Hello everyone! My part of our class’s final project, a remix of Disney princesses, is coming along well. As you all know, I’m doing a remix of Rapunzel’s story. I’ve completed the whole story by now and am doing some editing work on it. Aside from that, I’ve also made up a draft of my author bio. All that I have left to do for my personal part of the project is finalizing the story, finishing the moldboard (which I’m going to work on in class tomorrow), and doing my self-assessment narrative. As far as the project as a whole goes, I’m going to help out tomorrow as we all do our author statement, I will help with anything else that needs to be done (such as proofreading), and Giselle and I will work on the front-page visual. I’m glad that everything is wrapping up for the semester and that I’m almost done! I hope everyone is in similar states and that they’re not getting too overwhelmed. Just know that the end is in sight

Jules’s selection of Bi, Butch, and Bark Dyke: Pedagogical Performances of Class, Gender, and Sexuality was a really interesting read. I’m excited to bring a discussion of gender and sexuality into our talks about teaching and pedagogy, and Michelle Gibson, Martha Marinara, and Deborah Meem do an excellent job of talking about the intersection between their identities and their careers as academics.

I really enjoyed Marinara’s piece and her discussion of shifting identity. She brings this thought to the forefront of the classroom, where she feels that the uncertain spaces found in the writing classroom between the “real me” voice and the “emerging public voice” shouldn’t be resolved by placing students into identity label boxes, but rather this tension should become a space to work from and with. Identity, Marinara says, “includes the writer’s shifting relationships with the peculiarities of our culture,” and therefore is not static. She believes that the space created by opening up identity, rather than making it essentialist and fixed, allows for a model of collective identity and helps to reveal how every single one of us is both enlarged and oppressed by constantly shifting social norms and cultural ideas.

(As a side note, I was floored when I read the passage about a student who stated they “didn’t believe in lesbians” or, even worse, that an entire classroom of female students couldn’t/wouldn’t work with the writing of a lesbian essayist. I know this article is older, but it’s only from 2000 and the class mentioned above was stated as being taught “last quarter”, placing it in, most likely, 1999 or so. That’s not that long ago, but this really shows how far we’ve come in twenty-odd years regarding LGBTQ+ rights. Of course, we’re far from finished, but wow!)

Deborah Meem’s piece was eye-opening, in that it made me think about things in a way I’d never thought about before. Meem states that “as a butch woman, however, I had a certain power over him; he clearly perceived me as being immune to male feather-ruffling and intimidation,” in regards to an interaction where a male colleague where her butchness helped her. Furthermore, in an identity/privilege chart, Meem puts butch as privileged, femme as oppressed. I think society usually views butches as oppressed, because of their very visible lesbian identity (which can make them targets for hate), while viewing femmes as privileged because of their ability to be “invisible” in regard to their sexuality. Meem sees it otherwise, though: “today, however, butch visibility in the academy can provide access to a certain kind of power; the relative invisibility of femmes makes it difficult for them to connect with sources of lesbian community…” Meem feels that, while butch was an oppressed identity in the 1950s because the butch identity was a target for harassment, discrimination, and violence, today that axis is shifting and it may be that butch lesbians are able to use their identity “as a commodity” (mentioning work by Diana Fuss in which identities, in academia, are commodities) and that experiences of privilege vs. oppression do not remain consistent over time. Echoing Marinara, Meem states that identities, and the experience of privilege/oppression that goes along with them, are not fixed, and that complicating one’s own identities is a revolutionary act. I’d never really considered this concept of identity used as commodity/for power (which I don’t believe Meem posits as a bad thing, nor do I!) nor the idea that the experience of privilege/oppression attached to identity could change so much over time or from one situation to another.

Gibson’s piece talks about identity, political resistance, and diversity in academia. I think her piece was particularly telling about the state of the academy, at least in the 2000s, though I’m sure her statement still echoes today: “though many academics talk about diversity, the academy itself persists in seeing the university as tweed: white, middle class, and heterosexual.” Gibson tries to subvert this view by talking about her own memories and performing her identity actively in her academic career. She talks about how, in a dossier of her work that she was required to submit at her university (as a professor), she used her life experiences and identity as “currency” (following in line with the idea of identity as a commodity) to try to bring some understanding of her students’ circumstances to the administrators she knew would be reading her dossier. She was being sure to actively blur the line between a person that the administrators would see as “not college material” and a person who was a successful professional, by using herself and her life experiences as an example of these things. At the end of her piece, however, Gibson warns that over time, acts intended to work as political resistance can become so familiar and institutionalized they can lose their power, so these acts should not continue to be used thoughtlessly/without constant interrogation to see if they are still functioning as the user intends.

The overall piece ends with the conclusion that teachers committed to creating classrooms that critique traditional power structures must commit to interrogating their own identities and positions in the classroom. They must be aware of and responsive to the interplay of identities of their own and their students; it is not enough to simply assign readings about race, class, gender, sexuality, and so forth.

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And now, an update on my final project. I’m doing a remix of Rapunzel (my favorite Disney princess!) and for a bit I actually really struggled, unsure of what direction I wanted to take this in. However, after a brainstorming session with my girlfriend, I know what I’m doing:

My remix is going to be set in the modern world. Mother Gothel is not evil, but rather an overly-anxious mother who went through a tough past and has some agoraphobia because of it. Her daughter, Rapunzel, is the light of her life and she wants nothing more than to protect her from the world. Rapunzel is homeschooled and learned a lot of her mother’s fears; she doesn’t go out much and doesn’t have any friends besides her pet iguana. People, and the outside world, make her nervous. However, despite this, Rapunzel is determined to go to college in person next year. After an encounter with her neighbor, Flynn, she builds the courage to try new things and experience the world around her.

I’m really excited to keep working on this story! Above is a mood board image that I think fits some of the vibes and ideas I have in my mind. Can’t wait to share more

Ricki’s selection of essays from Bad Ideas About Writing focused on writing teachers and, well, the bad ideas that people have about them and about the field of writing studies in general. The first essay, “You’re Going to Need This for College,” as well as the last essay, “Anyone Can Teach Writing” mesh well together and call to mind some of our previous discussions. These essays speak about the problems with the English curriculum in both high school and college. “You’re Going to Need This for College” discusses issues with the high school English curriculum and how it often places a great emphasis on continued college education instead of focusing on the here and now, helping students to learn how to write well whether or not they intend to continue on to college. This essay also tied in with “Secondary School English Teachers Should Only be Taught Literature” which expands on another problem in high school English courses: the teachers are taught how to teach literature to students, but not to teach students how to write. This is not a problem with the teachers themselves but with the education system. “Anyone Can Teach Writing” helps to talk about the reflection of these problems in colleges: adjuncts, who often have little training in teaching writing, are paid and treated poorly and made to teach introductory college writing courses. If students are not being taught how to write by people who are trained to teach them such things, in both high school and college, then it’s no wonder that college professors complain about students writing capabilities.

“Dual-Enrollment Writing Courses Should Always be Pursued” was interesting to me for its emphasis on the differences between a high school English class versus a college-level one. This should be required reading for any (college professor!) theorist who is going to posit solutions for high-school-level English classes without actually teaching any. The things that work well in college-level courses often cannot even be implemented in high-school-level courses because of the curriculum and the constraints of the modern education system.

The two articles that I found most interesting (given our current global situation) also go hand-in-hand with each other: “Face-to-Face Courses are Superior to Online Courses” and “Anyone Can Teach an Online Writing Course.” In the wake of the pandemic, most if not all of us in the class experienced either taking or teaching (or both!) online classes. The problem with these courses is that we were unprepared and that we didn’t make the decision ourselves. I agree with the idea in “Face-to-Face…” that online writing courses can be just as effective as in-person ones. I still learned a great deal in my online courses during the pandemic. The problem comes, though, with difficulties paying attention and with professors being unsure how to teach an online course because they weren’t given training for it. I didn’t choose to take online courses, so I had problems paying full attention during them. My professors didn’t choose to teach online courses, so many of them didn’t have the skills talked about in “Face-to-Face….” And, as “Anyone Can Teach…” tells us, teaching online (writing courses in this essay, but honestly any course at all) requires special training and education. Being forced to take and teach online courses out of necessity was surely a burden to us all, even though I agree that online courses can be enriching, fulfilling, and the best option for some students.

Thoughts on Our Group Project Final

I’m excited to begin working with everyone on our final! We came up with a lot of good ideas in our last class, and I think our overall discussion about what’s important to us and what we want to focus on was fruitful. I love our remix idea, and whether we decide to go with that OR decide to pursue a different path, I have no doubt that we’re going to make something exciting. I hope that everyone is able to express their interests and thoughts in our final, and that we ultimately can make something everyone enjoys working on and is proud of.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Paulo Freire’s work this week. Pedagogy of the Oppressed gave me a lot of knowledge and a lot of ideas to “chew on” and work with. In fact, I was underlining and annotating my paper as I read because I found myself that invested in the work, eager to understand as much as possible. Freire’s work, in my opinion, strikes a beautiful balance between being rich in theory and being easily understood, and his pedagogical ideas, I can see, are deeply influential even today.

I find a lot of merit in Freire’s idea that humanization is “the people’s vocation.” I can think of no better goal for humankind than to work toward the freedom and justice of all people, and Freire posits that this very thing is the overarching goal of all humankind, right at the beginning of Chapter 1. We can see right at the start that, more than only a theory about education, Freire’s pedagogy is a sort of philosophy on life and humanity as well.

The main idea of Chapter 1 is the fact that, with the overarching goal of humanity being humanization, the only ones who can work towards and achieve this goal are the oppressed and those who are truly in solidarity with them. The work must be led by the oppressed, and those who wish to work alongside them must, rather than being paternalistic and “looking down” on them/patronizing, trust the oppressed and follow their lead. This is an idea that is echoed today, often expressed in the term of majority groups amplifying the voices of minority groups, not speaking over them or attempting to speak for them. Those in power must give the oppressed a “seat at the table” and allow them to speak for themselves and advocate for themselves, not try and do so for them (which, ultimately, as Freire describes, keeps the current oppressive class system intact, harming the oppressed and benefiting the oppressors.)

Freire posits that, during the initial stages of struggle, the oppressed often strive to become like their oppressor, because that is their model of humanity. The example I had in my head for this was as follows: a poor man strives to become like his boss, because he sees his wealth and control over others as success and he, too, wants to become successful. However, in order to become like his boss, this man too becomes an oppressor, treating those under him poorly and hoarding his wealth because that is the example he saw of a “successful” man. We see cases like this a lot today, however, I think we do recognize it as being wrong; think about the movies you’ve seen or stories you’ve read and heard where the above example is the plot, and where the once-poor man realizes the error of his ways and sees that he has to start treating people better and caring less about his wealth. Despite some kind of internal recognition that greed and the mistreatment of others are wrong, though, people keep doing it. There is still the struggle of wanting to “become” the oppressor, of chasing the mainstream idea of a successful human. This moving of roles, though, from oppressed to oppressor, is not an authentic solution to the problem at hand. Instead, both parties must be liberated, by the hand of the oppressed groups seeking humanity.

Something else that really resonated with me is the idea that even once the issue starts to be authentically resolved, with the oppressed fighting for and gaining their humanity, the former oppressors will start to feel oppressed themselves instead of realizing that both groups are now more liberated. Freire states “conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less
listened to Beethoven. Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of the rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors as a profound violation of their individual rights.” This reminds me of how members of majority groups today complain about minority groups fighting for equal rights. Some straight people will complain that the LGBTQ+ community is “taking over everything,” some white people complain about the Black Lives Matter movement, asking “what about white lives?” These people and others like them miss the point that minority groups have not enjoyed the rights, safety, protections, and freedoms that the majority groups always have. They don’t realize that equal rights are not in finite supply; everyone can and should have them, and everyone should keep fighting until those rights are afforded to all.

There was a part of this chapter that confused me a bit, though I think I may have worked through it. The part is as follows:

The pedagogy of the oppressed, animated by authentic, humanist
(not humanitarian) generosity, presents itself as a pedagogy of
humankind. Pedagogy which begins with the egoistic interests of
the oppressors (an egoism cloaked in the false generosity of paternalism) and makes of the oppressed the objects of its humanitarianism,
itself maintains and embodies oppression. It is an instrument of
dehumanization. This is why, as we affirmed earlier, the pedagogy
of the oppressed cannot be developed or practiced by the oppressors. It would be a contradiction in terms if the oppressors not only
defended but actually implemented a liberating education.

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, page 54

I was specifically confused about the last two sentences. Of course, I agreed that the pedagogy could not be developed by oppressors; to be truthful, effective, and humanized, it had to be developed by those who were oppressed. However, I was confused by the notion that oppressors could not practice the pedagogy, either, and that they could not defend or implement a liberating education. Isn’t that the ultimate goal, I asked myself? For mainstream education to make use of this pedagogy in order to start breaking down the walls of oppression? Then I realized…those who are still in an oppressor mindset cannot practically teach a liberating education. In order for one to do so, one has to step out of the role of oppressor and come and work alongside the oppressed, amplifying their voices and following their lead. This, I think, is what Freire meant. It is not that educators who are part of the majority group cannot implement this pedagogy, but rather that they first must be transformed out of their role of the oppressor (even if this transformation requires not a physical change but a mental one) before they can be considered no longer oppressors but allies to the oppressed and therefore appropriately implement a liberating education.

So, these have been (some of!) my thoughts on Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Again, I found the reading extremely insightful and will probably aim to read the rest of the book in my free time, because though I don’t intend to become an educator, I think this is important information to know nonetheless if simply to become a better human being.

Chapter 3 of “Teaching to Transgress” by bell hooks was an enlightening read. On one hand, it’s sad to see that, though this was written years ago, our education system still has many of the same problems regarding teaching in a multicultural setting. On the other hand, though, the existence of scholarship such as that of Dr. April Baker-Bell shows that people are carrying on bell hooks’ work and ideals and are continuing to push for changes in the system.

I found the series of seminars that bell hooks and Chandra Mohanty held at Oberlin to be an excellent idea. hooks talks about the intent to raise critical consciousness, to have a space for constructive confrontation and critical interrogation, and to have a setting for people to voice fears and to discuss what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and why they’re doing it, all in order to help these people shift their paradigms around more inclusive teaching. This all feels especially important today; you can see just by looking at news channels or social media how defensive people get over their mistakes today. When a mistake is pointed out, there’s a huge tendency to become defensive and double down on that mistake rather than accepting the criticism, apologizing, and aiming to improve. These spaces that hooks and Mohanty created seem to aim to move past this defensiveness and help people to actually learn and grow.

hooks mentioned how she and Mohanty felt greatly disappointed when the meetings concluded because they saw just how much work would have to be done, how much the faculty would have to unlearn racism to create and appreciate a new sort of education. They were definitely right in their realization that much work would have to be done, however it is a good thing that hooks, her contemporaries, and educators today continue to pursue this goal. Baker-Bell’s “We Been Knowin: Toward an Antiracist Language &
Literacy Education” gives some examples that clarify why this work is so important.

Baker-Bell’s parents did not finish high school because of negative racial experiences, taught by teachers who believed and upheld racist stereotypes of black students. Baker-Bell herself felt the white-centeredness of the education system when school offered her no opportunity to process the racial violence she’d seen in the police murder of Malice Green. Stories and experiences such as these have led her to pursue questions such as how can she produce anti-racist scholarship and what does racial and linguistic justice look like in literary/language education? She goes on to describe some antiracist critical media literacies such as digital activism as well as a discussion of Black English and how student’s should not be forced away from their own language, in this case a language that is often not even recognized as one. I am reminded of Vershawn Ashanti Young’s work “Should Writer’s Use They Own English?” (link) in which he discusses the harm that standard language ideology does to minorities in academia and how it serves to gatekeep many from entering the field. Young’s work is an excellent and insightful piece that I highly recommend to anyone interested in these ideas of multicultural scholarship/anti-racist scholarship/anti-racist language and literacy education.

Both of this week’s readings had to do with the process of writing and the best ways to teach said process. Mark Wiley’s The Popularity of Formulaic Writing (And Why We Need to Resist) warns against the popular but dangerous (to a writer’s education, not their health) “formulaic” writing process. Wiley states that it is due to the immense pressure on schools and teachers that formulaic writing has become so popular; this writing, which follows a “formula” to teach students how to write essays, is well-received by teachers because it makes it easy to teach large amounts of students how to write a piece that, academically, passes standards. (i.e will score well on standardized tests, the holy grail of education systems.) The formula Wiley chooses to focus on is the Jane Schaffer approach/formula, which teaches that body paragraphs are to be arranged as follows:

Topic sentence
Concrete detail #1
Commentary #1a
Commentary #1b
Concrete detail #2
Commentary #2a
Commentary #2b
Concluding sentence

This approach does make it easy for students to learn and understand how to write an essay, and while I do see how it could help many students, I also chafe at its strictness. Wiley argues the same, stating that while this approach is helpful to students at first, it ultimately leaves them too dependent on this structure and unable to really think in their writing. Once again, students are writing what they know the teacher wants to see (in this case, the Schaffer approach) and not expressing their own thoughts. Wiley believes that instead of being taught as strict formulas, structures like this should be taught as strategies, and students should be taught many different strategies to use so they can make their own decisions about which would work best for different situations. This would make their writing stronger (since the point of writing is communication and different communications require different strategies) and also their thinking about writing stronger, as they themselves have to consider which strategy to employ.

Donald Murray’s Teaching Writing as Process Not Product delves further into the idea of how to teach writing. He does not make mention of formulas but instead suggests that teachers stop grading student writing as literature/product and start instead helping them learn the process of writing. I agree that the process of writing needs to be focused on in schools, and I also agree with many of his implications, however, I don’t think Murray is quite aware of the pressures and circumstances placed upon teachers, especially those not in higher education. Murray states that none of his implications requires special training, special schedules, new materials, an increase in funding, or a change in teaching load…however, he does not acknowledge how teachers will, with their class sizes and limited time, put into practice any of his ideas. We’ve been talking a lot about how, despite the benefits of things like portfolios and comments and one-on-one conferences regarding writing, teachers simply do not have the time to do that with all of their students. It’s different in a college setting, yes, but students are taught, fundamentally, how to write academically not in college but in elementary, middle, and even high school.

I agree with the ideas presented in both articles, and they also mesh very well with my earlier discussion about creativity in writing education and how best to help students develop their creativity. However, it’s clear that in order for English education to change, the education system as a whole needs to change as well.

Linked are my reaction paper and my presentation for my discussion lead topic, feedback and creativity in student writing. I look forward to presenting!

Reaction Paper

Powerpoint

This week’s reading of “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries” was one of our most intriguing so far, in my opinion. I enjoy Peter Elbow’s work, but I will admit that at first, I wasn’t a fan of this reading. I guess that I was expecting Elbow to dive into a discussion of voice right from the very beginning of the essay, but in actuality, most of the first few pages were concerned not with voice in itself but with how Elbow was going discuss voice. He spoke a bit about the previous arguments that had occurred in the field regarding voice (arguments which surprised me; I never knew that people doubted the concept of voice in writing when it was something I was so used to believing), but mostly he talked about the ways in which people argue, how they work in a “zero-sum model” where only one side can be right and the other, therefore, must be wrong. He argues that this is the wrong approach to take with discussing voice, that there needs to be some sort of compromise, a “both/and” approach instead of an “either/or” one.” This is all well and good, but I felt like it was just overly theoretical and not really about voice, and I expected the rest of the paper to run along the same lines, leaving me frustrated and not very eager to keep going. However, at the bottom of page 174, Elbow states “in this essay, I will try to show that we can affirm the validity of both conflicting positions–even in their contradiction,” and from here, the rest of the essay really does deal with the issue of voice in writing, and I became much more interested!

At first, I was unable to see the benefits of what Elbow calls the “pure text lens,” i.e the way of viewing writing that completely disregards any voice. Elbow says that the text lens “foregrounds language as an abstract system…in which words have the same meaning whoever utters them in whatever context…” I initially chafed against this idea, because words do mean different things in different contexts. Elbow claimed that the pure text lens shows a “naked meaning dimension” that is present in discourse and that both lenses (voice and text) are of benefit to us, but I still was not able to understand the benefit of the text lens by this point in the essay. The voice lens already felt abundantly clear to me, but the points that Elbow made helped to cement its importance in my brain.

I found it very interesting how text with a clear voice (that sounds like a person) carries meaning more clearly. I also appreciate his statement that when students read their work aloud, they are more likely to be able to write sentences that are “inviting and comfortable” to speak aloud, in turn making those sentences better for even silent reading. I’ve heard a lot of benefits about reading one’s work aloud, and I think it’s something I do have to start doing even though I despise hearing my creative work read aloud. I was also interested in the fact that one can learn to analyze voice by reading not only their own drafts aloud but also the work of others in something called “ear training.” Elbow made a lot of points about the benefits of voice but these were some of the ones that really stood out to me.

And now for the argument against paying attention to voice in writing, i.e looking through the text lens. Before these examples, I really was unable to think of the ways that a pure text lens would be useful. Once Elbow started giving the examples, however, I quickly changed my mind and was able to see a lot of use. For one, he states that ignoring voice can help one to read critically, as voice “often functions like a persuasive courtroom lawyer” and can distract readers from the logic of an argument. By looking through a text lens, one can cut through the rhetoric and see the flaws in a writer’s thinking/argument. Also, if teachers put too much focus on voice, students might think that good writing only requires a strong voice, which is not the case.

Probably one of the most interesting uses of the text lens is working out multiple meanings in a work. Elbow believes that when you hear the actual performance of a work, such as a Shakespeare play, the meaning that work focuses on becomes cemented in your mind. However, if you are reading a work, the silent text invites many interpretations. If students are trained not to rely on voice when reading, they will be able to separate language and thought from the author and “read against the grain” (i.e read against the voice) and find their own meanings in a text.

After reading Elbow’s essay, I can see the benefits of reading both with and without a focus on the voice. Of course, I’m still a big fan of voice and think it can do wonders for writing (especially when storytelling), but now I can see the uses of a purely textual lens as well.

I’ve seen Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDTalk a few times now, but repeated viewing hasn’t made it any less impactful. I think this idea of the “single story” and the danger it poses should be a required study topic for all of us creators who are looking to share stories with the world. But even aside from creating, I think that everyone needs to be aware of how the media we consume influences our views on others and how we must be cautious to not let a single story cloud our thinking.

As students of writing practice and theory, many of us are creators and/or teachers. For those of us who want to create, as I’ve said, we need to be aware of how stereotypes can insidiously make their way into our work. We may not do so intentionally, but when we have a single story in our head about something, that is going to reflect in our writing. We should aim to be widely read on matters that we want to write about in order to avoid getting this single, narrow perspective that Adichie warns about. We should not be rehashing the same stories we’ve heard over and over.

For those among us who are educators, Adichie makes it clear that diverse reading is important in education. When children see themselves in books, their whole world view can change. Adichie says that, when she was young, she did not know that people like her could exist in literature. It was not until she discovered stories by African authors that she was saved from having a single story of what books are. She was able to see herself in books, and from there she realized that she could write about others like her, not just about the white British people she’d read about as a child.

This talk also gives us a glimpse of the power of story. Stories have, inevitably, shaped our view of the world over the years, but new stories can change those views. By what we read and what we write, we can change our minds and we can even hope to change others’. I think this is one of the most incredible things about stories, their capability to change the world, even if it’s in the tiny way of just changing the way one person sees something. That alone makes writing worth studying.

I found this week’s readings, Writing Comments on Student Papers by John Bean and Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgement by Peter Elbow to be pretty interesting and thought-provoking. Writing, be it academic or creative, can be difficult to grade and/or evaluate. My personal experiences with peer-editing in classes and serving as a beta-reader for peoples’ creative work have given me a glimpse into what the writing grading process must be like for teachers and professors, and I definitely experienced its difficulties. However, as a student, there’s nothing more disheartening than pouring a ton of work into a paper, handing it in, and only receiving a letter grade back. It makes you wonder if the teacher/professor actually even read your paper or if they only skimmed it, and it’s easy to feel frustrated. Why bother putting in so much work researching, drafting, editing, and polishing if your work is not even going to be read? With creative work, which can be even harder to evaluate than academic work because of the lack of a thesis or “goal” (besides the goal of telling a coherent story), not getting feedback could make it feel impossible to improve that specific piece of writing or your future works. So, I feel pretty strongly that written feedback beyond grades is necessary, but how can it be done in a way that helps writers to grow and improve? These two articles do a great job of laying out some foundations and ideas.

Bean’s article focuses itself on academic writing and probably gives some of the best advice on grading such work that I’ve ever seen. I particularly like his idea of focusing on higher-order issues, such as the organization of ideas, first before moving on to lower-order issues like spelling and grammar. When writing a long piece, including creative works like a book, writers often get caught up in worrying about grammar and word choice on a sentence level instead of focusing on ideas, organization, and simply getting the draft done. I like that Bean’s grading reflects the best practice when it comes to drafting writing, which is to focus on the big stuff before you move on to sentence-level editing.

Bean’s idea of including the good along with the bad is also very helpful. It’s something I’ve learned is important when beta-reading, and something I appreciate having done with my own writing as well. I want to know what to improve, certainly, but I also want to know what parts you enjoyed so I can know where I’m on the right track and also not get hopelessly discouraged. Both of these aforementioned aspects of Bean’s work can be applied to both academic and creative works, even if the bulk of his piece is focused on academic writing.

Elbow’s ideas can apply to evaluating/grading any sort of writing. I like his belief that there is too much of a focus on number/letter grades when it comes to assessing written works, which are hard to appropriately give such a grade to anyway. Writing can be so personal and unique (think, for instance, of the importance of a writer’s voice) that it can be hard to evaluate. And when it comes to grading a student’s work, not liking their writing, because of style or subject matter or their stance on an issue, should not affect the grade, but it can be hard to ignore your personal opinions when grading and assessing.

I like Elbow’s’ grid idea for evaluating a work as a way of satisfying a student’s need for ranking while not giving a conventional grade. Likewise, portfolio grading and comments (well, you already know that I love comments) seem very helpful. Bottom-line grading is an interesting idea, though I think even that would be unhelpful without explanatory comments (a student would find themselves wondering why they got a check and not a check plus, for example). The unevaluated writing times and assignments are great too, and I’ve had plenty of personal experience with writing during class time with no expectation of a grade; it’s comforting and allows me to express myself more freely.

One point that Elbow makes that I really want to touch on is his statement that “We learn to like our writing when we have a respected reader who likes it.” This has been very true for me personally. I gained a lot of confidence in my writing only after I realized that close friends of mine genuinely enjoyed reading it and saw its potential. If friends, family, and teachers never expressed an interest in my writing, I doubt I would have carried on with it. This is partially why I think it’s so important that teachers leave meaningful comments on student writing and learn to assess it beyond just giving it a grade; it is through this that I believe one can really foster and support a love of writing in students.