Category Archives: Grades

Critical Pedagogy, Education, Grades, Paulo Freire, Teaching, Writing

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

Three behaviors have over the course of about 40 years come to constitute a significant percentage of who I am—writing, teaching, and cycling.

Of those three, I have received the most formal education in teaching, completing all three of my degrees (BA, MEd, EdD) in education; in many ways, I am self-taught as a writer and a cyclist even though I would argue that I have developed a level of expertise in all three that are comparable.

Recently, I bought my first gravel bicycle and have been making the small but noticeable transition to gravel riding that has forced me to experiment with decades of cycling knowledge built on road and mountain bicycling in order to ride gravel at a level comparable to road cycling (my first and deepest cycling love).

This, I think, is at the core of all of my personas as writer, teacher, and cycling—behaviors that are all journeys and not aspects of my life that I can (or should) finish.

Even though, as I noted above, teaching is my primary career and what I have the most education in, I am perpetually learning to teach; and I count on my students to guide me along that path.

My teacher Self is grounded and guided by critical pedagogy; Paulo Freire‘s concepts of the teacher/student and student/teacher have always resonated with me since I started as a tinkerer in my first days as a high school English teacher and continue to depend on my students by inquiring at regular intervals “Is this working?” and “What can I do better?”

While the primary focus of all my teaching is the student, of all the content I teach, I remain most enamored with and frustrated by teaching writing.

I have now spent about equal amounts of time teaching high school students and first-year college student to write.

During the pandemic, I have also shifted one of my assignments slightly (from their final portfolio to their final essay)—requiring first-year writing students to submit as their final essay a reflection on what they have learned as writers as well as what they think they need to continue to address moving forward in their college careers.

I have read the first submissions of those reflections (and will blog about those in a week or so), but I also use the last class session to brainstorm on what worked for students in the seminars and what I can do differently (in this case, for spring 2021).

Several students during the brainstorming session requested that I provide some of the key elements of the course—those addressing their transition from high school writing to college writing—earlier.

One of the foundational lessons I learned about teaching, during my years as a high school English teacher, was the need to reduce upfront teacher-led instruction and replace that with students producing authentic artifacts of learning (essays, for example) combined with direct instruction grounded in their writing after the first submission of their work.

The feedback I received this fall suggests I have moderated too far, and thus, I am including below the first draft of a checklist I will provide students on the first day of class this spring, encouraging them to keep this throughout the semester as a focal point as they revisit these lessons and come to understand them better.

Here, then, is my Checklist: Making the Transition from Writing in High School to Writing in College:

Writing Process and Drafting

  • Writing a couple quick drafts the night before an essay is due is not genuinely engaging in the drafting process, and likely will not be effective in college (even if you received high grades in high school for this practice). Last-minute essay writing is behaving as a student (dutifully preparing an assignment as the teacher as required), and not as a writer or scholar.
  • Drafting from an approved, direct thesis (common in high school) may be a less effective writing strategy than other drafting approaches, such as the following: (1) “vomit” drafting (free writing as much as you can to create text you can reorganize and revise) or (2) discovery drafting (writing with a general idea of your topic and focus, but allowing yourself to discover and evolve your topic and focus). One commitment to the drafting process that may be different than when in high school is making the decision to abandon large sections of drafting, or even entire essays. Starting over after a discovery draft is not wasting a draft, but coming to see that writing is a way to better understand even if the text you created is not directly included in the submitted draft.
  • Committing to several days for drafting is necessary, and establishing a routine for revising that focuses on one revision strategy at a time (diction and tone, paragraphing, etc.) is often effective.
  • Reading and using as models published academic and scholarly essays along with public and creative nonfiction essays increases your toolbox as a writer. The symbiotic relationship between reading and writing should become more purposeful during college—notably that the reading and writing are for you and your learning, and not simply to complete an assignment.

Essay Writing

  • A five-paragraph essay with a one-paragraph introduction (and direct thesis), three body paragraphs, and a one-paragraph conclusion that restates the introduction is inadequate in college; the form is simplistic thinking (most topics do not have only 3 points) and writing, and guarantees you will under-develop your discussion. The essay form is far more complex that a template, and your thinking as a college student needs also to rise above reducing all arguments and explanations to a direct statement (thesis) supported by three points.
  • Write to a clear audience (not your teacher or professor), recognizing that academic writing often has a well-informed (expert), specialized audience and that a public audience can range from being poorly informed or misinformed to being highly experienced and knowledgeable (public writing, then, may require you to navigate a much more complex audience than your academic writing).
  • Avoid overstatements, especially in the first sentences of the essay and in the last few sentences. Overstatements include “since the beginning of time” (or suggesting long periods of time such as “throughout history”), “many/most people argue/debate,” and “[topic x] is important [or unique or a hot topic].” See this brilliant parody from The Onion: Since The Beginning Of Time, Mankind Has Discussed What It Did On Summer Vacation.
  • Your word choice (diction) creates the tone of your essay; many scholarly/academic topics are serious so take great care that your diction/tone matches the seriousness of your topic. The relationship between your tone and your topic impacts your credibility as a writer. Focus on vivid, active, concrete verbs (instead of forms of “get” and “be”), and take care not to write as you talk, avoiding slang and flippant phrases when examining a serious topic.
  • Always prefer active, vivid, and specific/concrete over vague or general. “Anger” instead of “how he felt”; for example: “John was upset that he couldn’t control his anger” is more effective than “John was upset that he couldn’t control how he felt.”
  • Rethink the essay form and paragraphing not as a set number of sentences but as important and purposeful parts of engaging your reader/audience while establishing your credibility. Your essays should have a multiple-paragraph opening the engages and focuses your reader by being specific and vivid, several body paragraphs with purposeful paragraph lengths (sentence and paragraph length variety are effective), and a multiple-paragraph closing that leaves the reader with specific and vivid language that parallels the opening (framing) but doesn’t simply repeat your initial thoughts.
  • Learn to use the tools available in Word (or other word processors): formatting using menus (and not simply inserting spaces, returns, and tabs to manipulate text), running your essay through the grammar and spell check (be careful not to leave your essay with the colored underlinings when submitting an assignment), and saving your text files purposefully (include your last name and assignment type in the file name) and in an organized way on your computer system (making sure you have a back-up process for all files).
  • Most academic essay writing is built from claims, evidence, and elaboration; however, the types of evidence required varies a great deal in writing among the many disciplines of the academy (history, sociology, economics, physics, etc.). For example, direct quotes are often necessary as evidence when writing a text-based analysis (analyzing a poem or an essay in philosophy), but many disciplines (social sciences and hard sciences) expect evidence that is data or paraphrasing/synthesis of concepts and conclusions from multiple sources at a time (synthesis). When writing a text analysis, quotes are necessary, but your own claims and elaboration should be the majority of the essay, and take great care to integrate quotes with your own words (avoid stand-alone sentences that are quotes only and be careful to limit block quoting).; when writing about topics (not specific texts) or making arguments, you should limit quoting.
  • Academic citation (MLA, APA, etc.) is different among the disciplines (you may not use MLA again after entering college, for example), and expectations for high-quality sources also vary among disciplines. Some fields such as literature and history require older sources, yet social (sociology, psychology, education) and hard (physics, biology, chemistry) sciences tend to prefer only peer-reviewed journal articles from within 5-10 years. Across most of academia, however, journal articles and peer-reviewed publications are preferred to books and public writing.
  • Text formatting impacts your credibility as a writer; set your font preferences to one standard font and size (Times New Roman, 12 pt.) and maintain that formatting throughout a document (only using bold or italics as appropriate for subheads or emphasis), including headers/footers.
  • Always submit essays with vivid and specific titles and your name where required on the document itself.

Another aspect of my class that requires students to thing and behave differently is that I do not grade assignments even though I do assign grades for the course (per university requirements)—what I have characterized as de-grading and delaying grades.

On the last day of class, we discussed what would eventually shape their course grades, and below is something I share to help think about grades assigned in a class where assignments are not graded.

When I think about final grades in a writing-intensive course, here are some guiding principles:

  • A work: Participating by choice in multiple drafts and conferences beyond the minimum requirements; essay form and content that is nuanced, sophisticated, and well developed (typically more narrow than broad); a high level demonstrated for selecting and incorporating source material in a wide variety of citation formats; submitting work as assigned and meeting due dates (except for illness, etc.); attending and participating in class-based discussion, lessons, and workshops; completing assigned and choice reading of course texts and mentor texts in ways that contribute to class discussions and original writing.
  • B work: Submitting drafts and attending conferences as detailed by the minimum requirements; essay form and content that is solid and distinct from high school writing (typically more narrow than broad); a basic college level demonstrated for selecting and incorporating source material in a wide variety of citation formats; submitting work as assigned and meeting most due dates; attending and participating in class-based discussion, lessons, and workshops; completing assigned and choice reading of texts and mentor texts in ways that contribute to class discussions and original writing.

This spring, with the guidance of my fall students, I am going to re-think and experiment with some of my core beliefs as a teacher—when to offer direct instruction and how to navigate the tension between my de-graded courses and the reality of grades in formal schooling.

Recommended

Advice on Writing, Trish Roberts-Miller

Education, Grades, literacy, Teaching, Testing, Writing

Confronting the Tension between Being a Student and a Writer

Titian: Sisyphus
Titian: Sisyphus
Sisyphus, oil on canvas by Titian, 1548–49; in the Prado Museum, Madrid.
Heritage Image Partnership Ltd./Alamy

I worry about my students.

I worry, I think, well past the line of being too demanding in the same way being a parent can (will?) become overbearing.

Good intentions and so-called tough love are not valid justifications, I recognize, but there is a powerful paradox to being the sort of kind and attentive teacher I want to be and the inherent flaws in believing that learning comes directly from my purposeful teaching and high demands.

After 37 years of teaching—and primarily focusing throughout my career on teaching students to write—I have witnessed that one of the greatest tensions of formal education is the contradiction of being a student versus being a writer.

That recognition is grounded in my own experiences; I entered K-12 teaching, my doctoral program, and my current career in higher education all as a writer first.

My primary adult Self has always been Writer, but being a writer has remained secondary to my status as either student or teacher/professor-and-scholar.

The tension between being a student and a writer has been vividly displayed for me during my more recent decade-plus teaching first-year writing at the university level. To state it bluntly, many of the behaviors that are effective for being a good student are behaviors that must be set aside in order to be an effective and compelling writer.

I began addressing this tension early in my career as a high school English teacher by de-grading and de-testing my classes. The writing process, I found, had to be de-graded so that students could focus on substantive feedback and commit to drafting free of concern for losing credit.

But by the time students reach college, they have been trained in a graded system; that graded system implies that students enter each assignment with a given 100, and thus, students learn to avoid the risk of losing points (see my discussion of minus 5).

But equally harmful is that college students have also been fairly and even extremely successful in a grading culture driven by rubrics, class rank, and extra credit—each of which shifts their focus to the grades (and not the quality of their work) and centers most of the decision making in their teachers.

For example, I currently teach at a selective university. Most of my students have been A students in high school.

Yet, they seem paralyzed when confronted with decision making and genuinely terrified to attempt anything not prescribed for them.

In my first year seminars now, students are revising their cited essays, and one student emailed, asking if they needed to cite a YouTube video (of course) and how to do so.

At this last question (although the first is really concerning) is where I find myself often answering: “Just Google, ‘How to cite a YouTube video in APA?'”

A reasonable person of moderate affluence in 2020 with access to the Internet (often on a smart phone) would search anything they didn’t know using a browser. I am convinced that being a student tends to create helpless people out of very capable young adults.

And despite several direct lessons on and multiple comments and examples provided in materials and on submitted drafts, many of my students continue to submit revised drafts with the first few sentences, as they did in high school, overstating nothing; these are from revised essays after I once again addressed overstating nothing in the opening sentences:

Some questions that have been floating around for a while are, is college worth it?

Day to day interactions between different people form the bonds for different relationships in our lives. People have acquaintances, friendships, romantic relationships, familial relationships, and more.

While I want to share some of my strategies below detailing how I confront the tension between being a student and a writer for my students, I must stress that my uniquely different classroom creates an entirely new tension because I must recognize that most of my students’ academic careers will remain in traditional classrooms tethered to traditional grading.

Therefore, I seek strategies that address simultaneously how students can present themselves as careful and diligent students as well as credible, engaging, and compelling writers.

Those strategies include the following:

  • Teaching students how to prepare and submit work (often with Word) that reflects them in a positive way for anyone evaluating them. While I discuss with students that document formatting is trivial, a careless submission will likely negatively impact how any teacher/professor views them as students. I encourage them to learn how to format with Word (using page breaks and hanging indents, for example); to navigate track changes and comments (creating clean documents to resubmit); to set their font to a standard size and font (to avoid submitting work with multiple fonts or font sizes, which they often do), including how to paste text so that it matches the document settings; and to address the Spelling and Grammar function in Word so that they do not submit documents with the jagged underlining noting issues they should have edited before submitting. Students also struggle with naming document files, attaching their work to emails, and emailing professors in ways that represent them well—so I am diligent about not accepting work until they meet those expectations. Important to note here is that in my class, these experiences come with no loss in grades, but I stress to them that in other courses, they likely could receive lower grades and probably will create a negative perception of them as students.
  • Instead of rubrics and writing prompts, we work from models of writing, and I provide for students checklists and examples that are designed so that they become the agents of their learning (and this is particularly frustrating since students still function with fear and thus avoid risk or making their own decisions). Drafting through all the stages of writing, then, are spaces where students are decision makers like real-world writer, but I provide them a somewhat risk-free experience that is unlike being a student.
  • In some respects, students seeking to present themselves well and writers seeking ways to be credible and engaging have some overlap. Therefore, many of my key points of emphasis as a teacher of writing will, in fact, raise their status as students. Some of these include attending to appropriate diction (word choice) and tone that matches the level of the topic being addressed, focusing on effective and specific (vivid) openings and closings (key skills for writers, but students establish themselves when being graded with their first sentences and then leave the person evaluating them with an impression linked to their final sentences), and selecting high-quality sources (typically peer-reviewed journal articles) and then integrating sources in sophisticated ways when writing (avoiding the high school strategy of over-quoting and walking the reader through one source at a time [see the discussion of synthesis in the link above and here]).
  • Students also leave high school feeling the need to make grand claims, grounded in simplistic approaches to the thesis sentence and standard practices by teachers that require students to have their thesis approved before they can draft an essay (see this on discovery drafts). I encourage students to focus narrowly and specifically throughout their essays while leaning toward raising questions (a more valid pose for students) instead of grand claims.

While I struggle, as I admitted above, with my tendency to be too demanding (my tough-love streak), I also recognize that providing only about 3 months in my unique teaching and learning environment faces a monumental hill to crest against more than a decade of experiences as students and student-writers.

More often than not, I do not crest, but descend a bit defeated like Sisyphus to roll that rock yet again.

The tension between being a student and a writer is not insurmountable, I hope, but it certainly must be confronted openly and directly in our classes, especially our writing-intensive classes.

In the world beyond formal schooling, many of the qualities of a good student will prove to be ineffective in the same way they are for young people learning to write well.

The best strategies for being an effective writing teacher include recognizing and helping our students navigate their roles as students—even as we seek to help them to move beyond those artificial restrictions.

Education, Grades, Teaching, Writing

The Perfect Trap

Many years ago when I was teaching high school English in rural upstate South Carolina, I taught all three of the district’s superintendent’s children—two daughters and a son.

The older daughter in many ways represented both a uniquely smart and hard-working student and the paradox of the perfect student.

These were the early days of me learning how to teach writing well; these were the early days when I taught with a sort of earnest zeal that can never make up for the horrific blunders I imposed on several years of students.

Setting aside everything I did wrong—reminding us all that learning to write and learning how to teach writing are journeys—I was from the earliest days as a teacher firmly committed to students experiencing writer’s workshop and writing often, authentically, and with multiple drafts for each essay.

Most of my students then and even now have had very little experience with drafting, navigating substantive and challenging feedback, and teaching/learning experiences that sit outside the norm of grading and evaluation.

This older daughter was the top student in her class; she went on to excel in college and eventually eared a doctorate.

But she wasn’t the perfect student because she was fortunate to be so smart and having been raised in a very privileged home.

From the beginning, she simply revised her essays and resubmitted them time and again. While other students tried to avoid the revision process or simply submitted a weak effort at the one required revision in order to pass my class, she was all-in on our partnership to help her learn to write well.

In stark contrast to that experience many years ago, I routinely—and once again this semester—have to carefully navigate that many if not most of my students are paralyzed by their own misguided perfectionism; paradoxically, the perfect student is not bound by perfection, but by risk and trust in learning as a journey.

A new partner for me in my quest to move students learning to write away from perfectionism and grade-grabbing is John Warner’s The Writer’s Practice.

My first-year writing students just finished Warner’s book, and we recently brainstormed the big take aways they gained from the book. I was deeply encouraged that many students were quick to focus on a theme of Warner’s:

This book is here to give shape to your practice, and encourage you to work purposefully toward increased proficiency.

While you will quite quickly amass experience, it’s important to recognize that there is no terminal expertise in writing. You will get a little better every time you do it, but you will never reach a finish line after which you will cease to improve.

This is one of the best things about writing with purpose and writing through different experiences.

May as well keep going by next figuring out who you are as a writer….

The first thing to know about writing is, in the words of Jeff O’Neal, a longtime writing teacher and now digital media entrepreneur, “You are going to spend your whole life learning how to write, and then you are going to die.” (pp. 9, 16)

I abandoned putting grades on essays decades ago in order to shift students away from thinking in terms of evaluation and avoiding mistakes in order to be perfect; however, the lack of grades has proven to inhibit student performance as well.

While I still do not grade essays, I invite students at any time to conference with me about what grade their work would be assigned. Several students have had this conversation with me this fall, sharing a common theme: They feel that my feedback suggests they are writing poorly and that they are doomed to low grades.

First, I assured each of them that their current hypothetical grade status is quite good, but more importantly, I stressed that if they continue to revise with purpose and care they certainly were capable of achieving an A in the course. In fact, I tell them, I often anticipate that from students who fully engage in the process.

They all left our conference relieved, but I have to stress to students over and over what Warner emphasizes above: “[Y]ou will never reach a finish line after which you will cease to improve.”

At the core of the perfect trap are some fundamental problems with traditional teaching that are firming linked to grades and evaluation.

The punishment/reward paradigm discourages risk and encourages pale compliance; writing well comes from risk and requires that writers navigate boundaries, both conforming to and breaking them.

There is nothing perfect about the perfect student, and there never will be.

As teachers of writing, we are tasked with fostering in our students a sense of purpose, care, and trust that the educational system has denied them.

While my two FYW seminars discussed Warner, several mentioned the O’Neal quote, which seems a bit harsh, but writing and learning to write, as journeys with no finish lines, are bound only by time.

We must write and rewrite until there is no more time for that piece, and then we move on.

Perfect is a trap that ends that journey, or even worse, never allows the first step.

Education, Grades, Teaching

Who Does Your Instructional Labor Serve?

One recurring theme to many K-12 and higher education institutions moving to remote instruction has been “uh-oh” moments concerning challenges not immediately anticipated. One example is that when my university’s professors have been reaching out to students, they have discovered many of their students left for spring break without their textbooks and notes.

Since the university has discouraged any students returning to campus, professors are now faced with revising courses for remote instruction realizing students may not have the necessary materials or the technology needed.

I want here to pull back from the specifics of teachers and students suddenly shifting mid-course into on-line/remote education in order to pose an essential question for teachers at all levels: Who does your instructional labor serve?

When I first started teaching high school English in 1984, my teaching position for the first 18 years of my career, I was laser-focused on being an effective teacher of writing. Much of those first five or six years were mired in my constantly changing what I was doing because I failed to see in student work (their writing) the growth or positive outcomes that justified my labor as a teacher and their labor as learners.

I was very fortunate, I think, to begin my career with that focus on teaching writing because that sort of instruction is necessarily very labor intensive. Responding to essays takes a great deal of time, and writing as well as rewriting essays is also time intensive for students.

Since I hate wasting time, and wasting other people’s time, I have worked for almost forty years to be extremely efficient—lowering labor while increasing positive outcomes.

Because of those patterns to my work as a teacher, when I was asked to switch to remote teaching of my two courses, I made the shift very easily by being very low-tech and simply revising my daily schedules slightly. Much of my instruction leans toward individualized teaching any way, and my courses are heavily text and writing intensive (and much of the reading students need to do is already provided online).

There remain some problems for my courses, but the only real loss we will experience is that my class sessions are mostly discussion based around how students respond in class. I don’t have lectures prepared, and I am not deeply committed to a fixed set of content that we must cover.

My classes are interactive and extemporaneous, demanding a great deal from me but these are topics I have studied and taught for decades.

Here, I want to emphasize that it is my attitude about teaching, learning, and content that makes this shift less stressful for me; I take a Thoreau attitude about my classes in that it is my obligation not to do everything, but to do something well.

Students who complete four years of college will have 16-17 years of formal education. This accumulated series of experiences likely will afford them a wealth of learning that cannot be narrowed to any single course, teacher, or class session.

While many teachers are making the transition from traditional classes to on-line/remote emergency teaching and learning, I suggest that we all reconsider our teaching labor and the teaching/learning efficiency of that labor.

For example, on a Facebook group about this shift, a teacher noted that they had a stack of essays they had hand-graded and needed to return, but would not see students again.

A key part of this problem, to me, is the teacher framed the need to justify grades with the responses on the essays.

I am a non-grader who does not put grades on any assignments but must record a grade for my classes (per university requirements). My stance has long been that my teaching labor must have some direct learning outcomes; therefore, when I spend time responding to student work, I expect students to do something with those responses—typically revise the assignment.

I, therefore, highly discourage marking student work to justify grades since that teaching labor is not serving the student or learning but bracing for an assumed concern not expressed by the students.

As someone noted, teachers can and should always offer to provide justifications for grades to students who request that (I do this through face-to-face conferences, but would adapt to email or video-conferencing under these unique circumstances).

Here, I would stress that a dialogue around grade justification is a more effective and efficient form of teaching labor than meticulously marking assignments, many if not most of which will never be seriously read or considered by students. (This traditional form of teacher labor is mere martyrdom.)

While this one example represents well navigating the relationship between teaching labor and learning outcomes, I think the entire—and urgent—reframing of classes mid-course is a great time to carry some of these revisions into our classes when (and if) we return to some sort of normal face-to-face teaching and learning.

I am a much better teacher than during my first five or six years, but I remain diligent about who my teaching labor serves and about respecting the learning labor of my students.

Setting aside traditional structures such as lectures and grading have allowed me to focus on my teaching, my students, and their learning in ways that better serve all of us. I think students respect that I am critically aware of what we are doing and why in terms of their learning and not simply serving some bureaucratic or traditional expectation.

As we teachers rush to serve our students as best as we can in the coming weeks and months, I hope we will include several sticky notes on the changes we make in desperate times that can become our new—and better—normal on the other side of COVID-19 in 2020.

Education, Grades, grammar, Teaching, Writing

“We did not have to stress about our grade but instead we were able to just work”: Student Evaluations of Learning

The evidence on student evaluations of teaching (SET) suggests that this sort of feedback is deeply biased in the U.S. against women educators, Black educators, and international educators; in other words, using SETs for evaluation in higher education is a misguided tradition that cannot be justified by the sort of scientific inquiry and research that the academy claims to embrace.

In both my levels of teaching—about two decades each as a high school teacher and now in higher education—I have always sought student voices and feedback. Those reflections, however, prompt students’ perceptions of their learning. And the validity and reliability of that feedback, of course, is best determined by me through the lens of what learning goals we were pursuing in any course.

Each fall, I teach two sections of my first-year writing seminar, Reconsidering James Baldwin in the Era of #BlackLivesMatter, which culminates in a portfolio assessment for their final exam grounded in minimum requirements for receiving a grade in the course:

Exam/ Final Writing Portfolio

Resubmit all REFLECTIONS (1-15) on exam date noted above. You may include any other artifacts of work throughout the semester to support the grade you deserve in the course.

Submit the following through email attachments:

  • Final drafts of E.1, E.2, E.3, and E.4 as email attachments; be sure to submit CLEAN files (no track changes or comments visible).
  • Label files with your last name, essay number, “final,” and the date of submission, such as Thomas.E1final.121715.docx
  • Attach also a reflection (1-2 pages) on what you have learned as a writer and what you see as the key weaknesses you need to continue to address. Label the file your last name and final reflection, such as Thomas.finalreflection.docx
  • In the body of the email, RANK your four essays from the best to the weakest.

URGENT: Reminder

Minimum Requirements for course credit:

  • Submit all essays in MULTIPLE DRAFTS per schedule before the last day of the course; initial drafts and subsequent drafts should be submitted with great care, as if each is the final submission, but students are expected to participate in process writing throughout the entire semester as a minimum requirement of this course—including a minimum of ONE conference per major essay.
  • Demonstrate adequate understanding of proper documentation and citation of sources through a single well-cited essay or several well-cited essays. A cited essay MUST be included in your final portfolio.

Final Grade Sheet—FYW 1259 (Fall 2019)/Thomas

Some of the challenges students face in a first-year writing course as well as unique features of courses I teach include not receiving grades on assignments, submitting multiple drafts of essays (and engaging significantly in revising those essays), participating in peer reviewing, and moving beyond the “research paper” and “memorizing MLA” toward scholarly writing in which incorporating high-quality sources and a wide variety of citation styles are the norm of essay writing.

When I read the students’ reflections, I focus on my two overarching goals for the course: Students thinking (and behaving) differently about writing and language (the two text books are designed to address these), and students developing their own agency as writers and students.

This fall, students were very enthusiastic about John Warner’s The Writer’s Practice (the first time I have assigned it) and often pleased with Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 12th Edition, by Joseph M. Williams and Joseph Bizup (a text I have used for many years through many editions). I recommend them both highly.

Below, I want to offer some of the selected feedback, in my students’ own words (anonymously), that reflects the most important patterns from their learning this fall. Again, I want to emphasize these are reflections on learning, not intended to be any sort of proof about my teaching or the structure of my course. None the less, I am as pleased as I have ever been with this group of students and who they have become and are becoming—which is proof, I think, of how important the students themselves are to any claims we make about teacher or professor quality.

I am highlighting feedback about the nature of first-year writing courses, students navigating a course without grades, students coming to embrace feedback for revising their writing, the transition from high school to college writing, and student perceptions of writing and being writers along with many other significant comments by these students.

It is a powerful thing, to me, that these comments below are rich with the language and concepts found in the two text books, noting as well that students read and reflected on these texts throughout the semester with no graded form of assessment or accountability such as tests.

In their own words, below are excerpts of reflections about their learning:

Student 1: This semester has been hard. In high school, I was very weak in writing, and sadly, I never sought out the help I needed. Before college, I would tell myself that I could wait till college, and then, I will learn proper writing and receive the help I was in need of. Thankfully, I was able to take an FYW class that would aid in my college writing and teach me the skills to become a strong writer.

Student 2: The in-class conferences were very significant in my progression throughout the course as I got to see first-hand from my teacher on what I did wrong and what I could do to improve my writing. The Writer’s Practice and Style helped me a numerous amount with my writing, such as ways to approach certain types of essays and how to connect with your audience in the best possible ways. There were many different forms of writing that helped me improve my weaknesses, such as communication, concision, clarity, complexity, and many other forms.

Student 3: This semester, I have grown as a writer and as a student. Coming out of high school, one of my main concerns was my ability to write at a college level. I took AP classes in high school and those are supposed to simulate a college level course. However, now taken actual college courses, I see that AP is nothing but a different form of standardized testing. The First Year Writing course has greatly improved my ability as a writer and made me enjoy writing again….

Overall, I believe Furman provides a unique opportunity to students through the First Year Writing classes. Not many universities are concerned with every individual student’s ability to write. The class allows a student to explore their own writing in depth and properly address the issues they consistently make. If every college student was given a similar opportunity, their writing ability would improve greatly. I’ll admit, I was hesitant when I first saw that I would have to take a required writing class in college. However, I would now gladly recommend to other colleges and universities to implement a similar style of course in their institution.

Student 4: This ties into a larger area of focus for me: concision. I fall victim to large paragraphs and sentences at times. This can confuse the audience and make my arguments hard to follow. It took some training for me realize where I lose readers, but through the readings we have in class, I’ve seen it is not a bad thing to use short sentences. It used to come across as choppy to me, but it’s just direct. Short sentences don’t necessarily mean bad ones. Often, short sentences are more effective at conveying points I would want to make. I would definitely say my concision and clarity are areas I intend to improve upon….

All things considered, I think you gave us the best possible FYW experience. This isn’t meant as flattery, but rather, my true opinion. You gave us the tools necessary to succeed, and allowed us to work independently to reach our goals. You didn’t hold our hand through every process, and you didn’t leave us out to dry when help was needed. I look forward to writing, I look forward to improving my writing.

Student 5: Throughout the year, I have learned many different techniques and styles that have improved my writing. The most improvement I noticed in my actual writing was the improvement of clarity and focusing on the audience. The Writers Practice book helped my writing with focusing on the audience, and the Style book helped me with making my writing more concise.

Student 6: Having to submit multiple rewrites has been a very helpful tactic for me. In each rewrite I would notice similar patterns in my mistakes. It has even come to the point where when I am writing a paper, and something doesn’t sound write I can picture a sentence from a previous essay that Dr. Thomas highlighted in green and I am able to fix my mistake based on a previously made mistake.

I also appreciate the in-class conferences. I feel like many professors simply markup student papers and send them back with vague explanations. This leaves students curious on what they need to fix and how to fix it. Having the in-class conferences after receiving feedback helps to solidify the problems with my essay and learn from my mistakes. After I have my conference, I am confident that I have a clear understanding on how to fix my paper.

Student 7: After developing my first “vomit draft” to this essay, the ideas came flowing rapidly. This leads me into something else that I have learned as a writer, which is the importance of “vomit drafting” and the pre-writing stage. In high school, I always had to force the drafting stage. Yet in this class, I had the freedom to hold off on drafting until I was in the mood or I had an idea that made me want to start drafting right away. I also discovered ways to get into the writing mood, and the main strategy I used this semester was reading Bad Feminist (Roxane Gay). Reading good writing inspires me to attempt to do the same thing….

I am glad that I have founded a passion for writing and confidence in my ability to write effectively while conveying a purpose. To add on, [a] general notion that has been brought to my attention in this class was that my opinions matter, and writing is one of the best ways to demonstrate my thoughts to the world. Some of the discussions we have had allowed me to make initial opinions on them, and I have been able to control that energy through my writing. This class has had a variety of benefits to it, and I am excited to see where my new passion for writing takes me in the future.

Student 8: What I appreciated most about this course was our ability to choose our own topics for essays. It was because of this process that I realized my [excitement] towards writing when it was about topics that I actually cared about. Generally, in all of the writing I did in the past, it felt like such a chore. Preparing keyhole five paragraph essays was so formulaic and boring, I absolutely never enjoyed the writing process. Being able to experience the opposite and having the creative freedom to choose anything I wanted to write about made my experience that much more enjoyable. A new experience I hope to be able to carry with me on journey at Furman.

Student 9: I had also previously thought that fancy wording was more formal in writing, but reading Style taught me that simpler writing is actually better. Another important lesson Style taught me was that most grammar “rules” are not really rules but choices writers make for clearer writing. This way of thinking of grammar is a lot less intimidating, and I feel better knowing that sometimes my grammatical “mistakes” are really just someone’s personal preference.

The Writer’s Practice helped me to find a writing process that works for me, rather than forcing me to use one process, like in high school. It also taught me to consider the audience more in my writing and think about answering their questions. John Warner allowed me to think of writing as a never ending journey of improvement, rather than one with a final destination and made me realize that despite not feeling like I’m improving, I’m actually making a lot of progress in my writing.

Student 10: Over this semester, I have learned to address writing in a completely new way. The best thing I will take from this course is that my writing should not just be defined by the grade I receive, but by the amount I have improved each time I write. Additionally, I will never become a perfect writer because I can always learn more and improve.

Moreover, I have learned the importance of rewriting essays. In my high school classes, as well as my other classes at Furman thus far, I was not given the opportunity to rewrite essays as many times as I want, so I was never able to see how much they could improve each time. In the future, I plan to write early assigned essays as soon as possible so that I can have them reviewed by my classmates and complete rewrites to make the essay the best it can be.

Student 11: There are no rules in writing, but there are consequences. This idea has nagged at me since it was planted in my mind at the beginning of the semester. The best writers can artfully break or bend the “rules” of writing, but they also are fully prepared to handle the consequences.

Student 12: This class has helped me pay closer attention to how I am writing, as I used to mostly pay attention only to what I was writing. I have learned more things from this semester-long course than I learned in all four years of high school. It is shocking how much I have learned from this class….

Writing essays and then receiving them with comments, not a grade, was very helpful. This is a class solely focused on teaching freshman college students how to write academically, so to grade students without any feedback or opportunities to fix their essays would be pointless and not beneficial.

Student 13: I first notice my style. Back then I was fairly confident I could just write things as they were in my head and that would be enough. That quickly turned out to be false. Apparently not everyone thinks the same way I do and writing in that stream of consciousness sort of way does not work. I have to write to my audience and my audience is not just the voices in my head. Doing this is complex and has multiple aspects but perhaps the most important is writing clearly. I think learning this was one of the most game changing things for me.

Student 14: At the beginning of this course, I was nervous and unsure of my writing abilities.  At orientation, I remember someone saying, “You may think you know how to write, but you really don’t.”  This terrified me, so I was determined to do my absolute best in this course.  In high school, I was very self-conscious about my writing and would become defensive when someone would give me feedback.  The main thing this course taught me was to accept feedback with open arms, since that is the only way your writing will improve.

Student 15: Over the course of the semester I have been pushed in my writing skills through practicing different styles, and continually writing pieces that were much longer than the average of what I used to consistently write. I have enjoyed being able to write about topics that I am passionate about, and I think that it made the transition to college level writing easier, because I had more to say and was not opposed to doing research to learn more about the topic….

I know that I will have to continue writing with citations, so one way that I plan on improving my weakness in them is to go to the writing lab for help and clarification. Going into a science field it is crucial that I master this skill before I graduate. My midterm interview with Dr. Anderson gave me insight as to how important it is in sustainability science. I’ve learned that I can write much more that I thought I could, and the readings helped me to consider my audience much more than I used to.

Student 16: One thing in particular that I think I learned that will be very helpful in the future was through Essay 3. Before this essay, I had never written an APA style research paper. Going into this essay, I had only written one cited paper in the past but did not give much thought into picking specific sources and evaluating their validity. Learning the style of an APA paper will be very helpful in the future, as one subject that I am interested in majoring in is economics. One factor in writing a research paper I still need to work on is synthesizing multiple sources.

I have learned how to organize information well and concisely through Essay 2 and 4. This was my first time writing a hyperlink paper so the idea of writing in short paragraphs was a new to me. Writing these papers taught me how to write in this different style. This was definitely my favorite type of essay to write. It gave me the opportunity to write about something that I was passionate about and also to learn in detail about a specific subject matter.

Student 17: Overall, the main lesson I learned is to give more attention to detail. Every part of an essay should be intentional. The introduction should connect to the conclusion without summarizing the essay completely. Similarly, word choice, sentence structure, and paragraphing can play a major role in the meaning of the essay. Dr. Thomas’ feedback made me realize how important every decision is. It’s also important to maintain the balance between caution and overthinking every decision. In The Writer’s Practice, the author explained that being afraid to write is one of the main inhibitors of good writing. I am still working on finding that balance myself.

Student 18: The structure of this class forced independent learning and I believe that is the best type of learning for me specifically. My first essay exposed my overuse of some sayings and structures. In addition, I wrote in a vague high school-like way. By the end of this course, I tried to shy away from my common tendencies and in my opinion, it ended in success. At the end of the last essay, I felt more confident and ready to move on in my writing career.

In addition, the variety in types of papers written helped me explore the types of writing and made me a more versatile writer. Although I found the APA format annoying and tedious, it made me think in a different, yet still creative, way when compared to the personal narrative. Overall, I learned how to write from these specific perspectives and what the goal of each of these types of writings were.

Student 19: Through this First Year Writing class, I have learned the importance of rewriting and continuing to go back and reflect on what I have written. Reflection is important as no matter how good I think a paper might be, there is always room for improvement. Even the greats have to go back and revise. I really liked what Dr. Thomas said, “if Baldwin had another day, he would’ve gone back and changed some things in even his greatest works.”

Student 20: I have enjoyed this course and it has helped me develop in my writing skills. I enjoyed the class discussions that we had, and I really liked the laid-back feel of it. This feel gave me, and my classmates the feeling that we could truly work on developing our writing skills. We did not have to stress about our grade but instead we were able to just work….

One of the first things I learned to do in this class was to create my own writing process. I have my own process now where I plan a paper and the direction that I want to go in by the end of the paper. I have used this process all semester long and in my other classes as well. There have been areas that I have been challenged in this class as well.

Student 21: Throughout the semester, I believe that my writing improved tremendously. The combination of reflecting on the books that teach writing and writing my own works alongside this. I was trying to actively use my learnings from the reflections and apply them to my papers while writing them.

Something specific that I have learned as as writer is considering audience. This may seem fairly straightforward, but deciding whether or not your audience has prior information on the topic is key. For example, in my paper about Pokémon Go, I should have assumed that none of my readers would have much previous Pokémon Go knowledge besides the fact that it was once very popular. Though, in my paper about Amazon, that was probably not the case. Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world and is commonplace on the Furman campus.

Student 22: The most influential and beneficial skill that I have improved on is my ability to take criticism. When you returned our first essay, I was absolutely mortified because I had expectations that I would not have much to change resulting from the praise that I received throughout high school for my writing. It honestly took until essay 3 for me to get over the feeling of embarrassment I felt due to the critiques on my essays, but it was an incredibly beneficial realization. I now understand that I should not take academic criticism to heart as much as I did in the beginning of the year because being so sensitive just hinders my ability to improve. The thicker skin that I have developed throughout this class has translated into my other classes as well and has allowed me to be more satisfied with my best effort despite criticism.

Student 23: When writing my first reflection I stated, “I have never been a fan of anything I have written.” I was not well informed in the process of writing and never felt fully prepared by any English teacher to write. That statement is no longer true after finishing my FYW with Dr. Thomas. I enjoy writing, I enjoy my peers work, and for once I am proud of what I have written. John Warner’s, The Writers Practice, was instrumental in the development of my writing. I learned that I will never become a perfect writer, and neither will anyone else. A quote in The Writers Practice by Jeff O’Neal stated, “You are going to spend your whole life learning to write, and then you are going to die.” Although the two books in class we have read have provided me with an incredible amount of guidance when it comes to my writing, I will be continuously learning to write throughout my life. I will never reach a peak perfection in my writing and I am okay with that….

This college level writing class has removed most of my preconceived notions about writing that were drilled into my head in high school. Writing is much different than my high school classes were, I was taught a very structured style of writing to obtain all points on a standardized exam. Writing can be more expressional, it does not always to conform to a certain set of standards and isn’t mathematical.

Education, Grades, grammar, Teaching, Writing

Student Agency, Authority, and Credibility as Writers

Each semester I teach, I become even more convinced that teaching writing is a journey, not a destination. And this semester has once again pushed me in that direction.

While it was just the second time I have taught the new upper-level writing/research course now part of our general education requirements (GER), it was in my 100-level GER course that struck me hardest, notably when a senior student sent the following message with a revised submission of the course major cited essay:

Attached is an updated copy. I don’t know if I have already said this, but thank you for being so helpful in all of these drafts! Also please let me know if it is going in the right direction or if I need to consider larger changes as opposed to these smaller edits.

This was the fifth submission of the essay, and the student has also met with me to conference about needed revisions.

What stands out here is the not-so-subtle message I have been receiving from this student and others—the “smaller edits” comment. Another student, exasperated, came very close to stating directly that I am being arbitrary and nit-picky.

My 100-level students are perfect examples of the problems associated with how a culture of grades degrades learning—and especially inhibits students from writing with agency, authority, and credibility.

Often, I am the first—and only—teacher who holds students accountable for foundational obligations related to formatting submissions and applying essential aspects of citation and scholarship.

Students have either had points deducted for formatting and citation or have simply been told they have “mistakes,” but that these are mere surface elements and thus not really important. Here, I think, is the seed of the student quoted above seeing my feedback as mostly addressing “smaller edits” even though my feedback was, in fact, substantive.

First, teaching any student to write, for me, is grounded in fostering some important foundational concepts about them as student-writers and developing scholars—how to represent themselves as purposeful writers and thinkers while establishing their authority and credibility.

Purposefulness is a difficult transition for students who have mostly been inculcated into a culture of rules about language and writing.

For example, I want students to set aside seeing their work as either correct or mistakes so that they focus on revision and editing their work—not merely correcting what I mark.

Instead of thinking “fragments are mistakes writers must avoid,” students are encouraged to think “what sentence formation am I using and what purposes do these purposeful sentence-level decisions serve in conveying meaning to my readers.” (The problem in student writing is not that fragments are “wrong,” but whether or not the student is aware of using a fragment and then if that use has effective purpose.)

Purposefulness in sentence and paragraph formation as well as choosing either to conform to conventions of grammar and mechanics or not is an essential element in establishing authority and credibility for student-writers and developing scholars.

This is key, I think, because the culture of grades creates a false dynamic in which some aspects of student performances of learning (writing) are deemed trivial and thus the holistic nature of demonstrating learning, or of expression, is corrupted for an analytic view of student behavior—the separate parts matter more than the whole while simultaneously some parts are rendered irrelevant since they simply cost the student a few points.

My approach to minimum requirements while requiring and allowing students to revise their work guided by feedback and conferencing seeks to honor the holistic nature of writers establishing their authority and credibility.

Especially in my 100-level courses and first-year writing, here is the structure I implement that helps students (ideally) move away from seeing some of their revision and editing being about “smaller edits” and toward viewing their work as a student-writer and developing scholar as a coherent whole:

  • Document formatting matters. I both teach and then require students to submit Word documents that show purposefulness and control over fonts (consistent throughout the document, including the header/footer) and font size, word processor formatting (margins, justification, hanging indents, spacing, page breaks, etc.), and file management (naming files with purpose and labeling subsequent drafts during the process). I explain to students that while these elements of submitting writing may seem “small” (and even trivial), these formatting elements establish in the reader’s (professor’s) mind an initial message about purposefulness and control—thus the student-writer’s authority and credibility.
  • Citation matters. I both teach and then require students to submit cited writing that meets basic expectations for citation format. Since I am in education, students in my courses primarily use APA so I focus on header format, title page, reference page, parenthetical citation, and subheads. These mechanical elements of citation, combined with document formatting above, are strictly addressed in the first submission, often meaning I do not accept the first or first few attempts made by students to submit work. I explain that these are all very easy to do, and failing to address these mechanical elements suggests, again, a lack of purpose, authority, and credibility. (Students are provided direct instruction in class and samples with notes along with being required or encouraged to conference with me.)
  • Sources matter. Despite detailed university guidelines about teaching first-year writing students how to search for high-quality sources, my students routinely demonstrate that they continue not to understand source quality (peer-reviewed journal articles tend to be more highly regarded in academia than books, for example; print sources, more than online; newer, more than older, etc.). Students also seem to lack the skills to search for those sources, relying on Google Scholar instead of searching through the library system that allows them to target searches. I work hard to scaffold experiences for students so that source quality and variety are addressed before they begin their writing; this still doesn’t work across the board, however. Students, for example, in the 100-level course mentioned above do a group project requiring high-quality sources, which can serve as a foundation for their individual essays. Yet, students will submit their essays without any of those sources and only online newspapers and magazines cited.
  • Using what seems “small” to foster substantive revision. When I focus on titles, subheads, and the need to synthesize sources, these tend to be elements of revision that students such as the one quoted above views as “smaller edits.” Yet, titles and subheads are about whether or not the student understands the primary and supporting focus of the essay (titles) as well as demonstrating a purposeful and compelling structure and organizational pattern (subheads) to the discussion or argument. Probably even more stressful for students is my emphasis on synthesizing sources. Typically, students paraphrase and quote extensively from one source at a time, plowing through their list of sources without regard for patterns found in the research or creating any sort of hierarchy for the importance of ideas related to their topic. Here, I am fostering disciplinary awareness by exposing them to the disciplinary differences between writing literary analysis and using MLA in high school and then transitioning to a social science course in college.
  • Openings and closings matter. Students have mechanical and not very compelling approaches to introductions (and clunky thesis sentences) and conclusions. They are drawn to making grand overstatements without offering any evidence for those claims—as The Onion brilliantly demonstrated: “For as far back as historians can go, summer vacations have been celebrated by people everywhere as a time for rest and relaxation.” And they mostly feel compelled to open with vague statements that they then repeat in a final paragraph. Therefore, I work on students creating multi-paragraph openings and closings that depend on framing (establishing something concrete, such as a narrative, in the opening that the student returns to in the end) and that introduce and then extend a focus (broader and more complex than a clunky thesis statement, allowing questions as well as allowing the essays to work toward an idea or call to action).

In 1957, Lou LaBrant wrote:

But I hope that I have hit upon enough of the important factors which go into writing to make it clear that it is not taught by considering the subject-predicate nature of modern English, the rules for punctuation, the parts of speech, or the placement of modifiers. Nor is writing taught when the formal outline with its A’s and B’s, its l’s, 2’s, and 3’s has been considered….Writing remains the final, most difficult of the language arts….Knowing about writing and its parts does not bring it about, just as owning a blueprint does not give you a house.

I have been guided by this metaphor—building a house versus the blueprint—for many years, and I have also extended that into how houses are built from the rough work leading to the finishing work.

Above, I have made a case that the rough work (“smaller edits” often to students) and the finishing work (“larger changes,” or the substance, I think, to students) are impossible to separate from each other because it is a holistic venture to craft an essay from a blank page.

Related

Shifting Disciplinary Gears as Student Writers

Helping Students Navigate Disciplinary Writing: The Quote Problem

Minus 5: How a Culture of Grades Degrades Learning

LaBrant, L. (1957). Writing is more than structure. English Journal, 46(5), 252–256, 293.

Thomas, P.L. (2011, September). Revisiting LaBrant’s “Writing is more than structure” (English Journal, May 1957). English Journal, 101(1), 103-104.

Thomas, P.L. (2000, January). Blueprints or houses?—Looking back at Lou LaBrant and the writing debate. English Journal, 89(3), pp. 85-89.

Thomas, P.L. (2019). Teaching writing as journey, not destination: Essays exploring what “teaching writing” means. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Education, Grades, Testing, Writing

Minus 5: How a Culture of Grades Degrades Learning

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About midway through my first 18 years in education as a high school English teacher, I had mostly de-graded and de-tested my courses except, of course, for having to comply with mandates such as midterm/final exams and course grades.

At some point, my students and I began to openly parody grade culture in a sort of wink-wink-nod-nod way that included my saying “Minus 5!” any time a student offered an incorrect answer during a class discussion.

We all smiled and laughed.

As I approach the same amount of time in the second wave of my career as an educator, now a university professor at a selective college, I continue to use that skit, adding at times a “Plus 10!” with exuberance when someone offers something really thoughtful.

My college students are hyper-students, having been very successful in school for many years while receiving as well as expecting high grades because of the student-skills they have developed.

Despite my careful and detailed explanations upfront that I do not grade and do not give tests, these college students struggle, some times mightily, in a de-graded classroom. Once, for example, a student emailed me about how to make up the “minus 5” I had taken away in the class discussion.

This semester in my educational foundations course and an upper-level writing/research course, many of the greatest flaws with grading culture have sprung up once again.

Even as we approach the end of the semester, I have had several students email me asking for extensions on submitting their major essay. I have to carefully reply that the concept of an extension isn’t relevant in a course that doesn’t grade and is grounded in the requirement that all assignments must be completed fully (and ideally on time) and resubmitted in a final portfolio.

In all of my courses, essays must also be submitted in multiple drafts or I cap the final course grade.

I explain repeatedly to my students that we are here to learn and that if I focus on artifacts of their learning while requiring that all work be completed fully, I have no option other than accepting late work, and they have no real option except to submit work late if they cannot meet deadlines.

Yet, my college students often cannot fathom any other system except the culture of grading that they have navigated quite well for many years.

Broadly, as an educator, I am daily disturbed by witnessing my students trapped in a grade mentality and not a learning mentality. As I have explored many times, the rewards/punishments elements of grading discourages risk and even effort in students and thus weakens the learning process that often requires a series of flawed efforts by students combined with mentoring from a teacher who requires and encourages informed revised efforts.

School at all levels, however, is just a statistical wrestling match between students and grade culture in which some students persist, hoping to excel, and many students simply try to survive in order to find some sort of freedom at the end.

Over the past couple of weeks, my educational foundations students have been submitting their major essay. I purposefully scaffold this assignment by having students present in groups earlier in the semester; those group presentations include focusing on students finding high-quality research for their topics and (for many) learning some basics of APA citation (the preferred style sheet in education).

I refuse to provide groups feedback on the group presentations until the group submits a correct and adequate references list for their sources used. This strategy lays the groundwork for each member having a start on sources for their individual essay and for my students to become somewhat acclimated to my minimum requirements approach to assignments (contrasted with grading).

Major cited essays are powerful windows into how a culture of grades degrades learning.

Students are provided a sample APA cited essay with notes and several checklists for preparing and revising an essay using APA citation; much of this is meticulously covered in class as well.

I also schedule some workshop time in class to help students with both trivial and significant elements of preparing a document in Word (headers can be a nightmare using APA). Then, as the first submission due date approaches, I stress that I will not provide feedback unless students submit a full first draft that includes some fundamental elements of formatting and citation [1].

However, as I experience every semester, several students submitted essays that were unacceptable (let me emphasize here, that when I reject these essays, the only recourse is that students address this problem by submitting a minimally acceptable draft as soon as possible, and I will meet with them if they are unsure how to do that despite the ample support I have already provided).

This included essays submitted without adequate sources (I stress the need to use peer-reviewed journal articles as the foundation of their sources, but also encourage a variety of sources), without a references list on the document, with a reference list but no citations in the essay, with some jumbled hybrid of MLA (usually the references list labeled “Works Cited” and then the bibliographies a wild Frankenstein’s monster of formatting), or as a document clearly in an early stage of brainstorming—what they would consider drafting—such as huge gaps between paragraphs, different colored fonts, and their own comments to themselves scattered throughout.

I have this happen despite stressing repeatedly they should submit the first draft of the essay as if they can never revise.

These dynamics in a degraded class that emphasizes authentic artifacts of learning and provides students ample opportunities to revise their work with my feedback in the form of comments on their work and conferences highlight that many students are unable to break free from a culture of grading, even when provided the opportunity.

Most students simply have their grades lowered when they fail to format and cite properly; that process tells them that these things really do not matter.

Yet, in my work as a scholar, I know that part of the authority a writer gains if from the trivial (formatting documents) and the essential (finding, understanding, and incorporating high-quality sources).

A culture of grading allows both students and teachers to be lazy about the things we claim to care about the most, such as authentic learning that translates into the so-called real world.

Once again, I have watched as several students have become angry at me and deeply frustrated by a process that is both requiring and supporting them to learn, in some cases for the first time, aspects of being a scholar that benefits them across their work as students and then in their lives after that.

What some are framing as “mean,” however, is a tenacity on my part that often results in students coming to understand and then apply the very things we sought to learn. But that process is unnecessarily painful because of the culture of grades that, in fact, asks less of students and teachers.

The culture of grades remains incredibly powerful in formal schooling, and as I discover time and time again, it makes the work of teaching and learning nearly impossible.

In the wake of this essay assignment and many of my formerly happy students struggling, my “Minus 5” rings a bit hollow these days among the tense faces of really bright young people more concerned about their grades than anything class has to offer.

[1] From my checklist, for example:

Checklist for Revising Cited Essay

Format in APA

[ ] Entire Word document (including header) is in Times New Roman, 12 pt. font, and double-spaced

[ ] Cover page has “Different First Page” checked, and running head formatted as follows:

Running head: RUNNING HEAD IN ALL CAPS                                                                1

[ ] Page 2 and beyond has running head only, as in:

RUNNING HEAD IN ALL CAPS                                                                                        2

[ ] Except for new paragraphs, do NOT format page breaks (cover page to page 2 and final page to references) with returns and do NOT format hanging indents or block quotes with return>tab.

[ ] Include a few subheads to organize the essay, but a subhead should be several paragraphs (not one), and avoid “Conclusion” as your final subhead (be interesting and specific).

Style and Citation in APA

[ ] Do not announce sources (avoid referring to the author[s] and titles of your sources when citing research) in your discussion.

[ ] Prefer synthesis of multiple sources and discussing the conclusions (patterns) from those sources—and thus, avoid quoting and simply cataloging one source at a time.

[ ] Take care with proper APA parenthetic citation; note the use of commas, page numbers with quotes only, and the placement of periods, for example:

Ironically, of course, we almost never hear a word of protest about the abundant misinformation found in our U. S. history textbooks (Loewen, 1996; Zinn, 1995), primarily because the misinformation better supports the meritocracy myth our schools are obligated to promote for the good of the society.

While Greene (1978) argues that “democracy is and has been an open possibility, not an actuality”—thus requiring “the kinds of action [by teachers] that make a difference in the public space” (pp. 58, 59)—the reality of school’s focus on socialization is that we are committed to capitalism above all else, even at the expense of democracy (Engel, 2000).

Recent scholarship on this concern for diversity and the achievement gap among races and socioeconomic groups has shown that when we attempt institutional approaches to “critical issues,” the result is corrupted by the system itself, resulting in a widespread acceptance of the work of Ruby Payne (1996), work that has no research supporting the “framework” and work that reinforces the assumptions (deficit thinking) about race and diversity that are common in our society (Bomer, Dworin, May, & Semingson, 2008; Bomer, Dworin, May, & Semingson, 2009; Dudley-Marling, 2007; Gorski, 2006a; Gorski, 2006b; Gorski, 2008; Thomas, 2009).

[ ] Parenthetical citation of paraphrased or synthesized sources require including the author(s) last name and publication year the FIRST time in each new paragraph, but multiple uses after that include ONLY the last name. Do not have several in-text citations over multiple paragraphs if all of the citations are paraphrasing. For example:

Greene (1978) is exploring the central dilemma offered by John Dewey, a dilemma that has been misunderstood at best and ignored at worst: Dewey “knew that optimism, demands for conformity, and ‘riotous glorification of things “as they are”’ discouraged critical thought” (p. 62). In U.S. society, and thus schools, critical challenges are popularly viewed as outright rejections. Within critical pedagogy, the challenges to assumptions are seen as fruitful, an essential part of process toward emancipatory practice, toward the ideal of democracy as “an open possibility” (Greene, p. 58).

[ ] Do NOT include hyperlinks in bibliographies in your references lists from your library searches (ebsco, galegroup links) or from jstor for hard-copy sources (includes page numbers).

Education, Grades, Testing

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

Each time there is a flurry of comments about grades on social media, I am compelled to advocate for de-grading and de-testing the classroom. Also, each time I make my case, many people offer lukewarm support wrapped in a great deal of skepticism about those practices in real-world classrooms.

My career as an educator has had two nearly equal spans of about two decades each—first as a high school English teacher in a rural public school, and second as a current professor in a selective university where I teach in the education department but also have two first-year writing seminars each fall.

I both learned and practiced over my first decade of teaching the need to de-grade and de-test my classes, notably to support effective writing instruction. So I must stress here that my endorsing de-grading, or at least delaying grading, is grounded in my work as a teacher in a very traditional high school setting where I still had to issue interim reports and quarterly, mid-term, and final grades.

And my entire career, of course, has been working with students who expect grades, students who are often disoriented by and even disturbed by my atypical approaches to grades and assessment.

Virtually all of us who teach, regardless of level or type of school, will have to issue grades at some point. Even as an avid proponent of no grades and no tests, I must assign course grades, and I must fulfill obligations for assessments, such as midterm and final exams.

In our real-world classrooms, then, I am practicing and calling for delaying grades, while also increasing significantly feedback on authentic assessments that require and allow students to revisit their work as a journey to greater understanding and deeper learning.

And, yes, my practices and arguments are primarily grounded in my commitment to literacy instruction, mostly writing, and my educational philosophy, critical pedagogy, as well as my skepticism about knowledge acquisition (I embrace content as a means, not an ends, of teaching).

While I am no fan of compromise, I do have a deeply pragmatic streak; therefore, I try to be very clear that I am not advocating some idealistic set of practices from a rarified teaching situation that isn’t applicable to other educators.

Here I want to outline what real-world practices I have for many years implemented and currently implement that merge well, I think, with my belief in de-grading and de-testing with entrenched and often non-negotiable expectations of teaching.

Establish minimum requirements of participation and artifact production as mandatory for course/class credit. My syllabus and daily schedules clearly state that students must complete assignments and submit all artifacts both throughout the course/class and then as a final portfolio. Those minimum requirements I establish are non-negotiable and students are not allowed to pick and choose which to fulfill. In other words, I do not average grades and I do record an F for any student who fails to complete and submit all of the minimum requirements. (See minimum requirements detailed in my first-year writing syllabus.)

Delay grading of assignments and eliminate high-stakes of grades and rubrics. Once participation is required (for example, students must draft, submit essays, meet for conferences, and submit rewrites) for course/class credit (a final grade), teachers are given more space to offer feedback without grading—thus delaying a grade until students have had opportunities to take risks while practicing new learning. One example from teaching Advanced Placement Literature helps illustrate how even numerical feedback can work in this context. I shared with students A.P. Literature rubrics for previous test writing prompts, and then I did assign practice essay responses the appropriate 9-point scale grade; however, students knew these were recorded but did not factor into their course grade (other than needing to be completed). The 9-scale number was feedback for their understanding of where their work stood and how we could improve for the actual test in the spring. Overwhelmingly, my students participated fully in the practice sessions (they had an authentic goal of doing well on the A.P. test), and noted that other teachers translating these A.P. scale scores to class grades inhibited their work and attitudes about the assignments. I learned in these classes that my rejecting grades and rubrics could be translated into more authentic uses of grades and rubrics as feedback and tools for learning by simply eliminating the stakes with those grades and rubrics.

Invite students into conversations about grades. The best concession I have made to de-grading my classes is to acknowledge that for students grades are a powerful reality. Now I invite students to initiate conferences with me about their current grade in my classes at any point and as often as they need throughout a course. While I give no grades on assignments, even as they revise, I will discuss with students what grade an assignment would deserve, and why, and what their grade status is in a course at any point along the way. The caveat, always, is that we do this in conversation (not by email or in writing) and that we recognize these estimations could change significantly as the course and their revisions progress.

Negotiate grade scales with required grade submissions in your school. My de-grading and de-testing practices have always been complicated by interim reports, midterm and final exam requirements, final grades, and the expectation that grading policies, scales, and calculations be posted on my syllabi. Most of my strategies in these contexts remain grounded in my minimum requirements approach. For interim reports and midterm grades, I submit only S (satisfactory) or I (incomplete) based on each student’s current status in relationship to minimum requirements at that point in the course; S is for students who have fully complied and I is for those missing work. I remind students and others that the I will become an F at the end of the course/class if students fail to fulfill the assignments. Midterm and final exams—both required at my university—have become different types of assessment: group and whole-class discussions, presentations, and portfolio assessment. And instead of posting how I calculate and average grades, and what grade scale I use, I include my minimum requirements statement on my syllabus.

I offer the above as no template or even demand, but one example of how I have tried to blend my educational philosophy with real-world expectations and non-negotiables.

I live under no delusion I can transform our formal education system into my ideal where we have no grades and no tests. But I do practice what I believe are more effective versions on these norms by delaying grades and lowering the stakes when students receive both rich and even numerical/grade feedback on assignments while they are exploring new or complex learning.

In short, this is my argument against those who brush away my de-grading and de-testing arguments as not realistic; they are.

But I also must push against those who believe my practices somehow encourage students not to be engaged in their assignments. I have witnessed for almost four decades now that the opposite is, in fact, true.

One reason I began this journey to minimum requirements instead of grading is that I watched students routinely take zeros (not do assignments at all) and still receive course credit. They were playing and manipulating the grade/averaging game of school.

Easily over my career, most of my students have participated fully and punctually with my assignments; overwhelmingly, they have shared that they feel more relaxed and engaged with their assignments without the immediate threat of grades.

While the novelty of my teaching and assessment practices cause some distress for students, traditional grades and the finality of summative assessments are far more harmful to student engagement and learning.

There is no perfect world—neither the world of traditional grading nor the ideal world without grades and tests.

But we can create a better world for our students, one in which they produce work and learn in a supportive environment where our primary role is mentoring through feedback instead of being the dreaded agent of evaluation.

My argument, then, is not for perfect or ideal, but better, better for our teaching, better for our students’ learning.

Education, Grades, Statistics, Testing

If You Are Grading, You May Not Be Teaching

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Throughout my career of about two decades as a high school English teacher and then approaching another two decades in higher education (as a teacher educator and first-year/upper-level writing professor), I have avoided and delayed grading as well as eliminated testing from my classes.

My experiences with first-year and upper-level writing instruction have further confirmed that if you are grading, you may not be teaching.

Specifically, teaching citation and scholarly writing has revealed a problem that directly exposes why grading often works against our instructional goals.

First, let me stress again that the essential problems with grading include how traditional practices (such as assigning grades that are averaged for quarter and/or semester grades that are then averaged for course grades) tend to blur the distinction between summative and formative grades, inhibiting often the important role of feedback and student revision of assignments.

The blurring of formative and summative grades that occurs in averaging, as I have confronted often, deforms teaching and learning because students are being held accountable during the learning process (and thus discouraged from taking risks).

To briefly review the problems with grades and averaging, let me offer again what my major professor argued: Doctors do not take a patient’s temperature readings over a four-day stay in the hospital in order to average them, but does consider the trajectory of those readings, drawing a final diagnosis on the last reading (or readings). Thus, averaging is a statistical move that distorts student growth, deforms the value of reaching a state of greater understanding.

As I have detailed before, consider a series of grades: 10, 10, 85, 85, 85, 85, 85, 85, 100, 100 = 730.

The average is 73, which most teachers would assign, but the mode is 85, and if we note these grades are sequential and cumulative (10 as the first grade in terms of time, and 100 the last grade), a legitimate grade assignment could be 100.

In other words, using the same data, a teacher could assign 73, 85, or 100 to this student, and all can be justified statistically.

But another problem with grades and averaging that speaks to this post is something my students taught me when they complained about their math classes. Several students informed me that they had never passed a single math test, but had passed math courses.

The trick? Students earned bonus points for homework, etc., that were added to each test, on which students never reached a passing score.

This process means that cumulatively students never acquired so-called basic or essential math skills, but passed the courses, resulting in course credit that grossly misrepresented student learning.

Therefore, returning to my claim that grading may not be teaching, when we subtract for so-called errors to assign grades, we are allowing students to move through the learning process without actually learning the element being graded. In most cases, I believe, that strategy is teaching students that the element really doesn’t matter.

This dynamic is particularly corrosive when teaching scholarly writing and citation. Citation is one area of writing that doesn’t have degrees; you either cite fully or you don’t.

Many students, similar to the math students noted above, have never reached any level of proficiency with citing because they have mostly had points deducted for improper citation and then gone on their merry way, never having learned to cite fully.

If citation is essential, to grade and never require mastery of citation have two very negative consequences: (1) students do not attain an essential skill (and may exit formal education without the skill), and (2) students fail to understand the importance of drafting, receiving feedback, and revising.

Academic writing is challenging for developing young writers since it demands complex technical demands (such as citation and document formatting) and high expectations for content and style. Students need years and dozen of experiences reading and writing academic writing across multiple disciplines and varying conventional expectations.

But we cannot expect students to acquire the nuances of citation if we simply grade and never allow or expect them to cite fully and properly as an essential aspect of an academic writing experience.

As I make this case, I want to stress that as writing teachers we are trying to balance expectations for students and provide them low-stakes opportunities to draft with little or no consequences.

Students should have both writing assignments that demand minimum proficiency with key skills such as citation and writing contexts that foster and allow taking risks and working outside conventions.

Grading, I witness daily, inhibits both of those in ways that suggest the non-graded writing class is the best opportunity for students to learn in holistic and authentic ways that reveal themselves in student writing samples.

Because of their experiences being graded, I struggle to help students see that citation, grammar, mechanics, style, and content all work in unison either to support or erode their authority as writers and scholars.

I struggle to break through students resisting the drafting, feedback, revision process because they have been taught to submit instantly perfect work; that their identifiable flaws are the loss of points—not necessary areas to learn, grow, and excel.

As I end my thirty-fourth year teaching, I cannot stress hard enough that if you are grading, you may not be teaching, and your students likely are not learning the very things you value enough to assess.