The Cardinal Sin

...of English teaching is assigning writing instead of teaching writing.

My seniors read, among other texts, a novel over the summer. It's huge and complex and we don't spend a great deal of time discussing it -- although it's a great choice for 85% of the AP free response prompts that show up on the test in May. That's one of the reasons I have them read it.

After a few days of class discussion about the novel, I gave them copies of all the AP free response prompts from 1969 to 2007, spent part of a class period explaining how to approach a prompt, and instructed them to choose a prompt appropriate for the text at hand. I sent them off with some follow-up handouts and a due date.

At the beginning, reading the papers was, by and large, excruciating. They chose inappropriate prompts (either out of cluelessness or in order to "be unique"), misread or misinterpreted the prompts, or failed to answer part of -- or all of -- the prompt. There are loads of other issues, but the prompt...man, you gotta read and interpret the prompt correctly, or the most you can earn is a 5, and that's if your writing is particularly awesome. Hint: if you suffer from any of the issues listed above, you rarely write well enough to pass the essay, because you are writing about the wrong thing.

I take 85% responsibility. They are seniors, and I did give them enough information to make a decent sally forth (if they had read the handouts again and really thought about what they were doing). However, I didn't teach them enough. Five to ten excerable first papers out of sixty-seven would have been discouraging, but not unheard of. More than thirty? Shame on me.

I compounded the issue by committing another English teacher transgression: I put off reading the papers for a week (I was hip-deep in freshman essays); a week became two, and three, and a month. I collected the papers about a month ago and will be handing them back tomorrow. I know feedback can't be immediate all the time, but a month is way too long. I hope that the copious commentary that gave me a wrist ache sinks in.

So I emailed my little cocktail weenies and told them what I had done wrong and how I planned to proceed: each one would earn credit for the paper and the metacognitive piece that went with it. For the students who did poorly, this would not affect their grade so adversely as to cripple them for the quarter; for the students who did well, they can feel proud at their own success and know the road's going to be easier for them. The students who did well will also share their writing process with the class, so they can perhaps glean tips that might, in turn, work for them.

The next time around, they will earn the letter grade commensurate with their scores. My goal is, through some more direct instruction, to have my kids' papers exponentially improved by then.

While I can see my many mistakes in this episode, I must share something surprising that came from it: I wrote more commentary on these papers than I have in years. Prompt-specific feedback, general feedback, picky feedback (damnit, stop using ellipses when you have no clue how to do it correctly) -- I wrote so much my wrist ached. Oh yeah, I told you that already. Are you sympathetic yet?

I think I was able to do this because I didn't have the pressure in the back of my head that fears and loathes the assigning of grades to their work. The grades are so important to these kids that they often never even glance at feedback unless we do some reflective exercise with it (which happens rarely, since I have to get on to the next standard). I'm trusting that earning the full credit will provide them with an incentive to read the feedback and improve; they get one for free, and then have to sweat to make it work.

I need to think ahead to what we'll do when our current unit is finished. I plan to have a feedback pool (an open forum for mini-lessons based on student questions about my feedback -- commas, MLA format, answering the whole prompt, how to not drive me crazy with fucking ellipses). I've never done it before, and I just made up the name for it twelve seconds ago, so we'll see how that proceeds.

I also want to go through each of the AP free response prompts one by one and break them down -- tedious, perhaps, but clearly necessary, since they're not reading them correctly. I may even make them choose a prompt and apply it to something they read last year, and make them share those on the board. Yes...that way they will also be reminded that they can choose from a wide variety of literature for the exam.

I actually might be excited about going back to work tomorrow. That is such a welcome feeling for early November. It's a welcome feeling, period.

If you have other suggestions (things you do that work) or questions (what's my issue with ellipses? or excessive use of italics in blog posts?), please leave a comment.