blogging is ~ medicine for the heart

When I was still teaching at university, a student  – let’s call her Amy – told me she wanted to start a blog. Amy is a recovering cutter: for a long time she has laddered her arms and legs with razor cuts, as a way of coping with an overwhelming world.

The first day of class that semester, Amy had come to me in tears after class. She couldn’t do our (mandatory) class listserv, she said. She’d been told by her educational technology professor that she was incapable of learning technology, and she believed it. How could she do my class w/ this requirement?

I gave her a hug while she cried. I walked her through email (she’d never really done email — and yes, there are thousands of kids like Amy). I sat with her and listened. And for the past two months, Amy has posted the required 3-4 entries to the class list.

She also shared, in one of our daily quickwrites, that she is a recovering cutter. Her research project was on cutting, the causes, the treatment, and her own recovery process. It was a strong essay, like the strong young woman who produced it.

Here’s the thing: I learned to ‘speak digital’ at National Writing Project. At first I had to do it the hard way (no technology where I worked): manually networking computers  was the only way to get the kids talking to each other. But in addition to the technology, I also learned the research on why it’s important to give our students opportunities to write and learn digitally. And I’ve just been increasing that knowledge since I began, 20 years ago.

Without the training & support I received from NWP, Amy, for instance, would never have had a teacher who has learned (the hard way — through experiencing the learning curve myself!) how to think and read and write digitally. As Marc Prensky notes, this generation (and the one coming up behind it) speak digital fairly fluently. Or at least most of them do (there are still thousands of students like Amy, however). Teachers? Not so much. So when a student like Amy comes along — who was home-schooled for a while, and then in small rural schools w/out access to digital literacy education — how will s/he (the teacher) defuse that fear?

Amy ended up emailing all over the place. And she eventually shared her amazing recovery story on a blog, possibly a precursor to a memoir. Yes — a blog. Which intimidates even many digital natives. But Amy jumped in, before the end of the semesty. Because her teacher had a blog, and was able to discuss it and teach it w/ familiarity. Digital (& blogging) was — for Amy — literally ‘heart medicine.’ Her hard road to recovery may well help others, as well — Just as it has enabled her to move from shame, pain, & guilt to healing.

Far too many non-teaching ‘education experts’ dismiss digital writing — technology in general — as just ‘business’ training. But for so many of us, it can literally be what comforts us. Don’t ever be afraid to put your voice out there. Someone needs to hear your story. Someone needs to know what you’ve learned.