Gosh! Is it Wednesday night already?

I’ve always known that teachers read student work, and grade student work—but as a student I don’t think I ever understood how much thought and work that process of commenting on student writing takes. To be sure, you get a really varying degree of response—from no response, to red marks over every mistake, to a full page of comments on the writing. I try to give response both in a timely fashion (I fail at this sometimes… I mean, when I say “sometimes it takes me a week to get work back,” it doesn’t seem bad—but we’re meeting every day. To me this seems too long, and I certainly don’t want to get buried under student work…) and in a way that is constructive. I suppose I will see how this is working when I start to see new work from students after they received their initial feedback, as well as revisions. I think it worked in the Discovery Class—at the outset I told students I was happy to regrade any work they wanted to rewrite, based on feedback, outside of class time, and the few that have rewritten have improved a lot. I don’t know if they’re putting a lot of time into the revisions, whereas our class time is restricted, or if it’s about as much time again, just with a little guidance. I suppose as I teach more I’ll be able to see what kind of progress is being made.

And speaking of my Discovery Class—tomorrow is my last day with them. I’m pretty sad. I’ve had some really good days with them, as well as some when I’ve felt that they haven’t responded. I think since I did start getting their work back to them very punctually that has also helped break the ice a little too. It’s over so quickly! I’ve taught 13 classes with them, and tomorrow is the 14th and final. I asked them what they wanted to do—they asked to watch Clueless. I tried to find a copy on short notice, but didn’t. I’ll take a few things in so they have the option on what we watch/do. And I’m bringing strawberries. But before that, there is still about half an hour of writing left to do.

And speaking of watching movies, we ended up taking a day in between watching the first two thirds of Dead Poets Society and the last section in class—between my returning it after class in the late afternoon and returning the next morning not long after the library was open, someone else came and borrowed it! I ended up buying a copy last night, since I’m using it in both classes. The most interesting thing, though, was that we talked for about forty minutes in class on yesterday about where the narrative had taken us so far, and talked about narrative conventions—almost none of the students had seen the film before, and I asked them to make guesses based on what they had watched on what would happen to the characters. There were a lot of the “types” we had already seen in our trailers exercise—rebel, shy kid, new kid, lovelorn, nerd—and based on those types and the narratives we’re all familiar with, they were able to make some pretty good guesses. They then wrote responses to one of two different quotes from Mr Keating in the classroom—and it was the best batch of writing I had received from them.

Today we finished watching the film in my morning (Discovery) class, and we started watching it in my afternoon class. I cried in the morning class—I’m afraid it’s going to happen again tomorrow! None of the students wanted to talk about the film immediately after we finished it this morning. I understand that. It’s hard to take in, and then voice an immediate response (beyond: wah! Neil!) really.

I still thinking through commenting on student work. I think my comments have been getting longer—I don’t mind writing very detailed comments, but I also don’t want to overwhelm students. When Joe Harris ran a workshop at Georgetown last year on responding to student writing, he said he tended to err on the side of brevity. At the same time, I feel that the students in my Expository Writing class want all the feedback I can give them—they are really keen to improve their writing, and think about academic forms. I feel like some were a little disappointed with their first grades—but they are all provisional. Every piece can be revised, and I’m happy to talk to read another draft before they submit their final portfolio. I know they’re all capable of doing really well—and their papers all show that they’re heading there. It’s actually exciting to see, for the first time, the full process of students going through these stages, and at the same time, reformulating their ideas about what it is to write an academic paper.

Fingers crossed I don’t cry too much in class tomorrow. I might have to warn them in advance I’m a big sook over sad movies.