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Not All Responders Are Equal

As a teacher of first-year writing I realized something about peer review. I’m a better responder to writing than my students. Now I don’t mean to sound arrogant here, but for a long time I tried to conduct peer review as if I was just like every other responder in the classroom. I would begin peer review sessions in my classes by saying that all writers need multiple readers for their work. I would write a series of prompts on the board and then ask the students to give one another feedback. At the end of the peer review session I would pick up their papers and tell them I would give them feedback just like their peer responders. I would take their papers home, respond and then return them, once again telling them that I was only one responder in this whole process and they needed to examine all the feedback they received, determine what feedback was useful to them and revise accordingly. The students would do this, but usually it seemed to me that they would only use my comments and disregard their peers. When asked about what worked and didn’t work in peer review students would say the following: I really don’t know what to say because I’m not qualified to comment on other kids’ papers.
I never get good feedback from my peers. Peggy, your feedback is always the best!

For a long time I would address these comments by stressing even more the importance of peer review and working even harder to train them to be effective responders. I would work on the prompts I gave them, I would ask them to review and comment on ALL the feedback that they received—their peers and mine. I would try to boost their confidence: You don’t have to be an English teacher to be a good reader! You’re a reader and you know what you think! And I would politely tell them they didn’t have to suck up to me just because I was the teacher.

But of course I wasn’t fooling the students. They knew very well that I was the only responder in that classroom holding the grade book. But I think they also knew something that I wasn’t willing to admit—I really am a better responder to texts than they are. And then I realized that I should be. I have years on my students—not just in age, but I have years of training and experience responding to texts of all kinds. I studied how to be an effective responder. I’ve read and responded to hundreds and hundreds of pages of writing—mostly essays written by first-year students. I am actually a very skilled reader of these texts. Responding to texts is what I do, so I should be “better” at it than a first-year college student.

And then I realized something else. By not admitting I was a more experienced responder than the students in the classroom, I was consistently trumping everyone’s peer response. I would let the students go through the peer review activity, gather their responses, and then I would throw down my response—a response not only from a skilled and experience reader, but a response from the person holding the grade book. Let’s be honest. Whose feedback would you take? I was not only canceling out all the feedback that was given, but I was reinforcing how ineffective they saw peer review. In a sense, I was sabotaging the entire process.

So now I try to think about peer review in a different way. I still work hard at training the students to be effective responders, but now I acknowledge that I am a different responder than they are. I think about how their responses to one another and how my feedback to their work can work together and complement one another rather than compete. I try to structure my peer review sessions so that the peer responders provide feedback to specific things (sometimes very specific things) within the text and when I respond to their drafts, I respond to different concerns and issues. This helps to build the students’ confidence as responders because it enables them to give feedback that will be used by their peers. This also helps to make the peer review sessions more productive—the feedback the students provide to one another is useful and the feedback I provide is also useful. I still stress that all writers need multiple readers, but now I stress that different readers bring different strengths to the text and provide writers with different responses. As writers we don’t need a lot of responders attempting to compete for our attention, but responders whose particular strengths and perspectives will enable us to further develop our texts.

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Error Gone Right

I made a mistake in my class. It wasn’t a big mistake, but it was a mistake. This semester I’m teaching an experimental writing class. Like all classes I teach, I have a notebook where I write out my lesson plans and notes for the course.  I keep these notebooks so that I can refer to them the next time I teach the course. Now I’m going to be honest. I don’t always write out the most detailed lesson plans, but at the very least I do write down the plan for the day, particularly the order of how things will go and a loose time frame to keep me on track. So for the first day of my experimental class, here is what I wrote down in my book:

Roster–attendance
Introductions (introduce one another, recommend a movie)
Go over syllabus & course
Postcard exercise
Write 20-25 mins. read aloud,
Maybe take break before read aloud?
Label – maybe in pairs? maybe in three?
Pass out poems –begin talking about genre
Explain homework – turn postcard ex into another genre
 
So the first day of the semester I went to class, opened my teaching book and began. I introduced myself, went over the roster, and passed out the syllabus.  I talked about the course, about the writing we would be doing, what the grading policy would be for this pass/fail course. Then we began our first writing exercise.  We all wrote and then we began the process of reading our pieces out loud.
 
I like beginning a writing class like this. I think it sets the tone for the type of writing community I want to foster—a community where we write together and share our work.  I also like to use what I call the postcard exercise—I have a box of postcards that I throw on the table, ask each student to select three postcards and then generate a piece of writing that incorporates all three.  I like to begin with this exercise because it reinforces one of the basic assumptions for any writing class that I teach—there is no right way to do an assignment and part of the assignment is negotiating how to do the exercise. Asking the students to read out loud what they have written also helps to break the ice. All their voices get entered into our classroom space on the very first day.  This also gives me the opportunity to show the students that I mean what I say. As they go around and read their pieces I say something to validate each piece. (Just a note this isn’t hard or by any means a stretch. I have done this exercise many semesters with many different students and every writer does something surprising, interesting, beautiful, and great. I am also constantly amazed at how many different ways students find to create a piece of writing out of three random postcards.)
 
As usual when we begin to read what we had written I reminded the students to say their names so we could begin the process of learning everyone’s names. Everyone did, but as we went around the circle I had the nagging feeling that I had forgotten something. It wasn’t until we took our break and I looked down at my teaching book that I realized that I had forgotten to have the students introduce themselves. I introduced myself to them, but I forgot to have them introduce themselves to one another! What an idiot! I thought to myself.  All this talk about building a writing community and I forgot to do the most basic part—have them introduce themselves! Looking down at my teaching book I had to decide quickly. I could skip the introductions and just continue on with the class. That way I wouldn’t look like the absent-minded professor in front of them. I could do the introductions and pretend that was the plan all along, but they might think it was odd since as upperclassmen they know the routine of these small classes. Or I could just fess up and ask them to introduce themselves.
 
I decided to confess my error. When they came back from the break I said, “I just realized I forgot to have you introduce yourselves to one another.  I was so intent on going over the course that I forget to have you do that. So we’ll do it now.”
 
“Yeah,” one of the students said. “I thought you were going to make us do that, but I’m glad you didn’t. I liked that we wrote first.”
 
“Okay, “I said. “Why don’t we go around and introduce ourselves and tell us about a movie you would recommend us to see.”
 
So as they began to go around the table and tell us the usual things about themselves and the movies they like I began to realize that maybe, just maybe this is an error that had gone right. The students seemed a bit more relaxed while giving their introductions, they seemed to be listening to one another a bit more, they seemed to laugh a bit more, they seemed to be a bit more engaged with one another. Although asking the students to introduce to one another seems like a great way to begin a writing class (and I’m not saying that I would ever give it up) maybe it seems to the students a bit artificial. Maybe saying your name, your major, etc. is just the routine way of interacting in a college community. Granted I have tried to break this up a bit by asking to recommend a movie—giving them something else to say as a way to connect to one another. But maybe having shared their writing with one another first gave them something to connect with, something that gave them the sense that they were already getting to know one another.
 
So maybe the way to build a writing community is to actually have them engage together in the process of writing as soon as possible.  Maybe this is a mistake I will make again.

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Confronting the Inner English Teacher

As a writer I believe in peer review. Of course as a writer, I never actually call it peer review; rather I call it “meeting with my writing group,” or “showing my work to my trusted writing friends.” I can honestly say that I read every word of my first novel out loud to my writing group. I can also attest that the members of my writing group read draft after draft of my novel silently to themselves. And I have done the same for them—I have listened and read every word of their projects. So I can safely say that I believe in the process of peer review, the benefits of having fellow writers to work through the steps of the writing process.

So this is why, as a teacher, I want peer review to work in my class. I want my students to reap the same benefits that I, as a writer, reap from being a part of a writing group. I want my students to see that writing is best done in community, with fellow writers giving support, encouragement, advice, and suggestions along the way. I also want them to gain the benefits of being involved in someone else’s writing process. This all sounds great.

So why doesn’t peer review always work in the writing classroom?

I’ve tried a lot things to make peer review work in my class. For one thing I have avoided calling it peer review. Today we are going to work in our revision groups. I’ve also tried disguising peer review as some kind of fun activity. Today we are going to do speed-revising. I’ve also tried designing very specific, concrete activities. Today in our revision groups we are going to exchange papers. Who is the audience for this paper? Why? Only talk about audience. Don’t talk about anything else. Only audience. I’ve also built it reflection as a part of the peer review process. Okay, look at the comments you received from your colleagues (yes, I never call them peer reviewers) What suggestions will you use for revision and why? Which revisions won’t you use and why?

All these things work to varying degrees of success. Some work better than others depending on the usual range of factors—the students, the unit, the time of the semester, etc.

But there seems to be another problem. The inner English teacher. It seems that our students have hidden deep within them an English teacher wielding a red pen. As soon as I put a paper into their hands and ask them to respond, this inner English teacher emerges to find every error, every typo, to fill the margins with abbreviations like “trans,” “awk” and to write comments at the end that say “Be specific,” “Use more examples,”  “Develop.”

Where does this inner English teacher come from?

To be quite honest, I’m as guilty as my students when it comes to “correcting” typos and errors. I find whenever I’m given a paper at any stage of the drafting process, if I don’t stop myself, I’ll go through the paper circling the its/it’s errors, writing awk in the margin of sentences that are unclear to me, and deleting un-necessary words. I do this because somewhere I have internalized that this is the job of the English teacher—to correct and to fix what is wrong.

But this is also how I’ve been responded to throughout my own education. Yes, I’ve gotten insightful comments that have enabled me to revise. Yes, I’ve gotten great feedback that has encouraged me to keep writing and to develop my ideas further. But if I look back, the one thing that English teachers (and really all teachers regardless of discipline who have responded to a piece of my writing) have done consistently is to correct and fix.

So no wonder this is what our students think they are supposed to do. Since this may be the only consistent way of responding to texts they have received, when put in the role that usually belongs to the “teacher” they may feel this is what they are supposed to do as well.

So what can we do besides banning red pens from peer review sessions? What I’ve tried to do in my classes is to acknowledge the inner English teacher in all of us. As responders of texts, I say, we all have this built in reflex to correct an error when we see it. But for this particular revision workshop we want to focus on developing our ideas. We’ll all get a chance to be English teachers later on in the process.

I also try not to live by the “do as I say not as I do” motto. In other words, I follow my own directions. When I respond to initial drafts I make a very conscious effort not to write on the draft. This keeps me from circling errors, typos, sentence fragments, subject/verb disagreements that will be worked out for the final draft. This also helps to focus the students’ attention on my comments about how to develop their ideas; reinforcing to the students that revision is about developing ideas not about correcting and fixing.

But most importantly I try to remember that when I am responding to my students’ work, I am not responding as an English teacher to students. Rather I am responding as a writer to other writers. This helps to keep my own inner English teacher at bay and hopefully this enables me to model how writers help one another work through the steps of the writing process.

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The Stack

This was originally posted on the Writing Program’s “It’s a Process” blog on 9/26/2010.

I’ll admit it. All weekend I was dreading it. When I was walking my dogs by the lake, running the usual weekend errands, waking up in the middle of the night, I would remember that on Tuesday I would be picking up the final drafts of my students first papers. In my mind I kept seeing this stack of paper. I kept dividing “the stack” into piles, sorting “the stack” into seemingly manageable piles, cutting the piles into smaller and smaller piles. I began making the usual deals with myself. (Okay, after every fifth paper, you can get a cup of tea or a cookie or check email or take the dogs out for a walk.) In my mind I kept going over my calendar, blocking out chunks of time in order to get through the stack. As the weekend progressed, the stack in my mind grew, became larger and larger. By Sunday night all I could think of was this giant, towering stack of papers covering on my entire desk. “I can’t do it!” I thought to myself. “I’ll never be able to read them all! Never!!”

At the end of class on Tuesday, I collected my students’ papers and carried them up to my office. I arranged them in a neat pile on my desk. Although the stack wasn’t as large or as towering as I had built up in my mind, I could feel a new sense of panic creeping up in me. “How am I going to respond to all these paper?” I thought to myself. “What am I going to say?” Panic gave way to despair. Why did I assign Myself in Words, again? I already saw the quotations they brought in. I already read their first drafts. I really don’t have anything more to say about living life to the fullest, to always be sure to appreciate your family and friends. I really have nothing to say about the importance of working hard. “I can’t do this,” I thought to myself. Glancing through the stack I could already see that many of these essays were the traditional five paragraph essay, many were filled with generalizations, partially developed thoughts and ideas. What was I going to do?

So I did what most teachers faced with a stack of papers do—I checked my email, I sharpened my pencil, I went to get an iced coffee, I checked my email, I sharpened another pencil, I googled something, checked my email again—until the fear of not getting through the stack became so great, I finally sat down at my desk, picked up the first paper, and began to read.

And then I realized what I was forgetting. These papers were written by my students. The students I have been getting to know over the last three weeks, the students I’ve been doing writing exercises with, listening to, talking to. As I began to read, the students’ faces appeared before me. I could hear their voices through their words. Things they had said in class came back to me. I wanted to keep reading. I realized that I wanted to know what they had to say. I wanted to know what they were thinking. I wanted to say something back to them.

As I made my way through the stack of papers I realized I was no longer reading clichéd papers about the importance of friendships, of being nice to your family, and the virtues of working hard. I was reading about Lisa’s* homesickness, Jack’s fears of dealing with the academic challenges of college, Mary’s feelings about being away from her family. The stack was no longer a stack of paper, but the students in my class.

Okay. I’ll admit it. I still sorted the papers in smaller piles. After every paper that I read I counted how many I had left to do. I still took breaks and bribed myself in order to make it through the stack. The panic that I wouldn’t get through them all, never really went away. And I’ll admit it, when I finished the last paper I did get up and dance around my office.

But I realized I was forgetting something else. I was forgetting that these first papers are more than just the first papers that our students write. These papers are just the beginning, the start of what we are going to be working through all semester. These papers are the beginning of us learning more about our students. Our responses are the beginning of the dialogue we want to open up with our students about their writing.

* All student names have been changed.

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The Post-Cool-Era-Classroom by Mark Koyama

This week’s post is by guest writer Mark Koyama. Mark is a writer, musician and graduate of the UMass MFA program. Mark taught College Writing and has served as a mentor to first-year teachers.

I’ll wager that if you look out over your fresh batch of 112 students you can count at least half-a-dozen Red Sox Caps. Am I right? Welcome to Red Sox Nation. As it turns out, a Red Sox Cap ain’t just a Red Sox Cap—it’s also a form of protective headgear. Before long, several young men will pull their caps down over their foreheads, slouch down, and in this defensive stance, be thoroughly protected from the chance of learning anything.

I’m making a Terrible Generalization. I’ll do the requisite back-pedaling in due time, but before doing that, let me indulge in another T.G: you know those students who refuse to make eye contact? They aren’t shy. They’re texting.

I know, I know. This is turning into one of those “kids these days” rants. The thing to remember is that they’re not dumb, and they’re not trying to be bad and they may not be really texting. That’s so high school. It’s not that they don’t want to learn. Most of the students are genuinely excited about being in college. What is it then? What makes it seem like they just don’t care? It’s really no great mystery. It’s actually quite simple.

They’re trying to be cool.

The paraphernalia of cool may shift from generation to generation, but the fundamentals remain the same. Since time immemorial, being cool has been a posturing game. To be really cool, one has to know when to fit in, and when to be aloof (and, of course, one must never use the word “one” as a pronoun.) The “fitting in” part involves wearing the obligatory emblem of regional pride – the Red Sox Cap. The “being aloof” part involves pulling the cap down and feigning disinterest in the anything proceeding from the mouth of anyone older then twenty-five years of age (who uses the word “one” as a pronoun.)

As a teacher in the a first-year writing course the “fitting-in” part of the equation is not your concern. It’s the “being aloof” part that you need to worry about. It can be a killer. It feels, at times, like there is direct correlation between the earnest fervor with which one tries express an idea, and how much the students greet that same idea with blithe disregard. Earnestness, you see, is anathema to cool. To be earnest, you must be willing to commit to the truth of an idea. But commitment, too, is anathema to cool. These things – earnestness, truth, commitment – they are probably listed in the thesaurus as antonyms for “aloof.”

But again – the aloof thing is not about the students being bad. No. Remember, the students are in a critical moment of transition in their lives. They are figuring out who they are and what is important to them. They are picking and choosing. It makes sense that they will do this from as safe a vantage as possible – from under the Red Sox Cap.

What’s your job? Do you order them to take off the Red Sox Cap? Do you coerce them to take it off with some grading policy stipulation? Or do you just let them keep it on?

I think it’s important that you try, early in the semester, to establish a culture in your classroom. The best learning, I think, takes place in a culture of discussion. Discussion is the dynamic that slowly, and imperceptibly erodes the aloof culture of cool. Discussion has the power to transform something you think is important, into something we find to be worth thinking about. Discussion fosters an environment in which people discover that it’s OK to let their guard down and get excited about an idea. They may not even know its happening—they may feel uneasy, but that’s alright because real learning happens when students are out of their comfort zones. Learning happens when the students get so worked up about the truth of an idea, that they lose their cool. That’s why the culture of the classroom – your College Writing classroom – should be the culture of the post-cool era.

I think the College Writing 112 curriculum is actually pretty amazing. If you think about it, the Unit 1 essay is the perfect opportunity to begin fostering a culture of discussion. You are asking them to write about themselves – which is risky for them. You are asking them to write about what they believe and why. But they may not know what they believe until they start writing about it. Writing, in this sense, is not about recording who one is, as much as discovering who one is. This surprising reality is a great doorway into discussion. If this strange dynamic elicits even the barest glimpse of honesty from the mouth of one of your students, make sure everyone in the class recognizes what just happened! This will jump start the slow process of engendering the post-cool-era-classroom.

Don’t be disappointed if, at the end of the semester, you look out and see that only a handful of caps have been taken off. You are teaching the entire class – but you may really influence only a handful. Don’t underestimate the power and the significance of that influence – those students may remember you for the rest of their lives, because you showed them something important. It’s a beautiful thing.

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Romanticizing the Fall

Spring semester is different. I know that may seem obvious—the weather is different, the holidays are different, and the students are different. Or are they?

When I teach in the spring it seems I spend a lot of time comparing my spring class to my fall class. I come back from my first classes and I think, “Gee, this group seems so different from my class in the fall. This group seems quieter. Funny, they don’t always seem to ‘get’ what I’m saying– especially my jokes.”

My perceived difference in the students gets confirmed. Many of the teachers I work with come into my office and say the same thing. “This class seems so different from the class I taught in the fall.”

“How so?” I’ll ask checking to see if they notice the same kinds of things I do.

“They’re so quiet,” the teachers will say. “My class in the fall was more talkative. This class seems kind of hesitant. In my fall class I could ask them to do anything and they would just do it. This class. . .”

“Well, they are different students,” I’ll say. “Your fall class was mostly made up of first- semester students, students who had never been to college before. This group is different. They have already been through one semester of college.”

“Right,” the teachers will say.

But one day when I was having this conversation with a teacher, I said something different. When she said that her class was quiet I said, “Well, it is the beginning of the semester.”

“Oh right,” she said. “The students are always quiet the first couple of weeks.”

And then it hit me. She was right. Students are always quiet the first few classes and they are always a bit cautious. They don’t know me as a teacher yet and I don’t know them as students. And then I realized something else.

When I think about any of my previous classes, rarely do I think about the first couple of weeks. I remember my previous classes as they were mid-semester on, when we, as a class, had settled in and hit our stride. I also tend to remember fondly the good days of the semester and forget the not so great days. In other words, like we all do with many things, I tend to romanticize the past. I remember my previous classes when we had already worked through the awkwardness of the first weeks of the semester, when the students already knew what I meant when I talked about the rhetorical triangle and they already trusted me when I said I wanted them to take risks in their writing.

So even though I know this, something still bothers me. Why do I still catch myself comparing my spring class to my fall class? Why do I rarely compare my fall class to my previous spring class? I’m still thinking there is a difference between spring and fall and that difference has to do with distance. The memory of the last half of my fall class has yet to be a distant memory. The break between the semesters doesn’t seem to be enough time for me to really separate these two classes. The spring semester doesn’t have the same sense of “newness” that the fall semester has. In the fall we begin a new academic year. The spring semester we are coming back to continue on with the same academic year. This contributes to the feeling I have when I walk into my spring class that we should just be picking up where we left off before the break. Of course the problem is, these aren’t the same students I had before the break, and it’s unfair of me to expect them to know what I’ve yet to teach them. The spring semester takes a little adjustment on my part, an adjustment to see the beginning of spring semester as a beginning as well, the same kind of beginning that the fall is.

So now when teachers tell me their spring classes seem different I ask them to remember the beginning of their fall classes.

“Oh,” they say. “Those students were pretty quiet too.”

“You know,” I say, “you may be romanticizing the fall.”

“You know,” they say, “you may be right.”

“Don’t worry,” I tell them. “This class will get there too. And soon they’ll be getting your jokes.”

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Teacher Dreams

It’s the first day of classes. I go to my class. The students are all there sitting quietly looking at me. I put my bag on top of the teacher’s desk and begin taking my stuff out. I take out my pen, my grade book, the class roster, and my lesson planning book. I look in my bag, but I don’t see the syllabus. I look again. I know I made copies of the syllabus. I’m supposed to give it out and go over it with the students.  I look in my bag again. The copies I made aren’t there. I begin to panic. Did I leave the syllabus on my desk? Did I drop the copies in the hallway on my way to class? Did I leave the copies home? I look in my bag again. The syllabus still isn’t there. I look out at the students. They are all staring at me. What am I going to do??  
 
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t have the syllabus.”
 
The students stand up.
 
“What are you doing?”  I say. The students don’t say anything. They just stand there.
 
“Sit down,” I say beginning to panic. They don’t. “Please,” I plead. “Please sit down.”
 
“We don’t have to listen to you,” a student yells at me.
 
“We don’t have to do what you tell us to do,” another student shouts.
 
“Sit down,” I shout back. The students start moving towards the door. “Where are you going?” I shout. “What are you doing?” I shout louder. “Come back here.”
 
“We don’t have to do what you say,” several students shout as they walk out the door.
 
“Come back,” I yell because I don’t know what else to do.
 
“We don’t have to listen to you,” a student shouts at me.
 
“You aren’t the teacher,” they begin to chant. “You aren’t the teacher!”
 
And then I wake up.
 
When I first started teaching I thought these teacher anxiety dreams would go away. I believed that after a couple of semesters, I would have this whole teaching thing down, so that walking into a classroom and facing a group of students would be like walking into the grocery store, buying gas, brushing my teeth—something I’ve done so many times I could do it in my sleep.
 
But that has not been the case. Before the start of each semester the dreams still come and the butterflies that filled my stomach before I walked into my very first class are also still there.
 
Once, I did consider quitting. One afternoon in my second year of graduate school, I was walking across campus to my class. I had worked out my lesson plan the night before, but now, on my way to class, I was questioning it. What if the exercise I had planned didn’t work? What if the students didn’t like it? What if it took longer than I thought? What if it didn’t take as long as I thought? As I was working through all these “what if’s,” I found myself getting nervous, the butterflies growing in my stomach. I stopped, took a deep breath and thought, “Am I really going to be able to do this every day of my life?”  I took another deep breath and went to class where everything went fine.
 
But the idea of quitting stayed in the back of my mind until one day while sitting in a teaching practicum required of all students in our graduate program, our professor said in his usual off-hand manner, “Teaching is one of those things—for the amount of time you actually spend doing it, you spend more time worrying about what you are going to do before you do it, and then after you have done it you spend even more time worrying about what you did until it’s time to start worrying about your next class.” I looked around the room and everyone was nodding in agreement. Then it hit me. I wasn’t the only one to have butterflies and anxiety dreams.  It was normal to wonder, to question, to constantly reflect on your teaching practices. This is what teachers do.
 
And I have come to realize that questioning, wondering, and reflecting is something I need to do as a teacher. I’ve learned that my anxiety dreams are more about the anticipation of something new that is about to begin, rather than about my fears the students will walk out on me. Although I have taught the same course many times, the dreams and the butterflies remind me that I’ll be meeting and working with new student/writers who will offer me their own insights on things that will cause me to wonder and to question my own perspectives. The constant what if’s that run through my head on my walks to class serve to remind me that I’m not teaching a course, but rather I’m working with a group of people—all with various experiences as writers, readers, and thinkers. The start of the semester is just that—the start of something new and something I certainly don’t want to do in my sleep.