The Good Bad Kids

This week, I had the pleasure of volunteering as a facilitator of a creative writing workshop for a group of young men. They wanted to work on spoken word and rap (a post for another day). I haven't worked with that age group in a few years, and even when I had, it had mostly been kids from somewhat affluent families. Needless to say, I was anxious about my performance.

When I got to the classroom, I learned that the program was actually an attempt to provide more constructive uses of detention time. In essence, these were the "bad kids."

I was always a "good kid" in school. With the exception of my high school chemistry class, I never got in trouble for being disruptive. In all my years of school, I had only one lunch detention because I forgot to do my homework, and my teacher made me sit through my lunch break and do it. The funny thing is that some of my closest friends were the "bad kids." Several of my friends were familiar faces in the office, some even with the school-based law enforcement. I didn't know them as "bad kids," though. Actually, they protected me from bad influence (wouldn't let other kids pressure me into smoking pot when they knew I didn't want to try it, that kinda thing). All I knew of them was that they had good hearts and were good friends.

The kids in the creative writing group reminded me of those friends. It was a small group, so it was easy to get to know their personalities quickly. One faked being apathetic, one was engaged, and one wanted to participate but was self-deprecating.

By the end of class, it was easy for me to understand why they had been single out as potentially "bad kids." They were active and unfocused. Getting them to write more than two sentences was challenging.

It wasn't because they didn't want to be involved, though. It was because they were restless from sitting in school all day, and they were hungry, legitimately hungry, not "I want a snack" hungry. It was clear to me how they could be hard to manage in a classroom environment with limited resources, but they were nice kids who tried. I gave them a spoken word poem that was college-level reading, and they were able to make sense of it and have a conversation about the meaning and techniques used. At the end of class, I told them they could keep their pens and notebooks. They were surprised and excited. It really made me appreciate the challenges they must face.

I'm not sure I have anything groundbreaking to add here. Since I've been invited back to work with a new group, this is more of an attempt to remember and unpack my experience. Here's a few quick takeaways that I've gathered about working on writing with what I'll call a more "active" group of students:

• One-on-one attention and patience goes a long way.
• Ask questions to individuals, not just the group, and not in a "caught ya not paying attention" way either. Whether they're itching to get moving or hoping to detach from the lesson, it will keep them involved.
• I'd say that gamification and hands-on learning would also be useful since they didn't want to sit still, but at the same time, they were most focused when they were just talking.
• Giving a writing task and walking away did not work with this group. I think it would have been more effective if I sat down and led them to physically write before moving on to working with the next student. This would definitely be difficult to replicate in a large classroom setting.

Since I'll be returning, I'd love to hear from colleagues and students about what works best for students who may be frustrated with writing because of the formal school experience so that I can continue improving the workshop experience for future groups.

Do You Write Assignments for Colleagues or Students?

Every year the university where I work as a writing consult has a school-wide book that all incoming first-year students must read. They've picked some good books-- The Geography of Bliss, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Devil's Highway, and most recently, Scarcity: Why Having So Little Means So Much. Every year, though, without doubt, we cringe at the department-wide first writing prompt that students are given based on these texts.

The problem is that every year, without fail, the question is convoluted and overwritten. As a consultant, I have to sit there with a pen, highlighters, and paper to try to make sense of what I'm being asked and how to approach the question. There are too many words on the page. The important information is wedged into distracting excess language. Sometimes, there is even discord between the question and the book's message. Sometimes, I feel like I don't understand the question and therefore can't help students. This year, I found the question particularly problematic because it asked students to analyze a specific high school writing assignment. We have a school with many returning adult students and veterans. This would automatically put them at a disadvantage.

Even more problematic is that this department-wide essay prompt is given for high-stakes writing assignments. For the first three years, the questions were used as placement exam questions. Now, they are being used for the first graded paper and a mandatory portfolio entry. When the question is confusing or even at a level they haven't yet been prepared to meet (first essay before class or first essay of class), it's unfair.

Now, it seems to me that the issue here is that question is being written to impress colleagues and those doling out accreditation. The words are overly scholarly. The ideas are complex. It seems that an incoming first-year student, who may never have seen anything other than the 5-paragraph essay, is a distant thought in the minds of the creator. And that's really unfortunate. If the goal of the department-wide writing prompt is to help students bridge the gap from high school to college while having a diagnostic writing sample, this type of assignment does not provide a clear picture of a students' capabilities.

On the other hand, there is a lot of pressure for this department to demonstrate their worth and excellence at all times. For outsiders, "worth" often comes from complexity, a belief that if something really demonstrates high-level thinking it will be hard for the average person to decipher it. It's not surprising that something like this would develop from that academic cultural tension, and it leads me to wonder what kind of choices I make for the sake of "accountability" or answering to higher ups in my writing assignments.

So what would you do if you had to design a book-related prompt for a large population of students in core classes? How would you approach the task? What would you consider the best theories or best practices to apply in this situation?

In Defense of First-Year Writing Done Right

image from pixbay.com

I have this awesome colleague who I admittedly disagree with often. This is one of the things I enjoy most about our conversations, though. I always leave feeling smarter. Either he has taught me something about the other perspective that I had not considered before, or I am able to better articulate my own stance on something for myself. Most recently, the latter happened in regards to First Year Writing (FYW or First-Year Composition/FYC).

My colleague definitely falls into the First-Year Writing abolitionist group. He believes it's useless. After all, outside of the FYW classroom, where would students ever need to write essays like that again? At the university where we work, the FYW course also has a social reform focus, which can sometimes wind up confusing students-- they feel forced to choice a side that they might not buy into based on what they think their teacher feels about the issue. It seemed to me that my colleague had a singular vision of FYW and what it could do, though. 

Why We Need FYW Courses

The NCTE makes a strong argument for the FYW requirement in the research brief, First-Year Writing: What Does It Do?  The NCTE notes that FYW courses foster engagement and retention, enhance rhetorical knowledge, push students to develop metacognition, and increase responsibility. These all sound like good things to me!

Through my own teaching and consulting, I've also seen that First Year Writing is a social experience. It is a chance for first-year students to struggle through their first year in college together and to meet students from across disciplines (which they might be prevented from doing later in their major). It is a chance for them to become acclimated to college academic expectations. It's not surprising that the NCTE did not find test-out options particularly useful, then, as those options negate the social experience that helps students to develop as intellectuals and human beings. 

Where the Anti-FYWers Get It Right

image from pixbay.com

The reason many argue against FYW courses is because these courses are often limited in scope. Academic writing comes to mean a very specific type of "academic essay." Academic texts comes to mean a narrow cannon of writing textbooks and literature. Students come to see the writing in their FYW courses as divided from any other types of writing, especially those performed beyond academia. Professors in other disciplines become frustrated that they "didn't learn to write" in FYW when students fail to master grammar or citations (which is often a result of conflating convention and style with grammar, but we'll save that talk for another day). 

Where those against FYW do get it right is when they note that a limited scope is counterproductive. That is not to say that all types of writing must be taught, all students' grammar skills must be perfected, etc. What it means is that sometimes, especially in cases where the course is taught by someone with little teaching experience or study of writing pedagogy, FYW gets too caught up in preparing students to do tasks rather than preparing students to solve problems. This happens when students learn formulas for essays rather than questions to ask to approach a writing situation.

Reclaiming FYW

I think if we are going to continue requiring FYW classes, a shift does need to happen. It's not a very radical shift. I see many instructors who already are doing this and already know this is where the future is headed. FYW needs to start focusing on a set of learning outcomes that privilege the following: 

1. Conceptualizing rhetorical contexts: The big question students should learn to ask in a FYW writing course is: What are the elements of this writing event, and how can I best communicate within this framework? As I said in an earlier post about losing job opportunities because of poorly written cover letters,

"Every writing event will not call for the same performance or product, even ones that seem extremely similar. Those who cannot locate the elements that influence the writing event and ask the right questions of themselves will be unable to perform and produce effective writing, and they may miss out on real opportunities as a result." 

Teaching students to conceptualize rhetorical contexts would include everything from how to figure out style and citation to what form or genre would be most effective for communicating with a particular audience and/or purpose. 

2. Research Skills

• Performing academic inquiry: Students need to learn how to apply depth and breadth of inquiry appropriately. They should be asking themselves, "what questions do I need to ask to get closer to the truth?"
• Evaluating source materials: It's important, especially in the digital age, that students learn how to evaluate sources, and not just scholarly ones. They need to learn how to assess bias and know that biased doesn't necessarily mean useless. 
• Learning how to find information: Where can I find reliable (not necessarily scholarly) information to help me consider my argument or inquiry?

3. Dealing with complexity: As an undergraduate, this is something I really didn't learn about until the Spring semester of my senior year, and when I did, it was mind-blowing. I always thought you could only "make an argument," "take a side," or "provide evidence." That isn't how the real world works or even real scholarship. In world beyond FYW, things are rarely set in simply defined binaries. Students need to learn to make arguments while dealing with complexities (thinking about inquiry instead of argument can help this, too) and to see how complications can actually further their thinking or make their thinking more sophisticated. 

Teaching a class with those learning goals might be messier and require more energy than a "here's how to write an academic essay" formula-based course, but the students will reap the rewards in the long run.

Food for Thought

I'm clearly not the first one who has thought about whether or not there should be FYW and/or how it should be taught. Here are some online sources that reflect multiple perspectives (but is in no way a comprehensive bibliography or in proper MLA format).

Bamberg, Betty. "Alternative Models of First Year Composition." 1997.

Berrett, Dan. "Freshman Composition is Not Teaching Key Skills in Analysis, Researchers Argue." Chronicle of Higher Education. 2012.

Downs, Douglas and Elizabeth Wardle. "Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning First-Year Writing as 'Introduction to Writing Studies.'" College Composition and Communication 58.4. 2007.

Duffy, John. "Virtuous Arguments." Inside HigherEd. 2012. 

Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach?" New York Times. 2009.

Thaiss, Chris. "What Should First-Year Composition Students Learn about Writing Across the Curriculum." 2002.

IWAC 2014: Meaningful Writing

More from IWAC 2014 today! What a wonderful conference!

This time I'm going spend some time considering the presentation by Anne Ellen Geller, Michele Eodice, and Neal Lerner about the Meaningful Writing Project, a massive grounded theory study that questions what makes writing assignments meaningful to students and how faculty that have composed these meaningful writing assignments think about writing and writing pedagogy. This particular presentation was focused on the latter.

Disclaimer: I have a very positive bias towards the panel I'm going to write about in this post. I strongly believe in the importance of student-centered research when it comes to describing student learning experiences. I love to hear the voices of writers and educators; narratives are exciting. I also admire an approach that works from a strength-based concept of student learning experiences rather than a deficit one. And of course, Anne Ellen Geller is my dissertation chair, and one of the most kick-ass women I know (for lack of better words).

During the presentation, the team of scholars asked audience members to consider, through writing and discussion, their most meaningful writing assignment. They followed this up by sharing interview responses from three professors whose assignments had been nominated as most meaningful by students involved as participants in the Meaningful Writing Project.

Their big takeaway for the day was that there was no magic formula for a meaningful writing assignment, but that there seemed to be something about student-faculty relationships built into these assignments that shaped their reception. How teachers saw students and how students understood the role of that particular professor really had an impact on how that assignment was done--something I've seen in my own research.

My Meaningful Writing Assignment

In the meantime, what I really want to share is the thinking that I was allowed to do within the context of the discussion of the research. As I said, faculty audience members were asked to consider what their most meaningful writing assignment was. Here is what I wrote:

My favorite writing assignment is the Write for a Change assignment in my first-year writing class. It's a multi-part project where students begin by thinking about what they want to change in the world, no matter how small or big (I encourage them to think locally and consider the ripple effect-- what change could you actually implement?), and then to find a way to advocate that change through writing. First, they write a proposal that includes what they want to change, what form they will use, who their audience(s) is, and why that form and audience is most effective for causing change. Then, they actually all do their projects. They go through a multi-draft process with peer review, but as the projects vary, they can also vary greatly in the drafting process. Some people are writing pieces of websites, some are writing chunks of script, some are doing multiple marketing/PR-like pieces, etc. I typically  have the whole class read each of their proposal drafts and workshop as a whole class. At the end, they each do a very brief presentation on their final project, which sometimes includes the showing of short films or presentations.

The learning goal is to get students to use what they have learned about writing to help them achieve personal goals. I want them to think about genre, audience, and writing as a social transaction. I also want them to learn to use research in real-life scenarios, not just a research paper, and see how it actually part of life beyond academia.

Students only get a grade on this project if they turn it in as part of their final portfolio, as I use contract grades throughout the semester. I give extensive feedback, though. Typically, students are passionate and do a great job. It is hard to assess sometimes, though, because projects can be so different.

I love seeing students learning to use writing to empower them and to help create a better world, in whatever small or large way they think that is. I like giving students opportunities to vent their frustrations, but also learn how to deal with them in productive ways. It is hard to assess them, as I said. I also find it frustrating when students think picking an "easier" topic will get them a good grade. Inevitably, they become bored over the course of the month-long assignment and don't do as well as they would have if they actually thought about what they wanted to change, rather than what they wanted to get in the class.

Students are asked to see the way writing can be used in other contexts based on their own personal view of the world. They have to research and figure out how to do things/forms they may not be familiar with or information they didn't know before that they will have to communicate. They're also being asked to learn writing terminology, such as form, genre, and audience. 

The second part of that process was to talk to a colleague and then to think about what similarities we saw in our assignments and experiences. I really enjoyed hearing about the work a colleague, who I had only met the night before, was doing with her history students, and I saw how, though very different from my own, her assignment also focused on getting students to think, make connections, and engage with the course content. We both agreed that an indicator for a "good" assignment was typically that we were excited to read the student products.

My Meaningful Writing Project

Finally, something that we weren't asked to formally consider, but I couldn't help but think about was their interview question for faculty-- what was the most meaningful writing assignment of your undergraduate experience?

That question was hard for me. I had lots of great writing experiences in college, which is how I wound up teaching college writing. As an English and Communications major, I was always writing. I do see that some of the best writing experiences I had, though, were maybe not the best writing I did, but the ones that let me think about things in new ways or the ones where the professors engaged me in the feedback process. So what were those meaningful writing projects for me?

I loved my independent research project on Children's Fantasy heroes, not only because it was an impressive feat for an undergrad and well-received by others at the school's research conferences, but also because I learned so much from the mentorship process. For example, I didn't know how accept information that didn't fit a box or examine the complexities before this project, but in a one-on-one meeting, my professor explained how that worked. I felt the same way about my poetry independent study, where I worked very closely with faculty and another student who was doing short fiction.

On the other hand, I also loved putting together the final portfolio of public relations writing for an imaginary fundraising event in my Public Relations for Non-profit class, even though I had far less, if any, interaction with the professor one-on-one. It was different, and it was fun. I don't remember the grade, but I do know that I left feeling like I learned something valuable, applicable to the world outside of class, and actually, to this day, I use what I learned while putting that project together whenever I write an email, a memo, web content, or other professional writing genres.

These experiences definitely shaped how I have gone on to teach my own students. I really like project-based learning, and I try to make myself available to students as much as possible, to act as a mentor or role model where possible. For the most part, I came from the same place as my students, nearly literally, as I teach in the same classrooms where I was taught as an undergrad, and I want them to see that my success is not the result of some magic gift of intelligence, but of applying myself, connecting my passions to my school work, and of being willing to put in the time to do something exceptional rather than mediocre. In these ways, I see again how my concept of the ideal student-faculty relationship shapes my assignments. I can also see how understanding what I consider meaningful as a student and a teacher will have an impact on those relationships.

With all that said, the Meaningful Writing Project has a great website: http://meaningfulwritingproject.net/, and the work is set to be published in book-length detail sometime in the near future. I highly recommend everyone read about the methods, the findings, and the interesting stories involved in the research, if for no other reason than to reflect on your own experiences with meaningful writing.

IWAC 2014: Considering "Discipline"

As promised, I'm diving into some of the things that the 2014 IWAC (International Writing Across the Curriculum) Conference presentations prompted me to consider. Today, I'm going to talk more about the wonderful talk given by Melody Pugh, Naomi Silver, and Anne Ruggles Gere called "Interrogating Disciplinarity in WAC/WID: An Institutional Ethnography."

The scholars framed the discussion around what began an institutional review of the Upper Level Writing Requirement (ULWR) at their university, which lead to interviews with faculties and students about their expectations and experiences with these ULWR. What they found was a real struggle with defining disciplines/disciplinarity and whether their concepts of "writing in the discipline" would actually serve students. Many students and professors expressed a desire to explore more genres, but felt that was outside the bounds of "writing in the discipline," which largely seemed to boil down to write academic-journal-style papers. They also recognized the tension between forcing students to learn to use disciplinary writing as a researcher in the field when most of them would not be going on to do that type of work. Students questioned value while professors questioned ethics. It was extremely interesting.

The trio will likely continue working with the extensive data and perhaps publish some of their findings, so I don't want to give away all of their secrets, but I do really want to use their work to think about what it means to be "in the discipline," as they asked the audience to think about. What does it mean to "write in the discipline"? Is "the discourse of the field" only the work published in journals and books? Where do disciplines start and end? How does the way we conceptualize discipline affect how we assign writing?

I thought some of the audience members' questions and comments were very insightful. Here's just a few:

• Would it be better to consider disciplines as centers rather than closed-off spaces with boundaries?
• Is the WAC/WID version of disicplinarity just a selling model that positions us in a power relation  over other departments?
• Is the WAC model more useful than the WID model? Does wider help, or is "honoring of the occasion more helpful"? 
• It seems that when we consider disciplinarity in writing courses, we get the rhetoric and epistemology stuff, but we seem to miss the "activity systems" part. How can we/should we be more focused on activity systems in the disciplines?

As I prepare my own Writing in the Disciplines course, where my uses of multimodal texts have been minimal and semi-traditional in that they are fairly linear and usually called "papers"-- write a blog, use a screenshot and hyperlinks in an essay, etc.-- I wonder how my own notions of disciplinarity have shaped and possibly limited my students' learning experiences. I thought they should be learning to write as scholars in their disciplines, learning to mimic the style of academic journals, and that there were other types of writing courses to prepare them for those other types of writing (business writing for memos and executive summaries, for example), but I'm not sure they really are getting it elsewhere., especially if this narrow idea of discipline is pervasive throughout the university.

Though I say I focus on genre diversity and teaching students to address contextual/situational elements, I'm now beginning to question my own understanding and application of these terms in my pedagogy. Am I simply (as a panelist said in another presentation) "putting old wine in a new bottle"? What are the alternatives that come with a new definition, especially one that would be more focused on disciplines as centers or conscious of activity systems?

I will be teaching Writing in the Disciplines again in the fall, and while I thought I had pretty much got my syllabus together, I'm now prepared to go back and scrutinize the application of my conception of "discipline." I'm also considering how I can informally replicate some of the work these women did, finding out what they expected from a course called "Writing in the Disciplines," what they learned that was unexpected but valuable, and what they wish they had learned. Suggestions are much appreciated!

IWAC 2014: Where did the currents take me?

I just returned from the 2014 IWAC (International Writing Across the Curriculum) Conference at the University of Minnesota, and I have to say it was one of my best conference experiences yet. The presentations were engaging, the people were open and friendly, and Minneapolis was a great city.

During my brief two days there, I managed to sit in on 5 panels, one in which I presented, a keynote, and an incredible plenary session. In truth, it made me a little sad that I'm not a WAC WPA because I would have loved the opportunity to implement some of the ideas that were discussed at the universities where I am involved in writing pedagogy.

The Panels

Here is a brief overview of the titles of the panels that I attended:

• Role Reversal: When Students Teach Faculty in WAC Programs - Deanna Daniels & Brandy Grabow, Kate Ronald & Lucy Manley, and Greg Skutches
• Writing Beyond the Curriculum - Nicole Papaioannou, Dan Reis & Caroline Klidonas, and KaaVonia Hinton & Yonghee Suh
• Interrogating Disciplinarity in WAC/WID: An Institutional Ethnography - Anne Ruggles Gere, Naomi Silver, & Melody Pugh
• Teaching Meaningful Writing: What Faculty Say About Writing Assignments in Their Disciplines - Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller, & Neal Lerner
• Multimodal Literacy: Writing, Reading, & Transfer - Andrea Glover, Maggie Christensen, and G. Travis Adams

I will take some time to address the larger issues in each of these panels in separate posts, but I wanted to recap some of the big questions that I've started to ask as a result of these panels and some of the discussion that followed. I picked one large question that was sparked by each.

• Does the campus culture empower students?
• How can on-campus organizations make use of student writers and also enhance student writing?
• How do we frame disciplines? Should we moving toward a theory of centers rather than a theory of boundaries?
• What makes a writing assignment meaningful?
• Should we shift to a WRAC model (writing and reading across the curriculum)?

These questions may be brief in text, but responses are complex, and the ways in which those responses shape student learning experiences and faculty development are important.

The Plenary

The plenary session focused on creating sustainable WAC programs and was led by an A-team of scholars-- Chris Anson, Kathleen Blake Yancey, Chris Thaiss, Linda Adler-Kassner, and Bob McMaster-- who role-played how they would deal with a failing, under-resourced WAC program (a very cool divergence from the traditional plenary talk). Anson would propose scenarios, building the complexities facing the school bit by bit, and the 5 others would respond on the fly. They did not know what they would be asked beforehand.

 As some who hopes to be a WPA one day, I was really intrigued by how the scholars embodied the different thought processes, concerns, and strengths of each individual involved in a WAC initiative, ranging from department chairs to WAC directors to provosts to students. I thought, aside from having a bit of fun, they were incredibly in-tune with those that they served and incredibly empathetic. It helped me see what I might come up against should I someday be invited to try to enhance or save a WAC program.

The speakers reminded the audience that sustainability went beyond a current context and a current moment and planned for the future. The solution also had to be built within the framework of the local context with input from all stakeholders (as much as possible, that is). Top-down initiatives would feel imposing and oppressive and often fail to effectively use the strengths of the parties involved. Collaboration, where possible, is a wonderful thing.

The most important things I took away were:

1. Understand the campus climate and be prepared to work within it, even if the aim is to change it. No model is one-size-fits-all when it comes to campus writing initiatives.
2. Be sensitive to people's fears and frustrations. See challenges as moments for reflection, negotiation, or collaborative education.
3. Bring joy into the work. Focus on the pleasures of learning from one another and the pleasure of writing.

What seems evident from these talks and discussions is that the people here really care about their students and their colleagues. While many people were doing serious research, it was easy to see how much of it could be put into practice and was largely aimed at contributing to a positive learning environment for everyone involved. IWAC really made me excited about the work I'm doing, the field that I intend to contribute to, and continued interactions with the people who I am privileged to call my colleagues. I'm looking forward to (fingers crossed) attending again in 2016.

I would love to hear from IWAC-attendees about their experiences at the conference and from those interested in campus writing initiatives what to make of some of these big questions and themes.

Starting My Dissertation Study - YAY! - Call for Participants :)

I am proud to announce that I am beginning my dissertation research! I am looking for undergraduates/recent grads to participate in a qualitative study on writing through the classroom and beyond. Do you know a student who used class writing-- no matter how formal or informal-- to springboard to a larger project beyond the class without being required to do so? I would love to talk to them!

Seeking nominations and/or interested parties. 

Please feel free to forward or share this call for participants. Thank you! 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K0xbY8lSemh9WothJ59sb40WRje59q18jHfwHmqWVs0/edit?usp=sharing

Snark/asm and Second (3rd, 4th,...) Language Learning

For the past few months, I've been trying to learn Portuguese. It is definitely one of the hardest things I have done in a long time. I use interactive websites. I write in elementary grammar books. I listen to podcasts. I even try reading the news and books in Portuguese. Acquiring even the most basic conversational skill has been a painfully slow process. Despite keeping at it everyday, I can make only a few full sentences-- nothing in past tense or conditional or the million other tenses Portuguese has. As someone who is almost a doctor in the English language, it feels so odd to me not to be able to craft complex sentences or find the right vocabulary for the ideas I want to express. I haven't given up yet, though.

The reason I continue to fight it out is partially because I want to be able to converse with my boyfriend's friends and family, but even more so because I've had positive encouragement. My significant other will let me ask him one million questions about the language. He'll sit there and help me try to pronounce words. If I message him in Portuguese, he'll answer me back and show me the correct way to say what I was trying to say. He does this all with patience and kindness, and he reminds me how far I've come. At a birthday party, his family friends made me feel proud of how much I was catching on. One of my best friends is also learning Portuguese, though she is much more advanced than I am, and she also consistently reminds me that I've learned a lot and celebrates my small victories. Even online, when I chat on Babbel.com with native speakers, they never put down my poor grammar or the length of time it takes me to construct a thought. They are all supportive. This has made it easy to learn.

I contrast this with my attempts to learn Greek as an adult. My father is a Greek immigrant and several of my family members and close family friends speak Greek. I've been to Greece twice. I thought it was important to learn the language. The problem is that whenever I tried to speak Greek, I was met with sarcasm or playful mocking. The first time I went to Greece, my cousin would poke fun at me every time I spoke, whether my accent was incorrect or not, simply because I was an American struggling to speak the language. The second time I went to Greece, my grandmother was the only one who encouraged others to speak Greek to me in an attempt to help me learn the language, but she didn't help much with the spoken aspects. At home, my dad made no effort to encourage my Greek learning, even after I dished out a large fee for Rosetta Stone. After a while, I just didn't want to try anymore. No one would engage me. The learning process felt solitary. There was no one to practice with, and as I already felt self-conscious, the playful jests made me not want to try, even when there was.  

Sass doesn't belong in feedback to student writing. 

I spent the first five years of my life in Brooklyn, NY, grew up in Jersey, relocated to Queens, and then returned to Jersey again. I was raised by a native Staten Islander and a Greek transplanted in Brooklyn. Needless to say, I am fluent in sarcasm and teasing. I admit that I will often tease my students when they ask seemingly obvious questions, but now more than ever, I see that there is a time and place for it, and I am trying to train myself to act accordingly.

Learning a new language outside a formal educational settings has really helped me empathize with the plight of students who are learning English or even just learning to craft better Standard American Written English/Academic English/whatever fancy term you want to use to describe the English of the socioeconomic elite. It's become obvious to me that if we want students to learn, we have to tone down the sarcasm and the playful mocking.

The worst case I ever saw was on a student's paper from a law professor. A student was proposing a thesis statement for a research paper, and the professor had written things like "REALLY?????????!?!?????? Are you even trying? Can you think? Oh, so X, Y, Z happened? Really?" in a paragraph long email of harsh sarcasm that addressed his vague, overly general thesis statement. While I guessed that this professor was just offering a bit of tough love, her comments made the student feel incapable of performing the assigned task. They completely alienated him and made him feel far beneath the average student. He didn't want to ask her questions. He didn't feel playfully challenged. He felt defeated and didn't want to write anymore.

I also saw a professor who demanded that his student attend the writing center because he had a slew of grammar issues, which the professor guessed were a result of learning English as a second language. The professor thought he was being encouraging by writing snarky comments, then sending the student for extra help instead of failing him. However, the student's native language was English, and the professor's list of things to work on (which, again, he thought was encouraging) only served to make this student feel stupid and incapable of correcting what were really just small surface-level grammatical errors. He could have learned so much more if the professor just took the time to explain and perhaps actually let him play around with language.

Like I said, language learners definitely need play and playfulness. We need to make learning fun and encourage mistake-making in a nurturing environment. It clearly needs to be interactive. But fun doesn't have to be at the expense of our students, a reminder that we are superior to this, which is what snark and sarcasm both do. These students already know we have mastered something that they are struggling with. Sarcasm should be reserved for those who have already established skill and confidence, who know that they can do better. Those who are already questioning their abilities will only find further doubt in those seemingly harmless teasing remarks. In the process of building confidence, play has to be about discovery and socialization, making new connections.

Boa sorte!

Langer's Six Strategies of High-Performing Teachers

For last week's writing center professional development, my colleagues and I read George Hillocks' literature review on Middle and High School Composition from Smagorinsky's Research on Composition: Multiple Perspectives on Two Decades of Change. The chapter heavily concentrates on state-wide and national assessment, mostly via standardized tests, giving you an idea of what middle and high school writing education has become- an endless series of exams and rankings. Bleh!

In this chapter, Hillocks cites Langer's (2001) discussion of six strategies used by high-performing teachers. They are:

1. applying a variety of teaching methods and approaches that "integrate the skills taught with ongoing larger curricular goals"
2. integrating testing-based skills into the curriculum
3. pointing out connections
4. teaching students strategies for organizing thoughts and making tasks more manageable, focusing on the "development of meta-cognitive strategies"
5. taking a "generative approach" that reiterates and makes connections to already-learned material, even after that unit/lesson/objective is over with
6. creating social contexts for learning

Now, I recognize that these six strategies are all still in some ways shaped around the evaluation of teachers by their ability to get students to pass exams, which seems to be a very backwards way of educating anyone, but I still think the bigger picture, here, is an important one for educators to consider. The impact of high-performing teachers is best summarized in these lines:

English learning and high literacy (the content as well as the skills) were treated as social activity, with depth and complexity of understanding and proficiency with conversations growing out of the shared cognition that emerges from interaction with present and imagined others. (Langer, 2001)

The teachers who help their students to excel the most are those who recognize that learning and producing knowledge are social activities, built on conversation and interaction. Furthermore, Langer's findings demonstrate that learning and knowledge production are tied to an interdisciplinary approach that emphasizes connections and connect-making.

The problem is, of course, that most of what is being implemented as a result of current "education reform" steers educators away from the six strategies. We put lessons and units in boxes. We rank students by their individual accomplishments, rarely on collaborative efforts. We encourage them to succeed as individuals, and we encourage competition with peers to prove one's worth. We push for narrowly defined disciplines and sub-disciplines and call for specializations.

At the same time, we also know that beyond the microcosmic classroom, collaboration is important. Communities need people to come together, as do professions and academic disciplines. None of us can succeed on our own. We need everyone's skills pooled together. Most problem-solving in life requires integrated, interdisciplinary approaches. Communication, the very basis of our society, requires people to share information, negotiate, interact, and make connections. So why on earth aren't we teaching these skills? Why are those who do the "exception" and not the rule?

I'd argue that we've put far too much on individualism for the sake of individualism rather than pushing people to excel so that they may contribute to the whole, make things work better. That's what we have begun to teach in school- succeed at any cost, make a name for yourself, and leave the "weak" behind.

But literacy involves everyone! The United States created mass education so that Americans could be a community of knowledgeable individuals capable of making decisions that would benefit the entire community. The more individuals who are stomped down by this race to the top, the fewer people we will have to contribute to our society. This may seem like a good thing for those in power, but with time, it will break down the fibers of the community, leaving even those in power with much less power.

By returning social interaction and interdisciplinarity to education, high-performing teachers do more than just prepare students to meet standards. They tap back into this American democratic ideal of an educated mass, encouraging students to dive beneath the surface of texts and arguments and have educated conversations with peers, the stepping stones of social participation in the democratic microcosm.

The problem is that these high-performing teachers are considered extraordinary-- not the norm. So for those of us who teach or mentor pre-service teachers, the questions become:

How can we revise the standards for teaching high school writing in a way that is fruitful for all involved? How do we encourage development of educators who use socially-integrated, interdisciplinary, hybrid methods of teaching to help students achieve success on exams and, more importantly, beyond?

Access, Voice, and Globalization

Today, my Facebook newsfeed was covered with stories about government-mandated oppression and silencing across the world. At least 94 protestors were killed in Egypt by state security forces. A US woman was deported from Bahrain after writing articles and comments on social media that the Bahraini government decided "incited hatred against the government." 

As I read these headlines, I was also moved by an email I received: a student could not participate in my course because the government of the nation where this student resided blocked access to many sites. The student could not perform unbiased research-- or perform research at all, in some cases-- so the student was forced to withdraw, hoping to take the course again when back in the U.S.

This made me think hard about the globalization that many universities aim to promote. In my online summer course, for example, I have several international students, and they are taking the course from their home country. While I took into consideration time frame issues, language barriers, and the ways that cultural notions of identity might affect their writing, I did not consider permission to access information or speak about that information. I did not consider that freedom of speech is not a right in every country.

I come to education with a very Western view. I believe in democracy. I believe in freedom of speech. I use a more hands-off approach to teaching, rather than an authoritative stance, and I don't mind or discourage students when they have different views from my own. But these instances make me realize the challenges to embracing a globalized society and appreciating diverse cultures. How do I even begin to work within the frame of a culture that considers most of what I stand for is a threat to its way of life? Can I educate those students? How do I respect their culture and still teach in a way that I believe is most ethical? What is ethical? 

For all the complaints I make against the United States of America and its government, I feel very lucky to live here, where I'm allowed to make those complaints and where I am allowed to have a voice despite being a woman. This is highlighted for me when I see headlines like the one I mentioned or hear people speak about their own governments that restrict information access. I know that my voice is shaped by cultural forces, and that a truly free voice is an ideal that likely cannot been reached, but I have been able to develop my voice in ways that would not be possible in more restricted areas of the globe. Is my freedom to develop my voice oppressive to others thought? Is it freedom or oppression if I ask students to buy into the view that unbiased research is important and that authority figures are fallible? Am I expanding their worldview, or am I making it impossible for them to complete their American educations? 

Of course, I am also curious about university policy. I have seen almost every university push for globalization by advertising the number of countries that have sent students to the university, by pushing students to study abroad, and by allowing and promoting the existence of cultural organizations on campus. However, at least an adjunct, I have never seen any policy in regards to international students' abilities to complete work from their home countries. Does the university consider that governments may restrict access or limit free speech when they allow students to take courses online internationally? And how do they expect me, as an instructor, to respond when a student says that he or she is unable to fulfill the requirements of a course because of government restrictions in their home nation? 

In this instance, I can only continue to develop more questions. It is too soon in my thinking process to come up with answers. 

Across the Divide

High School and Higher Ed. Writing Instructors Come Together

This Monday, I attended a great event, Across the Divide, a writing forum that connected high school writing instructors from multiple disciplines with college writing instructors (mostly FYW). The forum took place in the form of a 2-hour roundtable talk that was based around organic discussion. It was held in a beautiful conference room at Biotechnology High School in Freehold, NJ, where several of the high school teachers were currently teaching. 

The conversations were insightful, constructive, and fun. You can watch the conversation and check out the live-tweet feed to see for yourself!

Just a quick aside: I found out about this event from my twitter pal, @ReadyWriting. I was immediately interested because I don't think there are nearly enough opportunities for high school and college educators to collaborate. Plus, I am an alumna of the school district that was hosting the event and still live in the area. However, I didn't learn about the event from local media outlets; I learned about it from someone hundreds of miles away via tweet. Props to the power of social media.

Anyway, some really great things happened at this roundtable. For one, high school teachers and college writing instructors got to talk to one another. Connecting educators across the vertical divides can be a challenge. This was a great way for us to recognize each others' wants and needs, as well as those of our students. And of course, I loved learning more about what these teachers were doing in their classrooms.

Furthermore, there was no "blame game" going on in the room. Often in education, we pass the buck-- How many times have you head "why didn't they learn that in high school?" or "Didn't they teach you anything in first year writing?" This event, however, was a testament to how bright and motivated educators across grade levels are. It also showed that we shared many of the same notions of "good writing," "good writing instruction," and had many of the same goals for our students.

Some of the things that were discussed included:

• Interdisciplinary learning: Many of us noted that putting subjects in boxes was detrimental to students' learning processes, that they were most able to engage when they could make connections to other content/contexts. Students had a hard time seeing English as anything but literature, and therefore, they were unable to transfer the skills. Part of this had to do with testing, but we saw that part of it had to do with educator's "that's not my job" attitudes that box disciplines in narrow constructs.
• Using Multiple Genres: One of the things that the Common Core introduced this year was more information texts, which through some high school teachers for a loop ("not my job"). At the forum, though, we seemed to agree that students needed to be exposed to more genres and learn how to read texts that are informational because it will help to remove the idea that English is only reading Literature and writing is only figuring out what literary devices are used in a piece. It will also enable them to read, understand, and evaluate different texts outside the classroom, and in a world where they are constantly bombarded by text, this is essential.
• Rhetorical Awareness versus Content Learning: Rhetorical awareness was something that the college writing instructors was not taught/encouraged much in high school writing classroom, and the high school writing instructors seemed to agree and see a need for more. They also noted, however, that time constraints made doing anything more than reading a text with students difficult sometimes. Time to discuss rhetorical concepts was limited.
• Form versus Formula: We all agreed that there may be a time and a place for a 5 paragraph essay, but there is a difference between The Five Paragraph Essay and an essay that happens to be five paragraphs because that is the best way to write about the issue. It was important to us that students recognize the difference between matching a form to a purpose and audience and simply choosing a formula and filling in the blanks. 
• Encouraging Students to Take Risks: Partially because of testing, partially because of cultural ideologies, partially because no one likes to be disappointed, and sometimes because of laziness, we noted that students seem to fear taking risks and many of them seek "right answers" to questions that don't need/have "right answers." We want to find more ways to encourage students to take risks and move beyond marking experimentation as failure, even when it doesn't go as planned, because that is how real learning occurs.

What was evident across the board is that we all had a passion for teaching. Everyone who was there wanted to be there to improve our students' experiences with developing as writers, which perhaps goes against cultural rhetoric that suggests many teachers are just skating by or are there because they want summers off. The people in that room were dedicated to improving the lives of others. Each one clearly held her or himself accountable for improving their practice, volunteering to take on professional development on their own time that day. We were all engrossed in the process of teaching and revising our teaching strategies as new contexts demand. It was obvious that we were all enthusiastic about learning new ways to help our students, which included keeping up-to-date with research in the field, checking in on the conversations happening among professional peers on social networks, and talking to current and former students. And we all agreed that these conversations were useful and likely necessary, but far too rare. Why is that?

The group plans to meet for several more sessions, though no dates have been selected. Those interesting in joining, either face-to-face or via GoogleHangout, can contact Michelle Lampinem (@MichLampinem) or Sarah Mulhern Gross (@thereadingzone) for further information.

The Expert as Novice: Reliving the Freshman Year

image from techwhirl.com

For the past few weeks, I've been working part-time at an IT consulting & network integration firm in downtown Manhattan as part of the technical writing team (which is really just me & the existing technical writer). The thing is, even though I’m (somewhat) proficient at writing for academic purposes, technical writing is a whole new ball game. While my writing is clean and easy to read, I don’t always have the knowledge to write what needs to be written. It’s a bit confidence-shaking. I’m feeling like an intern rather than someone whose specialty is writing.

Feeling like a beginner isn't easy, especially when you've devoted your entire adult life thus far to studying English and Communications, and even more so when as a writing instructor and writing consultant, I’m supposed to be an expert writer. It’s true that I can write for many contexts. Heck, I can even teach writing in the disciplines! But writing in the professional domain about information technology has proven challenging, and my lack of content knowledge is extremely frustrating. I know if I knew more, I could write better.

This brings me back to some of the literature that I have been reading for my dissertation. Sommers & Saltz’s study “The Novice as Expert: Writing the Freshman Year,” for instance, talks about the struggle that freshman face as they are placed in a new writing environment, where they are expected to perform as experts without already having expertise. While it it is the process of writing that these freshman struggle with, it is also the writing that helps them to make sense of complex concepts and gain expertise. Furthermore, they find that students who embrace their novice status are the ones most likely to make the greatest strides in writing development and learning in general. Continued writing is helping me to gain an understanding of the IT field, but embracing my novice is still a challenge.

Rehearsing New Roles: How College Students Develop as Writers by Lee Ann Carroll also speak into my situation. Carroll thinks writing assignments need to be redefined as literacy tasks because they require much more than just a handle on writing skills, such as grammar and organization. Writing tasks require some knowledge about the content area, an ability to negotiate the needs of the audience with the needs of the writer, to understand form, and perhaps to navigate information. Many literacies are involved in the composition of a single piece of writing. And with new roles come new literacy needs. In this case, my inability to perform as I would on, say, an essay for a Writing Studies course is directly related to being asked to perform a new role and a lack of information technology literacy. I am missing the necessary vocabulary and am fairly unaware of the conventions of the field. No matter how cleanly I can write, I will not be able to produce the quality of writing that someone who has in-depth knowledge of the field will be able to produce. My performance as a technical writer is affected by this lack of knowledge. Again, this is extremely frustrating to someone who supposedly has “mastered” reading and writing, with nearly 10 years of higher education devoted to it.

To cope with my lack of knowledge, I have been reading, taking notes on style, and asking questions-- and I am learning a lot-- but the process of learning to be an effective technical writer at an IT firm is still a much slower process than I’m comfortable with. Even when I feel that I’ve said something as precisely as possible, I am often told “that’s great, but here’s an even better way.” The person I am working under is great in that he tries to encourage me, but still, sometimes, I feel like my work is more of a burden to correct than a lightening of his workload. It can be totally disheartening.

It really makes me empathize with my students. It makes me see that they probably are giving me their best efforts and that my feedback to them may come as a surprise. It shows me that while they may understand my feedback in theory, they may not know how to put it into practice. Furthermore, encouragement is nice and may be genuine, but without specifics or if always followed by “but here’s what you need to fix,” it may wind up being meaningless. On the other hand, this experience also shows me that with time, effort, a willingness to research concepts and revise their writing, and a careful eye for rhetorical analysis, students will be able to make significant progress. Finally, this progress likely will not come in rapid epiphanies, but as a slow, non-linear coming into awareness.    

Take the Plunge: Mina Shaughnessy's "Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing"

Last week, I had to read Mina Shaughnessy's 1976 essay "Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing" for our professional development session at the writing center where I work. I've read her book Errors and Expectations (1977), but this was the first time that I had a chance to read any of her shorter works. Though the article is nearly 40 years old, the problems and solutions described by Shaughnessy are still applicable today.

Shaughnessy's main argument in the piece is that educators need to stop considering basic writing "a writing course for young men and women who have many things wrong with them" (291). Instead, she argues that writing instructors need to begin to examine their own teaching and learning processes and the complex and contextual needs of their students. To show how these issues manifest themselves in the university, Shaughnessy outlines a "developmental scale for teachers," complete with four stages. They are:

Guarding the Tower: gate-keeping and denying access to those who seemingly do not belong, a tactic of self-preservation.
Converting the Natives: assuming outsiders can be "tamed" and fashioned after the elite class, though they can never truly be part of the elite.
Sounding the Depths: realizing there is complexity and that students of all kinds have something to contribute.
Diving In: meeting basic writing students head-on, dealing with their complex needs, and breaking the tradition of thinking "what's wrong with them" 

Though the terminology is controversial, as it is steeped in racial and colonialist overtones, the message is clear. It's not "them" who needs to be fixed; it's "us," the educators, who need to reevaluate our methods. We need to be aware of our own practices, be willing to assess the needs of our students, and quit using one-size-fits-all pedagogies. We need to stop thinking these students are broken and realize that they simply need someone to guide them through the things they have not been privileged yet to know. We also need to stop privileging antiquated ideas of "the typical college student," the ones who come from high performing high schools with a middle class enthusiasm for formal education. These are ideas that are still practical and useful in our current educational climate.

Here are some things we can do to help students, especially basic writers, based on Shaughnessy's ideas:

1. See students as people with real problems, passions, and pursuits.
2. Do not think of students as empty vessels or know-nothings who need to be filled with your greater knowledge.
3. Accept that students bring their own knowledge and literacies to the classroom, even if they aren't the "standard."
4. Be willing to learn from students.
5. Remember that at one point, you didn't know either.
6. And... you didn't know what you didn't know until someone made you aware.
7. Don't use "it's not my job" or "they should have learned that in [insert course or grade level here]" as an excuse not to help a student with a task that you have the ability to help them with.
8. Recognize patterns of error and needs rather than worrying about "correctness" (what's correct anyway? whose version of correct?). 
9. Don't just mark errors. Explain your thought process.
10. Offer models of academic inquiry and inquiry processes. Students often need to learn how to ask questions more than they need to learn answers.
11. Do not underestimate your students. 
12. Challenge students to complete meaningful tasks, but also be willing to help them along the way.

Shaughessy ends these essay with these words: "DIVING IN is simply deciding that teaching them [basic writers] to write well is not only suitable but challenging work for those who would be teachers and scholars in a democracy" (297). If we want democracy, we can't have a fixed notion of who can and cannot be educated. We can't say, "oh they'll never make it" or "they're not 'college material,'" or only a small, likely homogeneous, group of students will ever have the opportunity to succeed. If we want to encourage diversity and all of the wonderful things that come from the intersection of different ideas, then we need to take the plunge and dive in.

-------------------------------------

Shaughnessy, Mina. "Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing." College Composition and Communication 27.3 (1976): 234-39. Rpt. Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. 3rd ed. Eds., Victor Villanueva and Kristin L. Arola. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2011. Print.

Narrating Writing Experiences: When Students Want to Know Teacher as Writer

Today, as I attempted to prep students for one-on-one conferences, I had them answer a list of questions to bring to our meeting. My last questions was "Do you have any questions for me about writing?" I expected a bunch of requests for specific instruction, such as "how do I write the perfect conclusion?" or "what are some ways I can come up with topics?", but what I got instead were several questions about my own experiences with writing. They asked me about my feelings about writing, whether I deal with constraints, the kinds of vocabulary I use when I write, why I teach writing the way I do, who my favorite authors are, and what I consider "good" writing.

I guess what this suggests to me is that I need to be more transparent about my own struggles and successes with writing. Students want to know who their teacher is as a writer. They don't seem to want to me to establish credibility and claim myself as a writer. Instead, it seems like they are genuinely curious as to what happens in the upper ranks of academia. Or perhaps, they just want to relate. This is something I did not expect when I posed the question.

Typically, I resist talking about my own writing in class. Partially, this is an attempt to avoid sharing to0 much of my personal preferences with my students. I don't want students to feel isolated or constrained if they feel like we don't share views. I also don't want them to shape their writing around my interests thinking that they'll earn higher grades. I like to see what they can come up with when those types of constraints are removed.

Not sharing the personal is only part of it. The other part is that I don't talk much about my experiences with writing because I assumed students would find it boring. Sure, sometimes I'll throw in a "yeah, I have a hard time with focusing too when I have a lot of ideas about a topic" or other little quips, but I rarely offer narratives. What these questions suggest, however, is that maybe I need to do more of this.

I'd love to know how much students want to know about their instructors' writing. Do you want the examples and narratives? I'd also love to know how much instructors are already sharing with their classes. Do you offer quick one-liners? Do you take the time to share narratives about your writing experiences? Do you have question-and-answer sessions about writing, as one fabulous colleague of mine said she has done?

Kate Kessler's "Composing for Delivery"

Today, I went back through my folders of research, trying to get back in the swing of the semester. I picked up the article "Composing for Delivery" by Kate Kessler. The article was initially published in the November 2005 edition of The English Journal. In this article, Kessler makes a fairly convincing argument for doing what she calls "composing for delivery" or creating "a call to write" for students in a Composition course. Building off the fifth canon of classical rhetoric, delivery, she implements a curriculum that forces students to write for purposes beyond the classroom (which, may I add, she never denotes as "real world"). She finds that as a result of this method students learn to compose with their own purposes in mind while also considering audience and effective rhetoric. In this particular article, Kessler observes how students develop rhetorical sensitivity through letter writing (actually mailed to the intended audience) and proposals. The end result of this teaching style is that "Students are encouraged to know that their compositions have civic as well as academic meaning" (93). They also seem more prepared to shift genres without simply relying on a formula.

I buy into Kessler's theory. I admit that I assign some similar tasks in my classroom and that my motives are the same. I want students to see themselves as engaged in the larger social sphere, as citizens with the necessary tools to make changes. While some might argue that Kessler should be teaching her students to succeed in academia by teaching them how to write academic essays instead, I fully support her methods. I see a greater need for teaching rhetorical sensitivity than academic forms. Students who are rhetorically sensitive will be able to see how to work their ideas into new genres without simply filling in a premade structure. They will see how they want to present their argument and what word choices are appropriate for the audience that they wish to address rather than "Do I have 5 sentences in this paragraph? Is my thesis at the end of the introduction?" And these lessons will translate from the classroom into other areas of their lives, which is what most of them want to recieve a higher education for in the first place.

Finally, what I really love about Kessler's piece is that it reminds us all that educators should adopt pedagogies they can live by. If students see us-- professors, GTAs, writing consultants-- engaged with writing in the way we want to tell them to be engaged with writing, it shows them that writing isn't just a tool for teachers to give grades. And I think it simply makes it easier to go to work, knowing that you believe in and live by the philosophy you present day in and out.

Grade Inflation or Lots of Invested Clients?

The semester is now officially wrapped up, and I've sent in all my grades. Grades, as many of you probably know by now, are the bane of my existence. I hate giving them. Sometimes, I'm not even sure I know how to do  it. Evaluating writing is so subjective, even when you try to be consistent and objective. So this post is kind of a -- in the words of one of my fabulous students -- "am I doing this right?" sort of thing.

I've traded out the standard system of grading each paper for a 50/50 contract/portfolio grading method. The contract grade is based on participation, completion of blogs and small writing assignments, and turning in drafts of major assignments. Everything must be done on-time and according to assignment criteria in order to be given full credit. Anything turned in after the cut-off date gets no credit. The portfolio is grading according to the department standards for A, B, C, D, or F. The thing is when you give students a chance to revise their drafts 2-3 times, then learn more about writing, then revise those pieces for a portfolio, if they're doing their work, odds are pretty good that they will produce some effective writing. If they aren't doing their work, then they probably are going to be turning in their best writing in their portfolios, so they will wind up with mediocre grades (these are usually my C/D/F students). However, I find that most students buy into this philosophy. They put in the time and effort, they read and think about the comments, and they participate in class. This means that I end up with a lot of "good" grades.

I've noted that for most of my courses, the majority of final grades fall between A and B-. I give a few Cs, rarely give Ds, and only a handful of Fs, typically to those students who fail to turn in major assignments or the portfolio or have terrible attendance (as all of the universities where I have taught had strict school-dictated attendance policies). I happen to think my students earn their grades, but when I hear others talk about their grading, I start to wonder if I'm committing "grade inflation." Or do I manage to create a clientele who are genuinely invested? I use these terms in particular because I believe big business is directly related to the reason that we grade in the first place.

I have obviously felt challenged by other grading methods. At one university where I work, the grading system is very strict. The department attempts to calibrate instructors, and they also advise them that Cs are average. Many students wind up with Cs, Ds, and Fs on their papers, which are each graded, and then two are submitted for a final portfolio, which is graded separately. The department also encourages more of a bell curve. One shouldn't give too many As, or even Bs. If the average of the class is too high or too low in comparison to others, the department makes sure that instructor is aware.

There are other methods of which I am aware, as well. For instance, while I use a rubric or, at the very least, a set of expectations, and grade my students in accordance with those standards, there are instructors who grade students against each other. The "excellent" work gets As and the worst of the work gets Fs. This, again, results in more of a curve.

My philosophy is that if a student does her or his work, and it meets the criteria, the work should be awarded the grade deserved. Instructors shouldn't feel pressured to meet some department average (what if you have awesome students in your course or ones that were simply unprepared for college and have more work to do?). I also believe that students find this bell curve system of grading discouraging and make getting the grade the sole reason for doing work and revising. They aren't invested in the work, but they are invested in getting the grade. This also seems to lead some students to feel that they have invested in an education in a way that entitles them to high marks without any real learning or effort (I paid $50,000 to go here, so you should be giving me an A so I can get a good job). On the other hand, As and Bs might very well help students land good jobs; however, if everyone graded like me, ruin the prestige of As and Bs.

So I have to wonder, is my system faulty? Are grades meant to represent rank? Should I be thinking of grades as a levels of achievement (excellence to unprepared?) rather than a point system? Or should I continue working on creating an "invested clientele"?