Recursive Journaling

In last year's English 101, I used student blogs to try to get students to reflect on their political ideals. I was dissatisfied with the depth they achieved. One possible solution is recursive journaling. This is where students write an initial journal, and then, after some discussion and additional information, they revisit the journal entry.

This process was briefly described in Lisa Taylor's article, “Reading Desire: From Empathy to Estrangement, from Enlightenment to Implication.” Students in Taylor's teacher-education course write their first journal as they read  Persepolis, commenting especially on their identification with Marjane. Students read contextual materials alongside Persepolis and learn more about history, then revisit their first journal. The purpose of this activity was to have students question their empathic identifications, which often are merely projections of the self onto the other. The recursive journals allowed students to examine their assumptions and place of privilege. 

Persepolis image from Slant Magazine

Have you used recursive journaling? If so, what sort of guidance did you provide to students?

The importance of attendance

One day I'm going to sit down and crunch the numbers on this, to get absolute proof. Regardless of the flaws in my data collection, I feel confident in saying that students who miss a lot of class end up with lower grades. And that's before the late penalty is added in.

For evidence I offer the following chart of grades and absences from two sections of the same undergraduate literature class. Notice the correlations after 9 absences--missing more than 3 weeks of class.

Average	Absences
0.8975	0
0.9026	1
0.8749	2
0.927	2
0.8694	2
0.7117	2
0.887	3
0.8669	3
0.8654	3
0.8478	3
0.9609	3
0.8712	3
0.9296	3
0.9311	3
0.8658	3
0.8684	3
0.815	3
0.6684	3
0.8893	3
0.8951	3
0.8571	3
0.8492	4
0.8423	4
0.9549	4
0.9195	4
0.8682	4
0.8893	4
0.9124	4
0.8364	4
0.8088	4
0.9016	4
0.9133	4
0.921	4
0.9254	4
0.8686	5
0.8512	5
0.8427	5
0.8238	5
0.8084	5
0.7495	5
0.8531	6
0.5819	7
0.8561	7
0.8788	7
0.7998	7
0.884	8
0.8017	9
0.8985	9
0.7992	10
0.7742	12
0.7273	13
0.7956	14
0.7326	14
0.6206	16
0.7638	16
0.7191	19
0.4008	21