Grading Reconsidered

In his recent blog about Bruce Horner's "Students, Authorship, and The Work of Composition," Josh explains precisely (well, almost precisely) my sentiments about grading. As a students who once identified her worth by GPA, I can laugh at my new stance as Freshmen Composition instructor. I no longer think grades are the best way to determine what a student has learned or accomplished in any given class. Forget for a moment that grades (no matter how objective or standard you may think your criteria or rubric may) are ultimately subjective. They are also, as Josh puts it, a "a form of punishment and reward." But I wonder exactly what an F (or punishment) really accomplishes? Does it truly make the student recognize the need to write more than one draft of a paper? Does it encourage them to do "better" next time? Or does it defeat them?

Today, the last day I met with my students before they turn in final portfolios, my students asked me what grade they needed to make on their portfolios to make an (fill in the blank). This seems completely counterproductive. I don't care what grade they make on the portfolio. That's not the point. The point is for them to learn, not make a grade. Personally, I would be satisfied to see that they had learned one thing they can apply to later writing projects. If they learn how to cite, great! If they learn to recognize audience, fabulous! I would like to see that they are thinking differently, taking risks with their writing, and gaining agency when they write. How do I grade those things?

I don't claim to have the answer to the grading issue. I'm not sure how to work around it or without it to be honest. Especially within a system that requires and feeds off such grading scales. But I do wonder exactly what we're teaching students. I know, this is coming from someone who was devastated when she made a grade less than A for the first time. But, then again, I prove my own point.

Mystery Building

As an English major, I have always been required to write papers for the final project of a class. But, in one particular class I took a couple of years ago, the professor gave us three options. We could (1) write a traditional paper 10-15 pages, (2) Create a website, (3) create a pamphlet, journal, e-mag, etc. All he required is that we run our ideas by him first and make sure that we did sufficient research. At first, I wanted to stick with the familiar: write a paper. I know how to write a paper, I thought. But, I decided to create a website instead to challenge myself and broaden my horizons, so to speak. It was such a liberating and challenging experience. For the first time in a long time, I had to really think about who my audience was. Yes, my website was for the class and the instructor, but because it was going to be available on the internet, I needed to think more specifically than that. I ended up spending more time on and doing more research for this project than I had ever in the past. But I was extremely proud of the end result, and I acquired a new skill.

In their article, "Building a Mystery: Alternative Research Writing and the Academic Act of Seeking," Robert Davis and Mark Shadle explain that the research paper has been and is still today typically the "climactic" final project for students in a first year composition course. While they acknowledge the value of the research paper, they also argue that alternative research assignments (even multi-media, multi-genre assignments) will help in bringing back the creativity and mystery to academic discourse. It is precisely mystery and innovation is often found lacking in students' research papers, causing them to be bland, repetitive, and ultimately irrelevant. What we need to strive for, is providing students with real-life, creative opportunities for research that they value and find interesting.

The authors state that "by asking students to stick to researching the known, we teach them to fear the unknown." I see this in my students everyday. Because of their high school experiences with the 5 paragraph essay, many of them are afraid to explore through writing. They're afraid of trying something new, yet, they seem to really crave the opportunity for doing so. The projects that the authors outline sound incredible, and because I can't really find anything to disagree with (I know; a first for me) I'll just end this blog by saying that I hope to have the chance soon to provide a group of students with the opportunity and liberation of designing their own research assignment. I would love to see a brochure, pamphlet, personal research assignment, website, blog, etc. And I think they would learn just as much, no, more, by completing such an assignment than they would by always simply writing another research paper.

What I hope to make

I recently had a disappointing encounter with someone I love. She asked me what my plans are after I graduate, and I told her that I planned to try to find a teaching job, work for a year, and then go on for my PhD.

"What exactly will you do with a PhD?"

"I'll teach," I told her.

She responded, "Why would you spend all this time and money to simply teach? You could make better money in another career."

I thought about this, not sure how to respond. I was unsure because it was a stupid question. I do what I do because I love it no matter what others may think of it. I love literature and writing, and, as idyllic and perhaps naive as it may sound, I believe these things make a difference. Through reading and writing, I hope to challenge students to become free-thinkers, critical thinkers, and confident writers. Whether the students I teach go on to study and teach ltierature themselves is beside the point. Whatever they may do in the future, I know they will be required to write in one format or another. And I hope that they take something more away from the class than how strict Mrs. Sellers was. With the class I'm teaching now, I want students to have learned that writing is social, a way to gain access to another community, a way to gain power to communicate effectively. But if all they take away is how to read an article, or an understanding that Hitler was born human like anyone else, that's cool. Because really, if I don't think I can make a difference, then what the hell am I doing?

Save us please: yes/okay, but; or time for a little ranting

To be perfectly honest, I find it difficult to respond to Yancy's article/speech. Not that I don't agree with Yancy; I do. I believe composition courses need to catch up with the times. Our students certainly do write in many ways in today's society: websites, texting, blogs, emails, etc. And we should incorporate these things in the classroom in order to prepare them for future jobs. Yes! Composition courses should be a synthesis (to use Kara's term) and incorporate different genres of writing to fully prepare students.

1. But, as we have discussed several times in class and outside of class, most of our students (unlike many of us) already know how to do most of these things. They have grown up with technology. While it is still helpful (and I think Yancy's ideas are absolutely fascinating and would be great way to make students excited about composition again; I would love to teach a class like that), I don't think we can totally forget about writing formal, boring essays, arguments, analasyes--I know Yancy isn't completely advocating this, but I think it's important to make the point nonetheless. Because, I believe that alot of the writing we have them do is more than writing. It is also about learning through writing, writing to learn. To learn to think critically. In short, I think this kind of writing also prepares them for the real world, helping them prepare for social and work conflicts/debates/experiences.

2. But, while one of freshmen compostition's goals should certainly be to prepare students for writing in the real world, are we not also responsible for preparing them for future course work? I understand Yancy's point about student retention, and I find it frightening that so many students enter college and never graduate. There should be something done. But, perhaps retention is also an issue because we are not fully preparing them for future course work. Students may be required to complete powerpoint presentations and other multi-media projects in future classes, but they also most definitely will be required to write papers, formal papers and essays. So, I don't think we should short change them. Give them the best of the both worlds I guess.

I'm not really sure if there is a solution to any of this, and I know that debates are occuring around the university about these types of issues, but I felt I needed to get these things off my chest. I feel it is my duty to accomplish or at least to attempt to accomplish the things Yancy discusses and encourages, but I also wonder why it seems to always fall on the shoulders of Composition instructors. When does History, Science, and Math begin to take responsibility too?

Literacy Heritage

My literacy heritage begins with an old woman who wanted to be an English teacher more than anything, and her dream was never realized: my great-grandmother. Growing up, my mother told me stories of this woman I never met, a woman who would read the letters her grandchildren wrote to her, would correct the grammar, and would send them back with a response. And because, in my child's mind, this woman was great enough to be admired by mother, who I admired greatly, I too worshiped her.

My mother and father never graduated from high school and never went to college. And I don't remember a lot of books in our home. But I do remember watching my mother write letters and learning to write letters at our kitchen table. So when I began to learn to read in school, I came home everyday to sit at the table with my mother and read aloud to her. She would then read stories and tell stories to me. Still, reading remained something I did for school. It wasn't a part of my life.

In third grade, my mom took me to the library for my first library card. Because we had no tv and she worked all day, she wanted me to do something productive, and she wanted me to be more educated than she. I read a few books, but nothing really struck me as particularly interesting until I read a Babysitter's Club book. It was the first book I encountered that I related to: the protagonist's parents were divorced. I had never read a book where the parents were divorced, so I read more.

I began to consume books like food or air, checking out several books at a time. By the time I was in sixth grade, I was reading books like Jane Eyre, Little Women, and Gone with the Wind. And I kept reading. Reading was no longer something I did for school or to please my mom or to live up to my great-grandmother's wishes for her family. It became who I was. And now that I think of it, maybe it began for my mother with her grandmother, but for me, it really began with my mother who, after a double shift, still found time to write with and read to me.

Performing Literacy

High School curriculum and teachers seem to understand the importance of performance in the literacy and writing classroom. As I studied educational and literacy theories while completing my undergraduate degree, I remember my instructors drilling us on new ways and methods of teaching literacy to our future students. While performing Shakespeare now seems trite and overdone, there is validity in having students act out scenes and even re-write them in their own words.

However, the act of performance and its obvious connection to writing and literacy have been little used in college composition courses. At least in my experience they haven't been taken advantage of. More and more, instructors are seeing the importance of multi-media writing, but even that is given less priority. Composition courses are meant to help students write essays so that they can "perform" in the "real world," right? Yeah, that doesn't make much sense to me either.

These are the types of issues that Fishman, Lunsford, McGregor, and Otuteye discuss in their article, "Performing Writing, Performing Literacy." The authors argue that

Performance is a dynamic form of literate expression that is both fun and deeply serious. Immediate and face-to-face, performance encourages active participation and collaboration, and thus it models many of the qualities we value most in real-time new-media writing, while at the same time it brings renewed attention to talk and scripted forms of oral communication. A tool for innovation as well as a potential vehicle for helping students to transfer literacy skills from situation to situation, performance, at least from our perspective, stands to reinvigorate both teaching and learning in the writing classroom. (226-7)

What an enlightening concept! On one of the most obvious and basic levels, in composition classes, we stress the importance of audience to students, but we rarely utilize the helpful analogy and strategy of audience in terms of performance: concerts, plays, movies, etc. Our students can relate to all of these types of performances, but we should show them the connection between these and their writing.

I saw the impact of performance in my own ENG 102 class just recently, though I did not realize fully at the time that I was using a theoretical strategy. As my students and I discussed the introduction to Graff's and Birkenstein's They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, the students struggled with the concept. We tried applying and recognizing the "They, Say, I Say" moves in an actual academic article, but because the students couldn't get past their own initial reactions to the article and the fact that the author never explicity used the words "I say," we were really getting nowhere. One point in particular seemed to resonate with them from the text though. Graff and Birkenstein point out that in "the real world we don't make arguments without being provoked" (3). I initiated a conversation about "real world" arguments. Students began to comment that when in an argument with a friend, they use the other person's words againste them. Essentially, "you said (fill in the blank,) but that's not true...." So, I decided to use the concept of a "real" argument in the classroom. I split the students into two teams. Because some of them thought the author's argument was effective while others thought it was faulty, I gave one team the "effective" argument and the other team the "faulty" argument. I gave them ten minutes to collaborate with their team members and to research the text for moments that supported their argument. I gave them the instructions that they were required to use evidence from the text. They then debated their positions. Before I knew it, not only were the students engaging the text, but they were also engaging with one anothers statements and arguments, using one another's words. They were performing "They Say, I Say."

While I attempted to make the connection between this debate and their writing, I believe if I had read this article before the class, I probably could have done so more confidently. What the students took away from the exercise has changed the dynamic in the classroom though. They are discussing the material with me AND their peers, using evidence from the text at hand. I can't wait to try more exercises like this in the future, and hopefully, I am now better prepared to make those explicit connections between performance and writing.

Out with the Perfect Excerpts

As I read Kathleen E. Welch's Ideology and Freshman Textbook Production: The Place of Theory in Writing Pedagogy, I couldn't help but remember my own undergraduate composition courses. I remember very well those modes Welch discusses. I never understood what exposition was and when I would ever use it in a real life writing scenario, and I always wondered what made one argument more persuasive than the next. I also remember poring over models the instructors gave the class, trying to figure out how to write something as moving as Martin Luther King Jr.'s " I Have a Dream." Or attempting to write something as creative as Margaret Atwood. Mostly, I left class feeling frustrated and defeated.

This is why I particularly like the Norton Field Guide writing textbook. While I encourage students to read it (I don't look kindly on those who don't read) and use it in the classroom, I do agree with Welch when she says, "the textbooks are instruction material more important for the writing teacher than for the writing student." I find myself underlining points in the book that I want to highlight for my students, strategies I think they will find useful. I also take some of the strategies presented in the text and model them in class. To the point, I use the textbook to help me learn how to teach, but I don't completely rely on it for my classroom instruction. But I think that although the NFG includes sample essays and exceprts, it usually attempts to contextualize the excerpt for the student writer, emphasizing the rhetorical importance and rhetorical situation of the piece of writing at hand.

Welch argues that we should "press forward the movement to subordinate the status of the textbook in favor of student text production." I don't think we can completely do away with the textbook or sample writing (it is useful to analyze a text and how it works when undertaking a new writing project), but I agree with her that student writing should be priority. To this end, I have been having my students draft portions of their papers and bring them to class, working on Paper 2. I had one of them email a copy of their draft to me with the last paper, and I printed it out on a transparency. As a class, we read through the writing. We didn't try to fix grammar or sentence structure. Instead, we focused on what the text was doing and how it did it. The student/volunteer left with a lot of notes and suggestions. And the other students were able to see a project unfinished and unpolished. They are all also more comfortable workshopping one another's drafts.

So, yes, I agree with Welch that we should throw out the perfect excerpts and samples, or at least push student writing to the foreground.