Evaluation: No Easy Task

As I sit with neatly arrange, yet unavoidably towering piles of essays scattered across my desk (some of my own, many of them belonging to my 101 students), I can’t help but recognize how timely this “theory” reading assignment is for the work we are doing in and out of our classes right now. This goes back to what Kate suggested the purpose of this blog is: a forum to communicate between the authors’ ideas, our own understanding of the texts, each other’s ideas, and our experiences as instructors. Kate described this as “theorizing teaching WRIT 101 using the week’s readings as a focus” in the post the preceded all of ours. Theorizing with a small ‘t’.

The readings this week, focusing on evaluation through such interrelated topics as participation, responding to student writing, and effective assessment strategies, knit together an overarching concept of reviewing and revising our own practices as instructors for what is most effective to improve the writing of our students. This may seem obvious, but as the authors proved time and again through example and study, many common moves among teachers don’t particularly signal what they expect it to to students and many evaluative criteria teachers create aren’t effectively articulated to the students to whom they are being applied. We have some work to do.

Early on in her piece “Evaluation as Acts of Reading, Response, and Reflection”, Chiseri-Strater confesses that “grading made me feel so vulnerable and confused that my attitude was one of avoidance” (179). I must admit, I am not unfamiliar with this general feeling, although I have been able to push through my hesitation and jump into some very interesting discussions and some situations that really require attendance. Am I the only one? She later suggests that this discomfort might better be looked at as an opportunity for learning and revising our own practices. Do you feel like this is possible within our first semester or does it happen over more time?

She suggests that students feel “manipulated” when the grading process is concealed. I think a strength of WRIT 101 is how clearly evaluation criteria and grading policies are laid out for our students, and for us.

She goes on to discuss how/why she’s decided to not rely on standard evaluative guides:

While I still find such guides useful for initiating class discussions about evaluation, objective scales are no longer part of my grading process. I'm now convinced that objective grading scales foster an overreliance on external standards of authority, prevent teachers from figuring out their own attitudes and procedures for evaluation, and mask the many interesting pedagogical issues involved in the assessment process. (180)

And on page 185, she discusses how/why she brings “students themselves into the assessment process.” Do you see opportunities for us as teachers to further incorporate our students into discerning guidelines for evaluation? It often seems that the more ownership students have over a concept or aspect of class, the more willing they are to fully grasp and respect it.

I also found it enlightening that in responding to student work (in the case of Eric writing about the abuse his mother received at the hand of his father), she found an opportunity for both her and her student to “potentially contribute to [social/political] change” (183). Here again, we’re brought back to what I think is a core goal of WRIT 101: preparing our students to write not only in their field, but also as active citizens. Have you found any such examples in your own classes? Or ways to build it into your curriculum?

Later, Chiseri-Strater suggests that “midterm evaluations are shaped by teachers' desires to get students to assume more responsibility and accountability for their work” (195). Do you feel that teachers’ desires for this are met? I think for some of my students, it may be the case, but for some who are struggling, it may be more disheartening than anything and I fear they might give up completely. Are we building confidence or breaking it down?

Now that I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time one reading, I’ll limit my time on the other readings.

Sommers focus is on effective response to student writing, and she helps us get into this by exploring what we as writers want to know : “if our writing has communicated our in-tended meaning and, if not, what questions or discrepancies our reader sees that we, as writers, are blind to” (148). If we can get our students to be invested as writers and we can respond to logic, organization, and meanings within a work—more than just mechanical errors—Sommers believes revision will then truly be a place of crafting a stronger overall piece. Do you agree? How can we navigate this differences and the need for our students to be invested in their writing enough to make the necessary deep revisions?

Dirk presents a discussion about participation. According to him, students and teachers are on very different wavelengths about what constitutes participation, how it is evaluated, and what role it plays in the classroom. How do we ensure we’re are clear with our students (and ourselves, for that matter) about participation’s place in our class? Is there room for discussion and different ways of incorporating it (or not) into our grading policy?

Now, please use what you've learned from these readings to respond to this writing!