Lindemann's Chapter 14: Responding to Student Writing

           Grading papers is a thorny business.  It can be painful for everyone involved.  I think back on the sense of anticipation (my pulse quickening, averting my eyes) as I saw a teacher begin cruising the aisles, returning essays.  To be perfectly honest, I still feel a little this way.  I am no longer quite as desperate, quite as hungry for approval.  I know that I can have an off day and an imperfect paper, and that this does not mean that I am a horrible writer.  (After this blog post, you and I might feel differently.)  I have come to terms with the fact that writing, for all of us, is a work in progress.  I look back at some of my previously-brilliant essays and cringe at my typos and hubris.  But I still love to write, and with time and some positive feedback, I have developed enough confidence to meet the challenge of a blank page with a sense of possibility, as opposed to fear of impending failure.  This was a fairly long-winded way of getting to Lindemann’s chapter 14:  “Responding to Student Writing.” 

            I like Lindemann’s set up here: the pressurized climate of high stakes learning.  This is changing a little – at least in verbiage.  We are moving toward Common Core Standards. They descended on us quite suddenly in late August.  In June, administrators were feverishly preaching “Twenty-First Century Learning.”  Eyes bugging out of heads, nearly frothing at the mouth, they showered us with videos from TED conventions.  Students are being held back because we aren’t integrating techno-savvy learning strategies.  We aren’t incorporating processes…processes only available on iPads!  I exaggerate, but not much.  Over the summer, it all went away.  Not only weren’t we getting iPads (that might have been fun) or Smart boards, but we weren’t going to teach students to write essays on iPhones either.  Instead, the new focus was Common Core Standards.  Once we unpack (I have been waiting for just the right blog post in which to “unpack”) these standards, we see that we have just another set of good teaching practices – not exactly the emperor’s new clothes – but really this is stuff I learned in my teaching program at CSUDH seven years ago.  Some clever people have basically repackaged a couple of overly-caffeinated TED/Edutopia conferences.  Why do people have to sell us on collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity?  The teachers that I know have been trying to do this for some time.  What I need help with is in Lindemann’s book – particularly chapter 14. 

            I love lesson planning and unveiling a new story, poem, or learning strategy.  I love teaching.  And I actually have become moderately adept at Edmodo (my class’s 21^st century, highly collaborative, creative, communicative, if quirky, website.)  My students write blogs, write in journal, have Socratic seminars, and work in groups to create movie pitches based on our core novels.  We have trials based on short stories, act out others, and do a variety of things that I spend the weekend working on, when I should be studying for the comp exams.  The truth is that some of my ideas fail miserably; others die slow, ignominious deaths.  Occasionally, something works well…and those are the days that make it all worthwhile. It is worth noting that when I get the courage to ask my thirteen-year-old students if they liked a lesson (I usually ask when I think the lesson was great), at least a third of the class says “no, it was boring,” a third of those clever enough to stroke the teacher’s ego will say, “yes, that was soooo fun!” and a third won’t even bother to raise their hands.  For the past six years (my entire teaching career), I have been working on getting a thick skin but to no avail; that is another blog post entirely, and I would probably have to have a glass of wine standing by. 

            But the truth is that my students must still write a variety of essays deemed appropriate and necessary for twenty-first century learning by sincere, if dull, administrators.  I think I teach essay writing fairly well.  I have students brainstorm, talk about their ideas, and then I model the process.  I get a little better every year.  Grading them, however, is a painful task.  Not only is it a lot of work, and I begin to feel sorry for myself (more than usual), but I feel as though, in a way, it drives a wedge between me and my students.  Up until the essay grading, we have been getting along fine.  I always have a day of peer review and then ask students to revise.  Then even after grading my students’ papers, I announce the, what I thought was, generous opportunity to revise.  Some students take me up on this.  In past years, students changed very little of their original essay and hoped I wouldn’t notice.  Now, at Dr. Cauthen’s suggestion, I have a proviso.  I will only accept rewrites if students conference with me.  This has resulted in some better results -- from the few who take me up on my offer.  The truth is, however, that most middle school students don’t want to revisit their essays.  The vast majority of my 160+ students will not meet with me and will not revise.  They like visiting me at lunch, writing inane things about each other and about Justin Bieber on my board, but they decline my invitation to meet briefly and talk about their essays.  I am working on this. 

            I am going to try very hard to follow Lindemann’s model for marking up student work (visible on page 236).  I like the conversational tone and the focus of her feedback; it is certainly a vast improvement from the “awk,” “cliché” and other markings of the grammar police.  She realizes that her case study would only grow frustrated with too many things to consider.  I think that we often become fearful of leaving alone a comma splice, dangling modifier, or misspelled word.  As teachers, we feel that to leave it alone is a sin of sorts, like walking past a Coke bottle on the beach, when we easily could have picked it up.  But this isn’t the same thing.  Writing is too close to students, and we have to be mindful of this and careful not to deflate egos and crush spirits.  I think we all know something about how that feels.  It is really hard to move away from the red pen.  It takes courage to help a student set a course, selecting one or two things to work on – not a litany of grammatical, logical, and structural evils.  It’s just too overwhelming.

            I am getting better at all this, but I have a long way to go. 

            My students have been writing a variety of poems for the last couple of weeks – not formulaic, cookie-cutter, smarmy and sweet cinquains, acrostics, or limericks (the usual middle school fare), but poems that they have actually enjoyed, and that I like to read.  They have been asked to consider their given names (and thus themselves) with a guided free write in which they imagine their names as elements, weather, colors, music, etc.  This ends up becoming a poem with surprising imagery and insight.  They have also mined their bedrooms for specific details that begin to paint the picture of who they are and what they feel strongly about for "map poems."  The students have been told that if they do the assignment, they will get full credit.  I most certainly do not want to get into the business of judging the works of fledgling poets.  And interestingly enough, my “lowest” students have actually done the best.  They have come alive with rich and fascinating word choice.  Not only are they less tied to grades, and able to just let go, they have frequently had more hardships, more pain in their young lives, and this can make for more interesting poems.  The “A” students, who know how to write organized well-supported seventh grade essays, have a harder time letting go.  The pursuit of logic, structure, and complete sentences gets in the way. 

            Anyway, I really enjoyed Lindemann’s essay.  I like her suggestions for decentralizing grading – journals, peer review, portfolios, and self-evaluation.  Anything that I can do to topple my position as the expert of essays and arbiter of awkward sentences would be great.  (Some days I feel like the Wizard of Oz, hiding behind my California Teaching Credential.  Other days I need the certificate, as the Scarecrow did, to prove that I know anything at all.)  Ultimately, I must make a determination about my vulnerable thirteen-year-olds’ work.  And I hate it.  Besides the fact that my administrators would not countenance straight As in my class, students must see that the course we set toward their improvement is working, if slowly, and that I am noticing.  Whether it is holistic or atomistic grading, peer review, self-reflection, or the occasional no grade, I want my students to leave my class enjoying writing.  Anything that I can do to keep my students feeling positive about the process is what I want to do.  I will keep trying.