The end of a course often challenges my fundamental beliefs as a teacher.

Once again, in the final days of my courses when students are allowed and encouraged to revise their major essays as often as possible, I have returned several without responding because the resubmitted essays are mostly the same as the last draft I marked or the student is merely dutifully addressing only what I have marked.

Many years ago when I was teaching high school English, my classroom was directly across the courtyard from a math teacher. We could see each other’s desks through our windows.

Part joking and part shade, that math teacher occasionally prodded me with “I wish I could teach while sitting at my desk.”

Some of the tension here is the essential nature of teaching math versus teaching writing as an English teacher, but there is also the more pronounced tension of what it means to teach. [1]

This math teacher ran a very quiet classroom with students focused on the teacher’s instruction—what I would call a teacher-centered environment. I see this often when I walk the hallways of my university where professors are apt to be lecturing from notes.

As a teacher of reading and writing, I organized my classes as workshops, a commitment to student-centered learning in which (to address the question titling this post) students were tasked with doing most of the work in the teaching/learning dynamic.

My instruction, often conducted at my desk, in fact, was individualized and in the form of providing students feedback on their essay drafts. Each of my 100+ students each year produced 30-40-plus full drafts of essays, about four essays per quarter which they were required to revise at least once.

At the college level, my first-year writing students submit and must revise at least once four major essays, and they also must conference with me at least once per essay after the first submission and before they can submit their required revision.

One of the significant problems with the workshop approach to teaching writing that is grounded in student revision prompted with teacher feedback is how to shift the burden of revising and editing from the teacher to the student.

The primary reason I reject writing rubrics, writing prompts, and template writing (five-paragraph essays) is that these approaches are centering the work of the writing in the teacher and not in the student-writer.

Requiring a four-sentence introduction is relieving (denying) students the needed experience of coming to understand paragraphing as a skill that reinforces meaning, instead of a number to fulfill, for example.

A tradition of teaching writing among English teachers that is incredibly flawed teaching and at the core of why so many teachers dread or even avoid teaching writing is meticulously marking every “error” on every student essay—a time-consuming act of futility.

In my life as a student, we received heavily marked essays (on the rare occasion that we wrote essays) in red ink and a grade—but there was no revising or rewriting. What that teacher had done is sheer martyrdom, marking for hours and hours to prove some sort of monk-like dedication to laboring as a teacher.

You can imagine (and you likely have done this) that almost all of us looked at the grade and promptly discarded the essays (never interacting in any way with all that read ink).

A more recent and slightly different version of this is the heavily marked essay that students are required to “fix”; however, in this scenario, once again, teachers are actually doing all the work and the students are simply working at the lowest levels of addressing those marks.

Teacher martyrdom and student compliance are not the only options, however. To combat these flaws with teaching students to write in a workshop setting, I have implemented the following:

• Replacing grades with minimum requirements. In a writing-intensive course, students must submit a first full draft of each essay (with proof of their own drafting and in a final form as if they are not allowed to revise), must participate in a conference with their peers and the teacher, and must submit at least one acceptable revise essay (“acceptable” includes the student addressing all feedback and submitting a clean file copy).
• Marking student drafts as little as possible, typically marking the first third (using highlighting and copy editing) while also prompting students to “revise/edit this throughout the essay” so that they are applying the revision instead of me prompting them to all areas needing attention. Highlighting is particularly effective for addressing surface features (grammar, mechanics, and usage) so that students begin to read their own work more carefully. I also use highlighting to address careless sentence formation (starting many sentences with “it” constructions, using “thing” or “get” verbs repeatedly) and careless paragraphing (starting consecutive or several paragraphs with the same words, phrasing).
• Not accepting or proving feedback on drafts that students either submit with track changes, etc., still active or with most of my feedback left unrevised or unedited. When teaching high school I marked these submissions with “N/G” for “no grade,” but at the college level, I simply return the draft submitted and the last draft I marked, noting that I cannot provide further feedback until the student addresses what I have already marked before.

At the end of the course, however, many of these practices grounded in my beliefs about how to teach well so that students do the work instead of me are challenged.

Two patterns frustrate me—(1) students resubmitting and not addressing what I have already marked, and (2) that overzealous student who simply resubmits over and over while only addressing what I have marked.

Students are provided extensive support material so that they can come to revise and edit their own work; therefore, especially toward the end of the semester, I return essays without marking them yet again and nudge students to those materials, stressing that they need to do the work and not me.

While I haven’t yet found the magic formula for shifting the work from me to my students in a way that feels satisfying, I am resolute in practicing my craft as a teacher that honors the need for students to do the work of learning and to resist substituting instead what many people would perceive as teaching (marking, marking, marking essays) but is mere martyrdom that does more to inhibit than encourage student learning.

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Note

[1] As a teacher educator, I also have confronted this tension when conducting teaching observations of teacher candidates. Certification rubrics and traditional practices tend to focus on teacher candidate behaviors as proxies for student learning. Teacher candidates, then, see teaching observations as a time for them to perform. I caution my candidates, however, that I mostly observe their students for evidence of learning being fostered and not simply that the teacher is “teaching” in a way that conforms to the rubric.

Over a decade ago, my university transitioned from an English Department-based composition sequence (often designated as ENG 101 and ENG 102 in many universities) to a first-year seminar format that would be staffed across all departments. This change, of course, meant that many professors with no background or training in how to teach writing were now teaching first-year writing.

The university fumbled this move quite a bit, but gradually the significance of that hurdle was recognized. We continue to find ways to support professors new and still learning to teaching writing.

Two of the foundational concepts repeated by those of us helping support these professors have been that teaching writing is not an inoculation (one course, or even a few courses, cannot produce students who need no more writing instruction) and that assigning writing is not teaching writing.

For many years, I have been posting my thoughts and strategies for anyone who is tasked with teaching writing or who must teach a writing-intensive course, even though they have no experience or background in formal writing instruction (much of that became this book).

But I received an email from Heather Thiessen recently who framed her contacting me this way: “I don’t teach writing; I teach religious studies. However, I also ask students to write. Sometimes that feels like a bad idea.”

What she is confronting, I think, is incredibly important because students develop beliefs and practices about writing from all of their schooling experiences, regardless of whether or not the teacher/professor is actively teaching writing.

Heather ended her email by gently requesting that I examine “how teachers who are in the ‘writing across the curriculum’ position can, could, should use writing assignments in a helpful, as opposed to harmful, way I would be grateful.”

Here, then, I want to discuss how to assign writing when you do not teach writing—while adhering to the dictum “First, do no harm.” I also include some suggestions for how to make assigning writing and managing the paper load more efficient and manageable when you aren’t a writing teacher/professor.

This discussion and principles, I think, are applicable K-16, but I do tend to target in my examinations of teaching writing high school and undergraduate student writing.

In the do no harm category, I strongly recommend not requiring students follow a five-paragraph essay [1] or any template/essay rubric that does much of the work for the student.

The five-paragraph essay is equally weak writing and overly simplistic thinking (few topics fit neatly into a central thesis/argument that needs only three supporting points, especially at the college level). Templates and essay rubrics also place most of the writing decision making (organization, paragraphing, etc.) on the teacher/professor instead of the student.

Instead, I suggest finding authentic published examples of essays that model the qualities you want students to include in their essays; here, as I will stress often for teachers who assign but do not teach writing, less is more. What are a handful of elements important for you, your learning objective(s), and the reason you are assigning as essay?

One of the greatest gifts you can provide your students and teachers of writing is to use your role as a content teacher to expose students to the wide variety of ways writing exists across disciplines [2]. If you teach history, help students explore and mimic how historians write, for example.

One of the more harmful cycles in formal schooling is that teachers have mostly themselves written when they were students only school essays (formulaic and for the teacher), and then as teachers, ask the same of their students. Students need and deserve authentic writing experiences throughout their schooling.

Also in the do no harm category is an opportunity to reconsider your own attitudes toward writing, essays, and surface features of language (grammar, mechanics, and usage) as well as what messages you are sending to students about each of these.

At the core of this is making a shift from demanding correctness to encouraging students to have healthy and positive attitudes toward expression. A few strategies to follow include:

• Require and allow students to submit essays in a drafting process, providing them opportunities to receive feedback (targeted) from you and their peers.
• Stress that all writing is improved by drafting, but do not ask students to “correct” their essays and avoid framing the use of language as right or wrong. Instead, ask student to revise their writing (focusing on content, organization, and style) and to edit surface features (grammar, citation, formatting). A simple change is the language you use has an important positive impact on students.

This second point is certainly challenging, even for veterans of writing instruction, but students are better served when they are invited to understand language in descriptive (how language is used in different contexts) and not prescriptive ways (punitive approaches that perpetuate inequity) [3].

Related, a third do no harm category is not announcing to students “I won’t grade this like your English teacher” or “This isn’t English class.” Students need to understand that essay writing is common across disciplines, especially as they move to college and beyond.

Avoid framing your assignment and grading (better yet, your feedback [4]) in the negative, and instead, provide students narrow (less is more) but detailed guidelines for what you will be assessing (and then allow yourself to provide feedback on aspects of the writing that will not impact their grades).

In other words, you are doing everyone a service if you provide an assessment rubric that identifies specific content, organization, and a few key surface features that will be assessed since it relieves you of “marking everything” (never do that) and provides accountability if a student or parent raises questions about grades on essays.

Once teachers/professors who are not writing teachers move past some of the suggestions noted above what tends to remain is an existential dread about grammar [5], the urge to correct student writing.

Anyone offering feedback on or assessing student writing should target first and weigh most significantly content, organization, and style (sentence and paragraph formation). To be blunt here, if a piece of writing isn’t making valid and compelling points in cohesive ways, matters of spelling, commas, and such are of no relevance [6].

A sexist claim, a lie, or a baseless claim gains no credibility from the words being spelled or the grammar being in a so-called standard form.

If you have the time, respond to the elements students need to revise (content, organization, and style) on the first submission, and then, highlight areas needing editing (grammar, mechanics, usage) when a final submission is warranted.

Especially as a content teacher, and not a writing teacher, you must narrow significantly your concerns about surface features so that you address only a few status marking concerns; typically, for example, in the real world, there are consequences for carelessly shifting verb tense, subject/verb agreement issues, and verb forms.

Since there is a great deal here to digest, several don’t’s and then do instead’s, let me end by stressing that assigning writing well when you do not teach writing can be implemented by doing no harm as well as not overburdening your workload as a teacher of content; in fact, assigning writing should reinforce your content instruction and tour students’ content learning.

You are, I am sure, shaking your head about the paper load.

When you assign writing as a content teacher, your job is not to do everything, but to do some targeted things well (to paraphrase Thoreau); consider the following:

• Design writing assignments that have only a few clearly detailed learning goals; provide those for students in an assessment rubric.
• Read and respond to those essays only focusing on those few goals (again, do not read for or mark everything). I recommend sending home a statement to parents explaining that when you assign grades to student writing that you are purposefully not assessing everything, but that each assignment has clearly stated elements that will impact the essay/assignment grade.
• If students are not going to be allowed or required to revise and resubmit, do not spend time marking the essay; instead have a brief checklist identifying what aspects of the essay impact the grade assigned. (Marking essays extensively that students do not have to address is a form of martyrdom that no teacher can afford.)
• Seek out a technology platform (as simple as Word, or any word processor, or something similar to Google docs) that supports quicker feedback from you and easier revision/editing by students.
• Find and use (when there is consent) materials already created by teachers of writing (I typically make my support materials for students accessible to anyone, such as these).

Assigning essays across all content areas, I think, is not only essential but one the best ways to teach and foster learning in students. Students, however, as well as teaching and learning are best served if teachers send and students receive consistent and authentic messages about writing, essays, and language.

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Recommended

RECOMMENDED: John Warner’s “The Writer’s Practice”

Making the Transition from Writing in High School to Writing in College

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Notes

[1] See John Warner’s Why They Can’t Write and the following:

How the 5-Paragraph Essay Fails as Warranted Practice

Adventures in Nonsense: Teaching Writing in the Accountability Era

John Warner Swears Off Essays, and Students? (Yes, And So Should Everyone)

[2] See the following:

Writing as a Discipline and in the Disciplines

Reading Like a Writer (Scholar): Kingsolver’s “Making Peace”

Intersections and Disjunctures: Scholars, Teachers, and Writers

Helping Students Navigate Disciplinary Writing: The Quote Problem

[3] See To “Be” or Not To “Be”: Moving Beyond Correctness and Stigmatized Language

[4] See the following:

Rethinking Grading as Instruction: Rejecting the Error Hunt and Deficit Practices

Not How to Enjoy Grading But Why to Stop Grading

Reformed to Death: Discipline and Control Eclipse Education

The Nearly Impossible: Teaching Writing in a Culture of Grades, Averages

Delaying Grades, Increasing Feedback: Adventures from the Real-World Classroom

More Thoughts on Feedback, Grades, and Late Work

[5] See the following:

Lost in Translation: More from a Stranger in Academia

Teaching Literacy, Not Literacy Skills

Fostering Convention Awareness in Students: Eschewing a Rules-Based View of Language

Diagramming Sentences and the Art of Misguided Nostalgia

Not If, But When: The Role of Direct Instruction in Teaching Writing

Teaching Literacy in Pursuit of “a Wholesome Use of Language”

On Common Terminology and Teaching Writing: Once Again, the Grammar Debate

[6] See Rethinking Grading as Instruction: Rejecting the Error Hunt and Deficit Practices

I may have just read the worst essay I have ever read submitted by a student—since the beginning of time.

And that occurs in this context: I have been teaching adolescents and young adults to write for 37 years.

Of the tens of thousands of student submissions I have read, of course, this essay cannot really be the worst.* But that sort of dramatic overstatement is exactly what brings me to discussing that essay and many just like it submitted recently as we near the end of the semester.

Again, as context, many of these essays have been submitted after more than two months of first-year writing seminar where I have explicitly focused on vivid and engaging openings and closings.

These essays were submitted by students working on their third essay of the semester. With the first essay of the semester, as well, class instruction and the drafting process heavily focused on writing specific openings that have concrete and vivid narratives to both focus the reader and engage the reader.

Students have had multiple class sessions and several authentic models of writing in order to interrogate their concepts about introductory paragraphs (6-8 sentences with a declarative thesis sentence as the last sentence), and have repeatedly been confronted with this brilliant parody from The Onion: Since The Beginning Of Time, Mankind Has Discussed What It Did On Summer Vacation.

Young Jeremy Ryan offers this peach of an opening (indistinguishable from many I just received from very bright college students):

For as far back as historians can go, summer vacations have been celebrated by people everywhere as a time for rest and relaxation. Many advancements have been made in summer breaks since these early times, but it is also true that many different traditions have lived on and continue to remain with us today. This is why, since the beginning of time, mankind has discussed what it did on its summer vacation.

What students remain trapped within, despite my repeated direct instruction and feedback on their writing, are many years of powerfully misguided writing lessons that have created students who feel compelled in the first sentences of their essays to overstate nothing.

The opening sentences from my students are remarkably paradoxical in that they make grand overstatements that are somehow accurate and completely devoid of any concrete meaning.

Such magically empty writing depends on magically empty diction such as “disparities,” “variety,” “points,” “how,” “many forms,” “effects,” “changed,” “common,” and “standard.”

Students have been taught directly and indirectly to string words into a sentence while also tip-toeing around making mistakes; meeting the word count by forming sentences and paragraphs that seem to say something that is nearly impossible to identify as incorrect (but also impossible to validate) is the Holy Grail of being a student writer.

Writing within a graded system and being taught by teachers not trained as writers have created students who write relentlessly to overstate nothing.

I have been struggling against the five-paragraph essay and template writing for all of my 37 years, but over the last decade and a half, I have been working mainly with first-year students who teach me over and over that my three or so months of writing instruction have little impact on their learned (and well graded) behavior from the previous 12 years of school writing.

And this fall is particularly different in the context of the pandemic and the very real negative consequences of multiple layers of unusual stress on my students—their reduced bandwidth to focus on challenging work, especially if the expectations are different than what they have been successful doing in the past.

But even without the stress of Covid-19 and our brave new world of formal education, my students are reverting to really weak but comfortable ways of writing because this is their first cited essay with all sorts of new and difficult demands. Some of the students simply didn’t have the bandwidth to focus on writing well and citing properly (considering the arcane world of APA for students mistaught MLA throughout high school).

I am convinced that my approaches to helping students write better aren’t the problem here; what students need is the same sort of guidance throughout K-12 education so that writing well (clearly, vividly, concretely, and directly) isn’t a new demand once they head off to the new world of college.

What, then, are better ways to serve our students on their journey to writing well?

• Remove the writing process as much as possible from grading so that students are allowed to take risks during that process, are encouraged to revise with purpose, and can focus on substantive feedback from their teachers, feedback that is instructional instead of evaluative.
• Reject fully the five-paragraph essay and template writing; including reimagining the introduction/thesis>body>conclusion structure of the essay by focusing on engaging and focusing the reader in a multi-paragraph opening, acknowledging that the body of an essay (and paragraphing itself) may be many different lengths (but three certainly isn’t adequate at the college level), and urging students to see the ending (also multi-paragraph) as a way to present their best writing and most vivid and concrete details in order to advocate for themselves as writers (and students).
• Explain to students that vivid and specific are qualities of writing that should be throughout their writing, never suggesting that students start broad and then narrow. Students read “broad” as “vague,” which never serves them or their readers well.
• Provide students with explicit examples and strategies for writing vividly and specifically in the context of openings, bodies, and endings. As I did above, literally provide students with lists of words that overstate nothing (I also highlight these words when providing feedback for students on their writing).
• Refrain from demanding that students propose definitive claims (having their introductions and thesis sentences approved before they can write), and shift to encouraging students to write in order to discover as well as address their readers with questions instead of grand pronouncement.
• Focus on the key concepts that are valid across almost all types of writing, and then work within those concepts while providing more targeted lessons. Coherence and concision are two of those concepts that my students respond well to when reading Style, for example.
• Acknowledge that ultimately students will receive grades based on the quality of their writing, and therefore, it is in their best interest as students to engage positively their primary reader (their teacher/professor) and to insure that this reader has a positive view of the essay and the writer as they finish reading the essay (students routinely write some of the worst sentences at the ends of their essays, significantly eroding what credibility they have built in their essay).

This is not intended as a “kids today” post or a harsh criticism of students.

My primary concern here is that students have often learned all too well lessons that are not serving them well and that my teaching them for three months has less of a positive impact than I’d like.

Since the beginning of time, students have learned to write badly; isn’t it time to allow them to be the vivid and specific writers and thinkers they are capable of being?

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*Note: This post has been edited from its original posting. Regretfully, some have misread this post as a criticism of my students; part of the problem is the satirical opening (although I do note it isn’t intended as a true statement but as a satire of what students often do in their first sentences). I also note late in the post that this is not student bashing. In fact, my criticism is how my students have been taught to write. None the less, good intentions aren’t really worth much when people read something differently than intended. This is not a criticism or public shaming of my students (something I would not do), but I find that in writing about teaching writing, concrete (anonymous) examples are helpful—and a common practice in this sort of writing. I hope the original effectiveness of this post remains, but I think it best to leave the student examples omitted.