out, so some of the sentences were just gibberish. However, as I was reading the magic happened: the words made more sense, the spelling and grammar were consistent, and it just generally became easier to read.
I started getting excited as I read it (as I do), and of course that means I was reading aloud faster, and louder (yup, that’s me). By the time I was reading the events of the day before I was convinced that writing was the meaning of life, and that I would be an okay adult after all!
Practice was really important. Practice is really important. That is why when I think about how I can make my world a better place, I always get back to self-publishing (or, ya know, blogging). It is powerful, and I think it is the six weeks of journaling that people need to understand that they have a voice, and the tools to use it. That is why I host so many WordPress sites, and why I encourage folks to use them whenever I remember. Writing to express an idea is not a limited skill, it won’t ever be wasted. It augments nearly everything else a person can do, and 11 year-old me wants everyone to feel great about themselves in the same way.