The Milk and Eggs

While rummaging through a grocery store cooler this week for a carton of eggs with the best expiration date, I spied a former student of mine gripping on to a gallon of milk. We both said, “Hi!” He said, “How have you been?” I said, “How are your classes going?” I thought back on this chance encounter and reflected on the tenets of individual, authentic assessment. In what contexts do we know our students? The composition we ask our students to create lives throughout their written words, the classroom, and the grocery store. It is a manifestation of their lifestyle, identity, culture, perceptions, experiences with writing, and maybe whether they drink whole or skim milk. It is interesting. When I ask students whom I see in a context outside of class, “How are your classes going?” they almost always answer with how their life is going. Is this where the writing lives that students drag into the writing classroom? Literacy seems far more amiable to our everyday moments. We read narratives, tell stories, remember childhood folklore, and build literacy initiatives within our communities where we buy our milk and eggs. On this particular day, with this particular student, in this particular context, student and teacher were interacting differently. I wasn't my teacherly, inspiring self. I was exhausted, worn-out, and unhappy that I couldn't find a dozen eggs that weren't expiring in three days. He wasn't talking as a student about his classes. He was venting about everything around him that was affecting his writing and his classes. As a writing teacher, I realize that there isn't one single context that determines how I assess, read, and understand my students and their writing. It is the glimpses of knowledge in between the contexts (the milk and eggs) and how milk and eggs make their way into student writing that is worth exploring.               

Critical Reading, Creative Responding

One of my favorite aspects of teaching is responding to student writing. Customizing a response to each writer with different modes of commentary is like crafting a solution only the writer can discover and act on. Commenting allows me to act as a reader-responder, a mirror that asks my students, “Is this what you are trying to say?” The resulting self-reflection and inquiry forces students back into their texts to revise and clarify their purpose. Some students need more praise and open-ended questions to further their writing. Other students may need a more directive response that addresses a particular pattern of error in their writing. Throughout this assessment process, I am trying to negotiate the amount of control I exert over each piece of writing. Careful, thoughtful response is always my aim. There is so much to consider when responding to student writing! If you feel bored, focus on an area of composition that you feel like reading. Maybe it is introductions, conclusions, transitions, searching for style, or praising paragraphs that sound confident and have a clear purpose. Be critical in your reading, but creative in your response to student writing. Have fun!

Check out more tips on how to make grading fun. :) 

Exchange Rate of Meeting Student Learning Outcomes

Classroom activities that get students writing on whiteboards and tables offer multiple opportunities for engagement in peer feedback, collaboration, invention, and revision. However, do f2f classrooms engage this learning at the same exchange rate of a digital learning space? How are SLOs for f2f classes translated when a course moves online? How do we increase students’ confidence when we aren’t f2f? Is praise when responding to student writing enough? Does a :) work as well as a real smile?