Task 2b My Journal Writing Experience

This image is taken from my Reflective Journal. I found it when I was first doing some research on reflective writing as part of the ROL for BAPP Arts. I liked it because the tentative step that the foot is making in the water was akin to the tentative step I was first taking into experiential learning. The reflection in the water made me think of the reflections I was making about my work for BAPP Arts.

Jennifer A Moon, in her book Learning Journals: a handbook for reflective practice and professional development, talks about the fact that journals can be in any form, e.g. they can be audio or visual, not just written. They can include, images, online material, in fact, they can include anything that is relevant to the person producing the journal. I thought back to the campus section on 'finding inspiration from our senses' for our work and for our reflective journals, that I have written about in a previous blog, and realised that: 'the sky's the limit' when it comes to journal writing.

 I have often got inspiration for dances from images and from music and written about the ideas I have had in note form; I had not considered this to be any form of diary, until I read about reflective journal writing.

I video my dances and look back at them, think about what I might like to change, sometimes incorporating suggestions from colleagues, or from the dancers themselves, and then implement the changes. I then video the dance again and compare the new version with the original. 

I hadn't realised, until I did ROL that videoing my work was, according to the concepts put forward by Moon, also a form of diary, or that I was, in fact, engaging in the reflective process when I was stepping back and looking at my work. Donald Schon refers to this process of thinking about your work after you have done it as: reflection-on-action.

As a dance teacher I am also frequently engaged in the process of what Schon refers to as: reflection-in-action; this is the concept of 'thinking on your feet' that is very necessary for any teacher of any subject. You have a lesson plan, but, if it isn't working, you have to change it during the lesson. Sometimes it can be that it is working better than anticipated and the pupils want to spend longer than you had planned on a particular subject so, once again, the lesson plan has to be changed. 

When I am choreographing, I occasionally have to change the work I had planned while I am teaching it, because, whilst conveying it to my dancers, I realise that it doesn't look right on their bodies. I frequently experiment with an idea that has just emerged on the spur of the moment, so, once again, I am adapting to the situation as it happens and employing Schon's reflection-in-action.

Kottcamp thought that reflection during action was much harder to do than reflection after action. BAPP Reader 2 makes the point that this is possibly because, as an academic, he is used to theorising, so finds this process easier, whilst someone in the performing arts might find reflecting during action easier, because they are used to doing it. This made me think of my own teaching experience. 

I have taught all ages and abilities dance and drama. I have worked with professional dancers and trained dance teachers and I have found that it is certainly not the case that all people in the performing arts find 'thinking on their feet' easy. I have encountered many dancers who find improvisation really difficult and teachers who are not able to adapt their work on the spot and need to meticulously plan it and then stick to it. I made a few notes in my journal about this and thought that exploring the value of improvisation in dance might be a possible line of inquiry to think about.

Moon talks about four levels of reflection in relation to journal writing. They are:

• Descriptive Writing- writing which tells a story but doesn't reflect upon what's written
• Descriptive Writing with some Reflection- writing which gives a basic account and poses some questions but doesn't really attempt to answer them or analyse events.
• Reflective Writing(1)- Writing which is focused and has a sense of being 'mulled over' and has evidence of external ideas.
• Reflective Writing(2)- in which Moon states the account shows deep reflection and it incorporates a recognition that the frame of reference with which an event is viewed can change.

I think that, during the course of writing my reflective journal for BAPP Arts, my own reflection has deepened. I have always been someone who questions myself and my work and always looked at the work of others for inspiration, but, I find myself reading more about what other industry experts are doing than I ever used to, and making notes about ideas that emerge, as a result.

For example I recently read Christopher Bannerman's article In Curation: The development of Dancscross and walking with Zhuangzi. I also found the following Youtube video on the subject of Artscross.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-23PaL7Ric

I found Bannerman's comments about the collaboration with ResCen Research Centre and Beijing Dance Academy fascinating. Reading about his comments on the cultural development of China made me think about a book I read called Mao's Last Dancer.

This book is the autobiography of professional dancer Li Cunxin and follows his struggles to become a professional dancer in China. He actually trained with the Beijing Dance Academy before his defection to the United States where he danced with Houston Ballet Company. 

The book had a profound effect upon me. I read it at a time when I was teaching a set of teenagers who had low self-esteem problems and a mentality of giving up at the first hurdle with dance movements they found difficult. 

I read these pupils a few excerpts from the book, to show them how perseverance was paramount to Li's success and to the training regime he endured. 

He mentions, in his book, about the fact that he practiced pirouettes in the dark to improve his kinaesthetic awareness. One of the things these particular pupils were struggling with was double pirouettes in open positions, so I tried getting them to turn in the dark in a couple of Ballet classes.They found the concept innovative and it generated fresh enthusiasm. In some cases I noticed a definite change in attitude in their dance classes and a much more positive approach to trying difficult dance movements.

I wrote in my reflective journal about how Christopher Bannerman's article had made me reflect upon a previous teaching experience. I also questioned what could have caused the pupils to have developed such a negative attitude and wrote about the possible reasons for their negativity. 

Moon talks about different techniques to aid journal writing such as:

• Free Flow Writing - the process of just starting to write random thoughts down and seeing what emerges
• Day notes- gathering ideas and jotting them down in note form
• Rehearsal Technique- holding an imaginary conversation with yourself, in which you pose questions and answer them as if you are the other person; for example, practicing what you imagine might happen in a conflict, or in a confrontation with someone.

She discusses different styles of journal writing. One of those is  Dialogue writing, in which two people give their thoughts to the journal. I thought this was an interesting concept.

I decided to rewrite my account of my negative pupils mentioned above from the perspective of one of my pupils. I then developed it further into a scripted, short duologue to use at a future date with my drama students.

 After I had written this imaginary pupil's version of events, I realised that I had never actually sat my pupils down and talked to them properly about their negative feelings. I had tried to present them with a solution without really knowing the root of the problem. My approach had helped some, but not all, of the pupils. I made a note in my journal to talk more to my pupils and take on board their comments.

I also realised that I had actually used this technique of looking at something from another perspective many times in my drama classes as topics for improvisation. For example, I recently gave my pupils the topic of imagining they were someone famous being interviewed. They then had to change it round and become the interviewer. I had just never considered this concept in relation to journal writing.

I have found the task of looking at different approaches to journal writing very thought provoking. It has made me far more aware of the world around me, because I find I am looking at every day things for inspiration. 

I also found it helpful to read some other blogs by people on BAPP Arts. I was very interested to discover, while reading Kim Morrison's  blog, that she used Evernote as a digital diary. I had never heard of this, so I looked into it further, and decided this would be something really useful for me. I spend hours looking at websites and finding interesting articles and it would be great to gather the information I require from them in one place, instead of having to search back and remember where I found them. 


 When looking at journals written by other people and comments they had made, these words, by Virginia Woolf, struck a chord, as I thought they summarised my idea of what my own diary should be:

       I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art.