12 Readers Intro

Hello All,

This is my introduction for the 12 Readers project and I was hoping for some feedback. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Ben

12 Readers Reading Project Analysis

Sometimes when I am sitting there in the early hours of the morning grading papers, I find myself thinking: Why didn’t I become a math teacher? It must be nice to deal with absolutes. Teaching the process of composition poses significant challenges for educators to overcome because the writing process is messy, emotional, personal and limitless. Because the composition process is so complex, giving students’ appropriate feedback which complement their strengths and hold their interests, while providing the appropriate guidance to improve their composition skills, is complicated business. Like mathematics, a student can use many different methods to find the solution to a problem; however, in mathematics the answer is typically universal, whereas, in writing there are no absolutes.

Writing, like any mode of critical thinking, is process based and although there are many different methods that teachers use to help their students’ writing to meet the standards of their course, that is a book in and of itself and I will not go into it in too much detail about that here, instead, I intend to discuss, based upon my findings from the 12 Readers Project and my own practices in the classroom, what are the best methods to respond to student work in order to strengthen their composition skills. Typically, I find that reading a students’ essay and giving them comments in regards to the strengths and weaknesses of their composition, while suggesting what can be done to improve their writing, is a crucial. This method does not apply only to my practices as a teacher. Scholars like Erika Lindemann advocate for “[c]omments that teach… an open-ended form of evaluation that allows students, guided by responses from the teacher and classmates, to rewrite their drafts or engage the next assignment” (226). I would find it hard to believe that many people would challenge this position (though some theorists probably do); however, the drafting process is not the same as the grading process. According to Lindemann “[g]rading, however, is a closed procedure. Once we assign a grade, we’ve judged the paper in ways that further revision can’t change” (226). While I somewhat disagree with Lindemann here as I tend to allow my students to rewrite their compositions, providing they are putting in the labor, until they get it right while giving them feedback along the way, I do agree that the comments a teacher puts on a students’ paper and the final grade that goes along with it can jeopardize a students’ progress if a teacher does not respond to a students’ work in a productive manner.