Writing Assessment: A Necessary Evil

I'm going to be honest about Kathleen Blake Yancey's "Writing Assessment in the Early Twenty-First Century--A Primer," I hated every second of reading it.  I will admit that it gave a comprehensive look at writing assessment, its waves, and its controversy, but it was just a boring read for me.  The way the document had been scanned into the computer also made it difficult to read; on every other page the text was very faint, and I had to get really close to the screen to even make out what it said, which put a lot of strain on my eyes.

I feel that, because of my age, I have been privileged to experience assessment of my writing skills from all three waves.  When I was younger I think holistic writing assessment was cresting while multiple choice testing was still in the posterior part of its wave.  I can remember selecting multiple choice grammar and vocabulary questions on tests like the CAT, GEPA, and HSPA.  Even the SAT had some questions like that, although my SAT was one of the first to feature the essay writing section, which was a holistic assessment. When I was in highschool I had my first experience with portfolio assessment as well.  I believe it was in a creative writing class that they asked me to do a portfolio and reflections.  Aside from that, however, the dominant writing assessment in my highschool years was holistic.  It was not until junior year in college that portfolio assessments became the norm. 

The whole issue of having to assess writing in a certain way just to please and validate the teaching of writing to people outside of the discipline is kind of ridiculous to me.  It seems like the humanities have to devote a disproportionate amount of energy into justifying themselves as something worth learning/teaching.  I don't know if this is because of the notion that STEM is the key to America's economic future, or what.  I mean, what if we asked teachers of physics to justify themselves in the terms and norms of writing assessment?  How would they do it?  And how would they feel about it?  Sometimes I feel like WAC is the only thing keeping English departments alive in American universities/colleges. 

Shortly after I began working in the writing center, I realized that writing centers have a very hard time with assessment.  Because we don't have access to grades, we had to come up with a way to gauge the progress of students who regularly attended our sessions.  We decided to look for similar things to the composition rubric, with extra allowances made for things like lifelong learning skills.  In that way, I guess we are floating somewhere in the holistic wave.

I've told the story in class about the representatives from a college in Florida I encountered at a writing center conference.  Their school graded entirely with "satisfactory" and "unsatisfactory," which removed a lot of the obsession with grades that distracts students from just LEARNING.  If I had to offer a solution to the challenge of writing assessment, it would be to adopt that same kind of grading system.  Did the students demonstrate all or most of the skills listed on the outcomes sheet?  Yeah?  Okay.  They get a satisfactory. They learned. End of story.  Less stress; less fuss, for everyone involved.    

 

Presentation Stuff

Here are links to the materials for my presentation tonight:

Review Paper: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0ENMKQP7b-PVHViaDdEUDZmMTA

Slides: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kHj-Rgeqo1vRfINUAJq1VGb7vr6K0u6x3kaOS_Do7Jw

"Richetti Method" Essay: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0ENMKQP7b-PR3JKbkYzT2NNZWs

I will also be sharing my Review Paper via email instead of distributing hard copies in class tonight.

Is it (rough) drafty in here?

Link to rough draft of piece:http://philome.la/KMarzinsky/nj-route-29

Peer Review Questions

1.       Is it clear that the narrator is the road itself? If so, is it too clear?  That is, does the piece lack subtlety and rely too heavily on the novelty of the narrator’s identity?

2.      Is it clear what Route 29 wants to accomplish and why?  Does the narrator’s motivation feel organic?  Does the conflict have high enough stakes to engage you as a reader?

3.      Are the somewhat sparse language, the brevity of the piece, and the abundance of simple sentences effective?  Are enough images evoked? 

4.      Does the tone of alienation and melancholy come through?  Is it effectively juxtaposed with Route 29’s goals and purpose?

5.      Does the piece rely too heavily on knowledge of the road and its geographic features?  Or would someone who’s never been on the road still be able to appreciate it?

6.   Does there need to be more interactive elements?  

 

Identity and the Storm

Of our assigned readings this week, I responded most strongly to "Butch, Bi, and Bar Dyke: Pedagogical Performances of Class, Gender, and Sexuality" by Michelle Gibson, Martha Marinara, and Deborah Meen.  I think this article is especially relevant because of the current political storm, which makes the divided and contradictory nature of our country all too apparent.  Identifying as an American, or even as a Democrat or Republican, has transformed from an answer to a prompt for more questioning.  In many ways, academia as it is presented by the three authors in the article, can be viewed as a microcosm for our country as a whole.  Now more than ever, Americans are being questioned about their dossiers, about what makes them a valid citizen of the country. 

When discussing class distinctions, the author that identifies herself as Bi mentions that the social narratives about one's class identity "are [...] fairy tales; the reality is an identity that never quite fits, is never quite comfortable, authentic, or believable" (Gibson, Marinara, and Meen 73).  This doesn't just apply to class identity, but to any identity, most notably writer identity.  I think that a lot of students believe a "fairy tale" about identifying as a writer.  In their minds, a writer is an amalgamate being composed of so many dust jacket pictures and coffee-scented stereotypes.  It wears a turtleneck sweater, speaks in beatnik riddles, and keeps a bandolier of ink quills and effortlessly brilliant papers on its chest.  It may or may not have a moustache and the brooding eyes of a pachyderm.  Seeing that they're not this mythical creature, these students decide to reject "writer" from their identities.  That, or they try to quantify the writer identity: "Well, a person is a writer once they're published."  "A writer has an MFA."  "A writer works at a newspaper."  The truth is that those are fairy tales too.  There are plenty of published, MFA-holding newspaper journalists that don't feel comfortable calling themselves writers.  It's almost a paradox.  A writer is someone who writes, yes, but also someone who is comfortable "lying" about being a writer.

Another quotation from the same part of the article actually made my eyes tear up as I thought of it in relation to my own identity: "I can talk or write about my working-class past, but I no longer live in it. I have no real identity there, and I have no real identity in the professional class; I only have the dream" (Gibson, Marinara, and Meen 74).  I feel this way at the current hour of my life.  I struggle to identify as a graduate student because of the difficulties I'm having adapting to grad school life; I also know that I'm no longer an undergrad, and I'm certainly not a professional anymore (despite working a full time office job for 6 years before focusing on school).  I'm not really an adult, but I'm not a child.  I'm just kind of here, dreaming of becoming something, and wondering when any moniker will fit without bunching at the seams or draping like a tent.

Going back to the whole political theme (I know this blog has been disorganized; forgive me), I think something said by "Bar Dyke" toward the end of the article can be taken as the best advice for all of us. "I believe that constructing and performing our nontraditional identities through personal experience is an inherently political act designed to transform the public spaces we inhabit from oppressive realms into inclusive realms" (Gibson, Marinara, and Meen 92).  There is a chance that in the coming years, the social climate of our country will change drastically, that many more identities will be seen as "nontraditional." The best thing we can do is perform our identities, whatever they may be, as authentically and loudly as possible.  We must show the nation and the world that we the people will tolerate nothing less than "inclusive realms," even if oppression becomes the norm.

A Global "Society of Authorship"?

Of our two articles for this week, I responded much more strongly to Will Richardson's "Selections from Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms," or more specifically, one portion of said article.  On page 5 it states: "We are creating what author Douglas Rushkoff calls a 'Society of Authorship' where every teacher and every student, every person with access will have the ability to contribute ideas and experiences to the larger body of knowledge that is the Internet.  And in doing so, Rushkoff says, we will be writing the human story, in real time, together, a vision that asks each of us to participate (Rushkoff, 2004)."  What intrigues me is that now, ten years after the publication of the book from which the article is taken, we have a society where Internet access and participation is as widespread as Richardson predicted; however, I don't think it is a "society of authorship."  If anything, it seems like the more tools we have to distribute our voices in written format, the less people think of themselves as authors.  Instead, they come up with new words, like "blogger," to describe what they are and what they do, as if "author" or "writer" are taboo.  Why is that?  Anyone who writes is a writer.  If a blog is a kind of writing, then why not just call bloggers writers?  We don't call writers who write in other languages something different.  Who created this dichotomy and why?  And if writing is migrating more and more into the digital realm, then will writers someday cease to exist semantically, replaced by some other word that means the same thing?

As for the other article, I think what stuck out to me the most was the difference between types of multilingual students.  I never really took "1.5 generation" students (Matsuda 39) into consideration as something separate from ESL or EFL students.  And this is even after having worked with each type of student in the writing center, and having seen the difference in their issues and performance.  It makes me realize just how easy it is to overlook what, on the surface, seems like an obvious or commonsense concept in the academic world.  Sometimes we get so focused on each little task ahead of us, each individual session and student, that it's hard to see the whole picture.  I know this is kind of the opposite of the problem educational institutions usually have, but I think it is just as valid, and can have just as many negative effects. 

If we have tools, like those mentioned in the first article, to make voices heard by a global audience, then we really must make sure we're equipping people of all language backgrounds to make their voices heard by as many people as possible.  In this day and age, that often means legible, coherent English.  If we're unable to succeed in giving students that power, then it's no wonder they don't want to think of themselves as writers or authors. 

Comments and Responses to Students

This week's readings each had to do with the ways educators interact with their students in and about writing.  "Writing Comments on Student Papers" was practical in its approach, offering detailed examples, while "Response to Writing" dealt more with theory.  Both articles stood against the outdated, overly-directive, surface-level types of responses to student writing and advocated responses/feedback that encourage the student to engage in thoughtful revision.   

I found John Bean's "Writing Comments on Student Papers" both vindicating and useful.  As part of my work in the Writing Center, I have served as an in-class mentor twice.  Both times, the professors with whom I worked asked me to read and write comments on students' papers.  I was not asked to give grades; I only provided feedback, which would later be appended to feedback from the professor.  Among Bean's advice I was able to see some techniques I had already used, such as offering praise for things that are working (335 par. 2) and asking specific questions to help a student improve their argument (335 par. 5).  Both of these techniques are things that I had stumbled into based purely on instinct or as adapted forms of writing center tutoring protocol.  Seeing them provided as sagely wisdom for the teaching of writing was very encouraging.  It was kind of a sign that, yes, I have been doing this commenting thing correctly.  Or at least certain parts of it.  That was very valuable to me, because I always second-guess myself for fear that I'll do something wrong and turn a student off of writing forever.  I was particularly concerned that maybe offering praise (and I offered it on everything I could; if a student got only one smiley face in their comments, it was a bad sign) could be a destructive thing because students would only read the praise and then feel like they didn't have to revise.  Reading that "positive emotions enhance cognition" (Bean 319) and "to promote meaningful learning [...] teachers should build on student successes, evoking feelings of hope and confidence rather than failure" (Bean 320) removed a lot of the doubt and guilt in my mind.   In Bean's article I also saw some techniques that I had never thought of, and which I would like to use in the future.  The use of directive bullet-points in end-comments (Bean 334) struck me as a something I would like to try.  In addition, I particularly liked the notion of the old-new contract (Bean 326-329).  I had actually never heard of the old/new contract before, but it made a lot of sense.  I also really liked how referencing the old-new contract with "O/N" became a sort of "inside" thing for the author's class.  I know I've read somewhere that inside jokes/memories help build bonds between people and strengthen relationships, so I assume that same concept would extend to the teacher/student relationship. 

This social quality of the classroom was also a part of our other reading, Beach and Friedrich's "Response to Writing."  According to the article, "demonstrating to students how to use teacher and student feedback to reflect alternative perspectives on ideas and beliefs leads to a reenvisioning of one's beliefs, perspectives, and ways of knowing that are essential for revision (Lee, 2000 as cited in Beach & Friedrich 223).  I chewed on this idea for quite a while because I'm still becoming used to the idea of knowledge itself as a socially-constructed thing (this concept is a big part of two of my classes this semester).  As a student, when I saw comments from the teacher, I usually tried to figure out what the teacher wanted from me. In other words, my audience was one person and I had to "play-out" my knowledge in the way my audience-of-one wanted, just because that audience-of-one was in power.  I suppose I thought of it more as a complicated command-obey exercise: figure out the command, then obey it. That worked for me, so I never really thought further into it.  Now, after working in the writing center, studying to be on the other side of the equation, and reading things like this, I am beginning to reenvision the purpose of feedback, and the entire nature of the professor/student dynamic.  Teachers of writing shouldn't be like animal trainers teaching tu-tu clad lions to perform clumsy verbal ballet on command; we should be teaching the lions how to speak coherently so they can join our discussion of Tchaikovsky instead of just roaring.        

With my interest in writer identity, I also appreciated the part of "Response to Writing" about teachers interpreting students' personas through their writing assignments (Beach & Friedrich 224).  It seems like common sense that teachers would translate their students' writing into caricatures of the students themselves, but somehow I had never thought of that occurring.  I think letting students know that others' perception of their identities could depend on their writing could make them care more about it.  This could be framed within the context of social media, where written content is often the first contact a person has with another person.  Perhaps there could even be an assignment where students write short, anonymous blog or forum posts about their interests, families, majors, etc. and then their classmates have to guess which post belongs to which student.  This could demonstrate to them just how much power one's writing has to define them.  Ideally, this would lead to the formation of an embryonic writer identity, even if they only ever apply it to looking cooler than they actually are on Facebook.     

Writing Identity and Reflection in the Teaching World

The articles for this week focused on the use of "authentic" writing in teaching ("Get Real: Instructional Implications for Authentic Writing Activities" by Carly D. Lidvall) and the teacher as a writer ("Teacher-Writers: Then, Now, and Next" by Anne Elrod Whitney, Troy Hicks, Leah Zuidema, James E. Fredricksen, and Robert P. Yagelski). I feel that these two concepts can, and should, go hand-in-hand.  If a teacher of writing is herself a writer, then students will have the opportunity to see and understand authentic writing on a daily (or however often the class meets) basis.

In Lidvall's essay, she says that "students must see [a] real, human reason behind their writing if they are going to engage in the writing process" (5).  What could be a better object lesson for this concept than a teacher who actively writes and publishes work in a variety of genres?  Although Whitney et. al. primarily talk about teachers writing and publishing in pedagogical research outlets, a teacher who does any kind of product-oriented writing with a purpose, a set audience, motivation, and a choice of subject matter (Lidvall 6-8) can lead their students through authentic writing activities.  For example, even if a teacher has only published poems, they are still able to speak firsthand about "real world [writing] situations" (Lidvall 3).  They've struggled through difficult prewriting and drafting situations, and they've felt the anxious pride of seeing their audience react to their work.  Such a teacher is likely to be more secure in his/her writer identity and be able to talk about parts of the writing process with greater credibility, authority, and ease.  In the words of Whitney and their team, they can "[be] authors in every sense: professionals who claim authority with their own words and their work" (Whitney et. al. 179)   Knowing that their teacher is also a professional writer, the students will see writing as a part of a real person's daily routine and professional life.  It makes writing that much more relevant.  Even if a teacher doesn't write for publication, they can use "personal pieces of writing [like] letters, postcards, drafts, [or] poems [...] to show students that writing is connected to the world, not just school" (Routman, 2000 as cited in Lidvall 15).  In other words, if a teacher has a writer identity and makes it known openly to his/her students, the students are more likely to develop a writer identity themselves.

Whitney et. al. emphasize the opportunity that writing as a teacher presents for reflection and growth, both as an educator and a writer.  As an example, they say that "personal and professional writing helped [National Writing Project] teachers claim identities as writers and make concomitant shifts in teaching practices" (Whitney, 2009b as cited in Whitney et. al. 179).  In order to write about their experiences and theories in teaching, teacher-writers must reflect upon them.  As we learned last week from Yancey's article, this reflection is a beneficial psychological process for not only the one doing the reflecting, but those with whom they share an academic field or daily contact.  By reflecting, writing, and sharing research with other teachers, teachers are able to help themselves and their community members to become better teachers.  They are also able to reaffirm or maintain their writer identities, which as I asserted above, will enable them to have greater authority in the classroom.

  

Reflection and Response: How Writers Take Shape

Firstly, I would like to commend Andaiye on her selection of articles for this week.  The interplay between Kim Jaxon's "One Approach to Guiding Peer Response" and Kathleen Blake Yancey's "Reflection in the Writing Classroom" really gave me a lot to think about and chew on.  From the content in these articles, I am able to infer that there are two primary ways in which writers prepare themselves for productive revision: reflecting on their own work and conferring with peers about their works.  Though these actions are separate and unique, many teachers are creating ways to blend them, allowing student writers to "get the best of both worlds."  Though scholarship does show positive results from this, my own experience leads me to disagree with the practice.  I would even venture to say that reflection and response are distinct stages of the writing process and should be treated as such, with reflection preceding response.

An example of combining reflection and response in the composition classroom can be found in Jaxon's article when she explains her peer-to-peer memo assignment: "The purpose of the Peer to Peer memo is to guide the responder to specific places in the essay that the writer is concerned about and also to give some idea of what the writer is trying to accomplish with the essay" (2).  She also states that this memo is created "on the day a first draft is due in class" (1).  The student writer must reflect in order to identify areas of concern in his/her draft and to come to a detailed understanding of just what their writing is trying to accomplish.  Most students will have completed that first draft the night before it's due in class.  Yes, I know Jaxon says that "in order for this activity to be successful, the writer needs to come to class the day a draft is due with two copies of a thoughtful, 'best first effort' of an essay" (2), but in freshman composition courses how realistic is this expectation of a "best first effort"?  Is less than twenty-four hours really all the time student writers need to reflect on their work?  Schon, the philosopher cited in Yancey's article, would likely disagree since he defines constructive reflection as "the generalizing and identity-formation processes that accumulate over time, with specific reference to writing and learning" (13, emphasis added by me).  Yes, reflection may be taking place as a part of this response exercise, but it is likely more shallow, surface level reflection.  I think this is what Schon meant when he talked about "reflection-in-action."  That's all well and good, and it's better than nothing, but I think if student writers were given more time for reflection, in which they could evaluate their own work before asking a peer for response, they'd grow more as writers, become more aware of their own process, and become more self-sufficient.

A probable reason for wanting to combine reflection and response in the classroom is time constraint.  Professors only have a few hours a week, for one semester, to get through an enormous amount of content, and there may not be time for constructive reflection or more than a handful of peer review workshops. This problem could be solved by altering the break-down of freshman composition classes.  Instead of working one paper through from draft to completion and then moving onto another, perhaps the response stage for one paper could be sandwiched between the draft stages of two different papers, with constructive reflection occurring privately and quietly (Yancey 14) "between and among composing events" (Yancey 14).  In my own personal fiction writing, I am able to reflect more productively on one project (Story A) when I have begun drafting my next project (Story B).  It allows me to compare and contrast the two stories, and it makes me feel like there is less pressure on Story A to be perfect.  Paradoxically, this allows me to more fearlessly and objectively evaluate Story A for what works and does not work because I don't feel like my entire identity and value as a writer rests on the content of Story A.  If Story A isn't perfect, okay, so what?  At least I've got Story B!  Identifying and lancing out flaws feels less like a masochistic exercise in self-loathing and more like the productive part of the writing process it's meant to be.  Then, after I've gotten the project as far as I can get it with my own reflection, I turn it over to friends and colleagues for their responses.  Those responses facilitate a second wave of revisions, which are in turn followed by one or more extended periods of reflection (sometimes lasting over a year), which are followed by revision, and on and on.

Perhaps my experiences are anomalous, or perhaps they're not applicable to academic writing, but regardless of how many in-class peer reviews or mandatory reflection essays I have written, most of my growth as a writer has occurred in the reflection stage, more specifically the constructive reflection stage.  The input of my peers is necessary and helpful, but I find it most useful after I've already been chewing on a piece of writing, by myself, at my desk while working on something else, in the shower or driver's seat of my car, for at least a few weeks.  To try to mush reflection and response together in the classroom is doing student writers a disservice; we're preventing them from taking the time/thought required to really reflect on their work, and stranding them on a shallow, surface-level sand bar. We're arresting the development of their identities as writers.