Let's Not Kill the Writer in Our Students

As an English major, I have looked over and given feedback on countless papers. As a student, I have received feedback on countless more. Through all of these experiences, I’ve always thought that grading papers was kind of messed up. I can understand trying to help students improve their writing skills, but why do we have to assign different levels of worth to students’ creative pieces?

Kelly Gallagher’s “Teaching Adolescent Writers” has given me some ideas on how to handle a distaste for assigning grades to papers. Early on in the chapter she writes, “Always telling students what is wrong with their papers is a recipe for killing off young writers” (Gallagher 144). This highlights one of my greatest fears as a teacher. I know that the way an educator teaches can make the difference between students hating or loving a subject. I don’t want to be responsible for “killing off” the writer in my students. For this reason, I found this chapter to be quite helpful in thinking about my own practices in writing assessment.

Throughout the chapter, Gallagher pushes the idea that student improvement comes from frequent, in-person conferences before the student finishes with their piece, rather than delivering a final, irreparable blow at the end of the process (Gallagher 148). I can remember numerous times when I’ve felt anxious about getting a paper back with a poor grade, not knowing what my teacher was looking for. If all of my teachers took Gallagher’s advice about meeting with students in the middle of the writing process, I would have been able to work collaboratively with my teachers to improve my papers and, more importantly, my writing skills. Instead of feeling anxious, I would have put more focus into what I wanted the final paper to look like. In my future career, I will definitely implement mid-process conferences with my students to help them improve their writing skills, rather than be discouraged by my comments and grade at the end of it.

Another big point Gallagher pushed that I’ll take with me into my career can be summed up by the following paragraph heading: “Read the paper through a craft lens” (Gallagher 145). It is so easy to get distracted by grammatical errors and by what is “wrong” with a paper, especially when we’ve grown up hearing narratives that push such things. (See my post from last week for more on this topic.) However, bogging students down with negative comments about their writing will only turn them away from wanting to write. While it is important to help students learn how to write with Standard English conventions, it’s almost more important that they are given room to make their writing into what they want it to be. Instead of telling students what’s wrong with their papers, we should ask them questions that will spark ideas and help them to move in the direction they want to go. I intend on making this my main focus as I work with my future students on their writing.

Source:

Gallagher, Kelly. “Using Assessment to Drive Better Student Writing.” Teaching Adolescent Writers, Hawker Brownlow Education, 2015, pp. 141–167.