As a teacher, I still have to write by hand for my Grade 3 students. I write their notes or information on my whiteboard or Loft TV and also have handwritten comments for their work. For this assignment, I found it challenging to simply write my ideas without a clear direction of what I wanted to write. It’s been a long time since I’ve freely written my thoughts in a reflective piece!
One thing I quickly noticed while completing this assignment was when I made a mistake while writing and editing my work; I couldn’t push ‘delete’ or use a whiteboard eraser to change my wording. Instead, I had to cross out (I couldn’t find my whiteout) the words I wanted to change. The messiness of the mistakes/crossing out bothers me, but because I chose to use a pen, I didn’t have many other options – unless I wanted to rewrite the piece entirely.
In the podcast, “From the Vault: Invention of the Book”, I appreciated how Robert and Joe highlighted when a person writes or documents something by hand, the written memory is very different from the memory you have in your brain (From the Vault: Invention of the Book, 2021). This thought resonated with me as when I was documenting my story and re-reading what I had written by hand, I felt the emotional context I was attempting to portray was lacking – the recollections and memories were challenging to put into words. One of the most significant differences I noticed in writing my ideas versus typing my thoughts is that I often read aloud what I’ve written and delete/edit accordingly. As a teacher, I love writing in my classroom and watching my students write, for University assignments, I strongly prefer typing. When writing by hand, I couldn’t simply move sentences around or have my spelling automatically corrected – I became very conscious of what I was writing. With typing, I’d have more of an opportunity to edit and change my work because of the ease of deleting, moving and adding additional thoughts. I feel I can better portray what I’d like to say with more concise thoughts and clarity while I’m typing.
I have attached below my written work – I included in my reflection one of my favourite poems I’ve received as a Teacher.
References:
Lamb, R and McCormick, J. May 26, 2020. The Invention of the Book (Part 1) [Audio podcast episode]. In From the Vault. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-to-blow-your-mind-21123915/episode/the-invention-of-the-book-part-63031174/