Teacher’s diary
Even now in the 21st century, I love the feeling of paper and pen in my hand. I love scribbling notes and sketching ideas. I feel “ready” when my notebook is with me everywhere I go.
I always look for the “best” one and I often buy new one as I pass the stationery store. Often unintentionally! Often with realization that I do not really need another one. Always happy!
I have kind of weird relationship with my notebook. I do my best to be faithful and use it to the fullest (last page) but I often fail finding another one with even better feature or design…or something I haven’t even considered before!
That’s for my confession as a notebook addict. However, I do use them seriously and effectively. I write down new ideas, observations from lessons, plans and projects to work on or nice things to remember.
Just recently, I learned one more thing about using notebooks: Just use them! Write every thought and don’t edit or wait for ones that may be better. Just fill one page after another. Very often I waited for the idea to be shaped or more developed before I put it down on paper and very often I ended up with blank pages. It works pretty well with just writing down everything.
Would you like to share about your relationship with notebooks? How do you use them/choose them?
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ~Sylvia Plath
Hi V
I am crazy about notebooks… I have different ones for different uses. I have a cute one as my teaching journal. I have a “life” one that Shelly gave me that has a cover that reads “things are never as bad as they seem. So dream, dream, dream” . ANd the latest addition, which I bought in Glasgow for blog post ideas I have when I have no time for writing them – with “Hold On’People… I’m having an idea”
Big, supportive hug from one notebook addict to another
I wish I could get a notebook I could use in the shower. I have my best ideas there … but forget them by the time I get to a pen!
Johanna
Author of Teaching Spelling to English Language Learners
I love your idea Johanna! What a notebook it would be
It happens to me when I go for walks with my dog (I always forget to take something to write on).
Thank you!
Dear Ceci!
You are my notebook soulmate indeed!
Thanks for sharing and inspiration!!! I just got an idea how to use another notebook
ps. who are those people coming up with such ideas for notebooks?? I bet they do it intentionally to make language teachers crazy
Vladka, you have touched upon a topic which makes me tremble as if I”m a drug addict..I am positively ADDICTED to notebooks.
I took 2 pictures to show you the notebooks I”m using at the moment and also those waiting for me! From every trip abroad – I bring a notebook. From every visit to a stationery shop – I bring a notebook. From any place I go where i can get my hands on a notebook – I bring a notebook.
I hope it one day stops! the craziness of it=))
yet I enjoy it soo much))
Check the link for the pics and my descriptions of how I use these (this is all in addition to notebook phone app)))
http://around366.posterous.com/project366-addiction
Thank you for the post and for the fun it let me have!)))
Big hugs,
Ann
Dear vladimira,
Please count me on your notebook soul mate team. I still keep memories that go really long back in time when I was just a little girl and my mom came and asked me what I wanted as a present for my birthday “A copybook”! Would always be my answer. The wonderful thing is I write so much that I have started indexing my copybooks, mine don´t look so cute.
My daughter loves them too. I buy her a new one every time I travel and see a stationery shop. And we keep a treasure box at home with notes and letters that we write, mine even before she was born. I’m going to post in my blog to show my copybooks.
Debbie
Such a lovely post Vladka! And comments from such great ladies!
You made me realise I love notebooks too! I collect all conference notebooks and write some teaching ideas there for a lesson, a talk or drama script
However, a special one bought in a stationery shop for this purpose would be a better idea 
One for Spanish vocabulary. Loads more really! Let me just mention one more… – a pink one with 3 Disney princesses used for… English slang! Looks so innocent but.. slang is language as well! 
I think you have seen it Vladka in the summer;)
I’d love to have a shower notebook too- shower is such a great place for creativity to wake up!
Any other notebooks of mine? Of course! One – Lion King cover – from my primary school with some funny poems. One from my secondary school with all my grades and some notes taken when I was a teenage girl – so funny to read now! Following this direction —-> History notebooks from my secondary school with lots of notes taken at the back of it by me and my friends. I wasn’t particularly fond of History lessons then but the notebook is a great history of my teenage life!
Anyway, thanks for this post, so positive!:) You’ve made me feel like shopping for new notebooks! Yaaay!
Lots of hugs,
Ania
Can a man chime in to confess that he is a notebook addict, too? I have an entire box of notebooks yet can never resist buying more whenever i see one — and I always see one, tho can spend hours (literally) in some shop finding just the right one: small enough to carry yet not too small, unlined with paper the feels nice to the touch, and preferably cloth or leather covered. The problem is, that when I find just the right one, I don’t want to use it because I love the emptiness of it — if that makes any sense. Still there’s always one (or two!) in my bag, just in case
confession: I enjoy the feeling of reflecting on my lessons by jotting down notes on the train home or just out of the blue, but honestly, I don’t go back to my notes much. Writing the notes satisfies the need to reflect but I don’t see my notebooks as formal records of what I have done or directives for what I will do in the future. That aspect of my teacher diaries tends to take place in my heart and mind, colouring what I do in future lessons without any need for documentation. Am I the only one who uses notebooks in this way?