Howdy howdy! Life has a funny way of getting in the way of living sometimes. Because of this, I’ve fallen a little behind on my posts, but Rocco returns at last!

This week I was tasked with reading both Writing Comments on Student Papers by John Bean and Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment by Peter Elbow.

Writing Comments on Students Papers proposed very intriguing ideas that I think, on a foundational level, would have revolutionized my writing when I was younger. The section “Students’ Responses to Teachers’ Comments” was one of my personal favorites, because I believe if this open line of dialogue was more commonplace in academic spaces, then there would fewer areas of confusion in regards to the teacher’s expectations. Growing up, I was very accustomed to having revisions tear apart my papers and fixing exactly what I was told to fix without understanding why that section was marked in the first place. This type of academic programming is precisely how students become academic machines with no personal voice or expression, which is the exact opposite of what we should want; we should want free-thinkers and creative writers that understand the foundations of writing to be more prevalent. The funniest part of this section is that a student’s response to “Needs to be more concise” was “I thought you wanted details and support,” (318) and I feel that this quote perfectly encapsulates a relationship between teacher and student that is aware of the fact that both parties are human; teachers may not always perfectly explain what they need from a student, and this student’s response perfectly displays where the confusion lies. Having open lines of communication like this is the first step to a healthy revision process. The article continues to discuss purposeful commentary and I really cannot explain how much I think praise in comments is important! I feel as though the more you show your students that you’re willing to support them just as much as you’re willing to correct them, they stop looking at you as a person of power and more as a guiding hand. Finally, I believe the most interesting piece of this article was the “old/new contract.” I’ve never heard of this concept before, but it truly does simplify the commentary process if academic papers are just a matter of following a specific set of rules. The old/new contract is a simple way of proposing a formula for students to follow. If bad writing is simply a breach of the contract, students can observe it as an objective wrongdoing rather than the teacher’s preference, making commentary easy to follow and revisions simple to approach. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the ideas that this paper introduced and it has a very genuine approach to assisting students.

Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment does a perfect job explaining the subjectivity of ranking systems and how it’s an overall unsatisfying method of evaluation. As I’ve stressed countless times throughout this post, communication is the most important piece of the grading process; if a student doesn’t understand why they received certain feedback, it can create a tense relationship and worsen the overall motivation and ability of that student as a writer. I remember back in elementary school, students were graded on a four point scale, with four meaning the student exceeded expectations. My teacher prided herself on her strict grading, saying “I’m not going to just hand out 4s. Very few of you are going to see any on your report cards.” I think this a perfect example of what the author was discussing when they stated, “Ranking or grading is woefully uncommunicative. Grades and holistic scores are nothing but points on a continuum from “yea” to “boo”–with no information or clues about the criteria behind these noises” (3). This teacher essentially created a barrier that challenged students to impress her, but with the little information that was given, that challenge was realistically impossible. This a prime example of how exacerbated power dynamics contribute no benefit to either party in an academic space. I think that ranking systems pose as a modifier for these power dynamics, so I agree with the author that they are simply uncommunicative and unhelpful.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this week’s readings and I believe they explore the importance of writing pedagogy as well; most writers can attribute some of their success to good teachers, and as we learn more about the practice, it becomes abundantly clear why that is.