Keeping a Journal Personal and
Private
It is the aim of journal writing
to invite deep personal exploration, but for educational as well as
accountability purposes a faculty or staff supervisor will normally read a
student’s reflections. Supervisors
should consider themselves under a tacit agreement not to reveal a student’s
private information nor share a student’s journal with others without the explicit
permission of the student.
Sometimes students may want to
journal about highly personal matters important to them but not to the
educational goals of the project. To
allow for this, the supervisor should let students know they can turn down any
pages in their journal that are of this sort and that they do not want the
supervisor to read. The supervisor explicitly agrees not to unfold such pages.
As we continue to assess Odyssey
and develop good engaged learning practices at Hendrix, it can be valuable for
supervisors to share what they learn from the experiences and outcomes students
describe in their journals. This should be done without identifying the student
or in ways that only reveal already public aspects of the student’s experience
or outcomes specific to the educational goals of the project.