Dear Dr. Hartman,
This journey into the teaching voice in writing for my Inquiry Project has been the most interesting one I have ever taken. I personally think the best way to explain all this in my reflection is to explain my website itself.
With The Beginning, I wanted to do what the page itself says. I thought the best way to start my journey was to define voice in writing itself before trying to understand how it is taught or isn't taught. I wanted to show the many ways I have been exposed to voice itself, in and out of writing. This gradually led to the journey of the actual definition of voice, which honestly can be interpreted into so many ways. I made sure to include the picture of my daybook because even though I used it to explore my topic, my daybook is my voice. It's my thoughts, notes, wishes, plans, etc. I felt that this was appropriate. Lastly on The Beginning, I used this as an opportunity for my visual piece. I know that the visual piece is supposed to make sense without words, but I wanted to explain why I picked this representation. Part of my observation in my studies this semester, there have been frequent links to therapeutic writing with the use of voice as a tool and more and more people are using their voice to speak up about mental illness. This was a very personal representation for me and like my roommate's sister once told me, "If I don't speak up, then how will other's know that someone is out there that understands them?" (she gave me her full permission to use this quote).
With What Are We Seeing, I wanted to show how my sources were interacting with each other. The black circles are quotes from my secondary scholarly sources and the green quote boxes are directly from my questionnaire. I felt it was important to bold the ones that really spoke out to me in this topic and that really helped me understand of how teachers use writing or how it can be used or the conversation that has been happening around it.
Finally, with my Daybook, which the unicorn picture on The Beginning will take you directly to, I had so much going on that I wanted to show the many ways I have explored this topic. What was interesting was the webinars I attended for work really got me thinking about the use of genre with voice writing instruction (similar to my studies in both this class and 501). I used this as an opportunity to show my struggles, my thoughts, direct works with our own class texts, and trying to visually see where everything connected.
All in all, I still have questions and I have some answers. From what I have observed, it is not that voice is diminished in institutional writing as it had once been, but more so how instructors are trying to bring out student voice in writing and the different tools to do this. One of the things that intrigued me the most was one of my sources discussing that students not just wanting to use their voice in writing, but understanding what purpose their writing has. So shouldn't we also be teaching them that their voice does have a purpose?
In the response to my questionnaire, one of the answers really caught my attention with how to bring out student voice in writing. Her explanation of how she would ask the students questions and bring out their own responses and read it back to them. I felt this was an interesting response on how to show students they do have a say in their academic writing and that their words do matter. I know I have experienced many times as a student on what I was trying to say and if it made sense, so having this type of listening-response framework would be a wonderful way for a student to understand that they do have a place in writing.
One of the things that resonated with me was the discussion about how students are afraid to show vulnerability in their writing due to judgement. I experienced this myself with the creation of this website. As I write this reflection, I am absolutely terrified of the judgement I might receive since I am exposing parts of myself in this modality. I am exposing parts of my voice to understand voice itself.
I don't truly know if I have any grounding answers, all I know is there is a conversation and the conversation is showing that this is important. Students are wanting to know that their words matter and have a purpose in their writing, mostly in their academic writing. I began to understand this myself in my creation and analysis of my WAD. I began to realize through my own process that I wanted to hear what the student had to say but was (and still am) unsure of how to do this. From what I can see, it is not just about voice, but it is the student themselves learning that there is a purpose for their writing in general. This honestly had me think about the many times I was in high school. We would be given writing assignments, the handouts, outlines, etc. but no one could really understand what our purpose was. You ask the teacher and your were told that it was to learn writing, okay great but why? I feel like those why's are important to students and instructors right now. It is a blend of understanding that students have a voice in their writing that has a purpose outside of academics.
I plan to continue to pursue this topic. I still have so many questions and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of this topic. Thankfully, our chapters in CP have really helped guide me through this topic and so did my WAD in trying to understand this from an instructor's point of view. This has been a wonderful and insightful topic to explore.
Thank you,
Tesla