Limitations

Time constraint was a limitation of this study. I believe that more meetings with students

over an extended period, and more time for my own personal reflection would have benefitted all

involved. A larger participant pool could have better served this research. Patricia was a

balancing point between Madrona and Romans education and English experiences, but it is

disappointing that she was unable to complete phase two prompts. More participants would have

offered more insight into a greater sample of the community.

Another limitation was my inability to record discussions. Recordings would have

provided more detail and potential for insight than notes, but I believe sacrificing recording to

maintain a comfortable atmosphere for participants was the right choice.

Reading personal journals would have provided me with more writing to assess, but

my instinct is that journaling would have been less personal if shared.

Presentation Feedback

I was pleased with the positive feedback I received from panelists after my presentation.

The feedback session helped me to clarify and structure my thoughts. Based on the consistency

of highly skilled/ strong competence ratings, I believe I was ultimately able to effectively

communicate my Action Research project and experience. Following my presentation, two of

the panelists approached me and congratulated me on the value of my research. Another told me

she was touched by the personal nature of my work.

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The theme of community and individual value in this work and my personal value system

seems to be reflected in the responses, tremendously satisfying me. The only section of the

rubric in which I did not receive consistently high scores, was the limitations & next steps,

which due to time, I slightly neglected. Ive more fully incorporated these into the writing of this

paper to address my presentation shortcoming.

General Findings

There was a consistent theme of family throughout this study. This theme made my

interactions with Patricia and Madrona more personalized because many of their stories reflected

values similar to my own. Talking to Madrona about her granddaughter reminded me of my

grandmother who passed a few years ago. Relating parallels to our intimate relationships seemed

to bring us closer together and solidify her learning context and writing in her personal value

system, family and legacy. This stresses the value of close teacher-student relationships.

At the conclusion of this research I more fully realized the power of the discussion

portion, not only in creating a safe environment for students and providing them with personal

connection to a native speaker, but also as an opportunity to gain insight into their values,

priorities, and motivations. This was key to focusing assignments on student interest, and

personalizing learning, ensuring meaningful learning.

I recognized the effects of imbalanced writing experiences through research and

personal experiences, but witnessing this during research was enlightening. I was interested to

discover that Roman innately desired this balance in his writing, while Patricia did not yet seem

to yearn for alternate forms of writing.

Initially, I was opposed to incorporating any grammar or error correction into this

research, but became less rigid on this point as the work progressed. Madrona needed some
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academic training and Roman directly requested it. I remembered feeling frustrated in Peru

trying to learn a language without access to instruction or grammar support. I was embarrassed

by my lack of knowledge and proficiency, just as Roman admitted being embarrassed to ask

clarification questions in class.

Teaching Practice

My personal struggles in learning to balance my L1-L2 identity and academic-personal

writer identity were an inspiration to this research. Recalling my own learning experiences gave

me insight into student struggles and helped me to balance my own teacher-student identities. I

was learning alongside my students, rather than teaching them. This flexibility opened great

potential for personal and professional growth. I will always remember to be a teacher and a

student.

Writing this paper was difficult! However, I gained much insight through my struggles

to express my experiences and findings in writing. This paper is about accessing inner self

through writing. In writing it, I became more in tune with my teacher self, merging her more

deeply with my inner self. I gained insight into myself, and my students by maintaining notes

and journaling. I was more conscious of my actions and intentions. Because of this, I plan to

continue this type of journaling throughout my teaching career. Teacher autobiography can

positively affect teaching practice (Connelly & Clandinin, 1987).

I also realized that I am a researcher. I found comfort in discovering meaningful texts,

which supported my innate personal and teaching philosophies. Reading these texts was like

talking to a wise friend about something personal and important. Researching for this paper

provided me with lists for future reading, and introduced me to some of the minds Im attracted

to, providing me support in my future teaching practice. It also helped me to realize that reading
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the perspectives of these thinkers provides me with a more holistic understanding of my own

ideas and beliefs. Researching grounds my thinking and informs my action. I will rely on the

wisdom of others and my instinct and thoughtfulness to continually improve my teaching

practice.

Finally, the intimate relationships I developed with participants were supportive of their

learning and mine, reinforcing my faith in the value of strong interdependent community. While

I will not be able to meet as intimately as frequently with future students once I have an entire

classroom of students, I will strive to build close and intimate relationships and to positively

affect all of my students. I will incorporate personal writing and encourage student expression

into all my future classrooms. My journey through this research has reaffirmed the value of

writing for self, and raises questions on how to incorporate it meaningfully in a classroom where

academic writing is stressed. In the future, I would love to incorporate a version of this sort of

expressive writing project into ESL and English curriculums.

Final Reflection

The most challenging aspect of this research was the writing process. The heart of this

project is the idea that expressive narrative writing can help the writer to access her inner self,

exploring and sharing it with the world. In exploring expressive narrative writing with my

students, I have also attempted to integrate my inner self into the creation of this academic

writing. The introduction of the timid inner self to the critical analogical world of academic

writing has been a trying experience for me. Incorporating narrative into this research paper was

an attempt to negotiate my understanding of self through this process and define myself

holistically by integrating personal and academic writing.

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The alienation of academic writing from inner self, discussed in this paper, was a

reflection of my own sense of estrangement and lack of writing balance. As discussed, academic

writing is designed as something separate from self, objectively formulaic. This writing research

has been an attempt to personalize my exterior self, conditioned through years of academic

training and discover a sense of balance by uniting it with my inner self.

I feel the effects of conditioning in one form, neglecting another, perhaps more than

most. Because of my strong connection to and experience in writing for self, I am sensitive to

the effects of imbalanced conditioning toward writing for another has upon this transformative

expression. I am an avid personal writer. Over a decade of writing between undergraduate and

graduate studies, has been primarily expressive narrative. My recent studies have reminded me

of the estrangement I felt when first graduating with my BA in English 13 years ago. It took

years of slow and uncertain journaling, writing workshops, and much self-exploration to

decondition myself of academic writing, coaxing my inner self back to the pages before me.

The Action Research context seems to have been the ideal arena for my first attempt at

reconciling personal and academic writing because it is a philosophical stance towards the

world, an attitude of enquiry that enables people to question and improve taken-for-granted ways

of thinking and acting (McNiff and Whitehead, p. 7). Similar to the hyphenation of two

language identities I sought to assist in merging within my students, the action and writing of this

research was an attempt at my own hyphenated writer identity. And as an extension, it was a

hyphenation of my own inner and outer selves. Through this study, and the research and writing

it required, I believe that there is less distance between these two selves within me. I feel greater
balance of my multiple identities; learner, teacher, student, native speaker, non-native speaker,

academic writer, personal writer. They are all me.