EMILY STILLMAN
Self Expression
“Joy is fun and celebratory, yet it is not only about having fun and celebrating in schools and classrooms (although that is important). It is also the embodiment of, learning of, and practice of love of self and humanity, and care for and help for humanity and the earth. Joy encompasses happiness/smiles, truth, beauty, aesthetics, art, wonder, personal fulfillment and solutions to the social problems of the world.” - Gholdy Muhammad
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Opportunities for self-expression in the classroom uniquely allow students to connect freedom, creativity, exploration, challenge and learning. Throughout my instruction, I have been working on incorporating more opportunities for students' self-expression. Free writing has been a primary source of self-expression in my classroom. I first introduced my students to free writing as warm-up inspired by Urbanski's (2006) "Warming up the writing muscles: Two tools for intervention." Urbanski discusses free writing as follows:
"My view of free writing is writing at such a rate of speed that the voice in my head takes over and starts to express itself through my fingers." (Urbanski, 2006)
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I handed out lined sheets of paper and instructed each student to write for five minutes, uninterrupted, about whatever came to their minds. We do a lot of structured text-dependent analysis writing and opinion writing, but the students are rarely encouraged or instructed in the curriculum to just write freely and express themselves with no worries or constraints. I gave them the option ahead of time that they could have me read their writing or keep it for themselves.
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The class had a positive, engaged reaction to free-writing. Our post-writing discussion is captured in the video clip below.
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Students described their free writing experience as expressed as "feeling like letting the writing go" and "putting your thoughts on a piece of paper." They said the felt relaxed and calmer after, and that they really enjoyed that activity and wanted more time. They also expressed a desire to share out loud, and about 8 students read their pieces to the class.
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Artifact 8: Free Writing Debrief Clip
Artifact 9: Free Writing Samples
Their writing varied in topic and length, ranging from a recap of their morning to a list of their hopes and dreams for the future. Some student samples are pictured; these samples exemplify the depth of thought, care and effort that students put into their free writing and hope to continue writing about in the future. ​
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Relating to joy, activities like free writing open up the classroom to become a safe, imaginative, liberating space for self-expression. Viewing the the pursuit of joy in education as “human development and helping children come to self and recognize and celebrate their own genius” (Muhammad, 100), activities like free writing can cultivate joy in the classroom.
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Joy related to self-expression can also stem through creative and communal efforts to decorate and display student work around the classroom, particularly creative works. Artifact 10 shows a bulletin board I put up using student's work. For the assignment, they were asked to illustrate a character in the novel The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster based on the descriptions of the character in the book. They were also asked to explain, in accordance with one of our main topics for unit, why the character's name is an example of wordplay.
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This quick assignment was intended to work toward two listed CCS standards for the unit, while also providing students with the opportunity to illustrate a character as they pictured them in their mind while reading. Students enjoyed this activity and spent time in the following days looking at/reading their classmates' work and admiring the board. This board generated collaborative and joyful conversation centered around self-expression, while also demonstrating our learning goals and bringing some color to the classroom walls.
Artifact 10