My whole life I have loved music - particularly playing the piano! I love the flowing feeling of running my fingers up and down the long stretch of piano keys. The many songs I play have been a huge way of how I express my feelings and personality. There are so many different ways we can express our feelings, personality, and ideas to others. If you ever meet my family, one of the first things you may learn about us is that we completely consider ourselves the worst writers in the world. We love to laugh and joke about it all the time. While I was on my mission in North Carolina, I actually wrote a poem. When my mom read it, she declared, "I finally have a child that is a writer!!!" I will admit that I do enjoy writing poems. I don't know much about poem structure, or anything like that, I just "follow my heart" per se. I also love, love, LOVE to take pictures - especially of the things that I cherish (nature, family, music, friends, etc.)

I always wish that I could take a photography class, but alas, I don't have the funds to purchase a high-tech camera. To me, taking pictures and playing the piano are, for sure, a 'form' of writing. Like they say, "A picture is worth a thousand words." It's how I express myself. It is how I share my "voice" with others. I have also loved writing in a journal. It's so fun to take time to look back at the things I thought were important in my youth, and compare them to what is important to me now. So, I can say that throughout my life, I have loved "writing" more than I actually realized. I even enjoyed writing assignments in school - well, that was until I had to start writing research papers. BLECH!!! This has ultimately been my reaction to research papers! Until . . . I took English 2010 my first semester in College. Now that was a blast! I came to love writing research papers! (It could be due to the fact that our professor allowed us to choose our own topic). It was wonderful to study and learn about something that I truly cared about. I have also really enjoyed this writing assignment of blogging. It's been so fun to be able to put my own voice into this writing, and include various forms of literature that help me express my ideas. I realize that when I am a teacher, my students will have multiple 'writing assignments' to accomplish. As I do this, I want to make sure that each student has a chance to express their ideas as well as their personality. I loved the idea of having students choose for themselves (or even from a list of topics) of what they want to 'write' about. Since I love music so much, I think it would be fun to allow students to even write songs with lyrics to express their understandings of certain content that has been discussed in class. For example:

There are so many different forms of writing that teachers can open up to their students (facebook, blogging, music, photography, poems, oral language, skits, etc.). I guess what I'm saying is that I don't want to be known as the teacher that makes my students write page after page after page. I believe that the more fun the learning process is for the students, the more likely they will be to understand, retain, and apply the content. This will also help with diversity in the classroom. Students don't all learn the same way, and they don't all express themselves the same way. This could help create a classroom environment where students feel comfortable sharing their ideas, understandings, and personalities.