While I agree theoretically with a lot of what Inoue and Elbow have to say about community-based assessment and hybrid/contract grading, I still can't help but see their views as wishful thinking for a more privileged teacher than for someone in the graduate student/adjunct camp. When I had 60-70 students a semester--many of them woefully unprepared (behaviorally or academically, or both) for a college-level writing course--my main goal was to teach them how to write a basic critical essay that was readable and appropriate for the assignment. As an adjunct, which I think so many teachers can relate to, I had low-pay, no benefits, and a 45 minute commute. If I did not have some sort of traditional, point-black rubric, I would not have survived that job. Furthermore, as graduate students, how much time can we really afford to spend assessing student papers without a concrete rubric? It may not be a matter of caring so much a matter of time management and availability of resources.
That being the case, I think that we can still take what we can from these essays. We can work with our students to define "good writing" as a class with leaving room for multiple viewpoints and value systems. We can get them to form peer response groups and teach them how to assess each others' writing. We can foster a community where they feel comfortable sharing their ideas and making their voices heard.
I am wondering if anyone has used a class model similar to the ones that Inoue and Elbow describe, and how successful it was. I also wonder, cynically, perhaps, if concepts like hybrid grading are earnest in theory but fail our students in practice. What other teachers are going to grade like that in the university? Is it a disservice to our students to hold certain expectations in a classroom that will never be used in any other classroom during their college career? I don't know the answers to these questions yet, but I know the last thing I want to do as a teacher is to lead them astray in a way that may harm them further down the road.
I totally see your point Anne, and I think that part of me wants to decry these essays as utopian and completely impractical in the modern university. That said, I feel like questions like these need to be asked though and pushed by upcoming teachers, because, lets be honest, grading is subjective and to pretend that is not is only kidding ourselves. I think part of the attraction I have to the composition classroom is the possibility to demystify the teaching experience and to show our students that professors are human too and that when they grade papers they are not some god smiting them from on high. In this sense I think Elbow (may he live forever) may be onto something. At the end of the day though I too am reticent to give up my rubric for a collaborative grading approach or contract, but I am excited that the day may be coming when I could, in good conscious, do so.
ReplyDeleteDrew, I get the sense that you are an Elbow Acolyte -- there are many of them, so I am sure you are in good company. Anne's pragmatic concern are many of my own, as well. How can we realistically work out these assessment models in classrooms while we are simultaneously attempting to figure out so many other aspects of teaching as well? I might be just speaking for myself, but this is a genuine concern. Yet, I do appreciate these models as striving for something more, and I am hoping that, in time, after becoming more comfortable with teaching and with the student population of MU, I could incorporate these types of models into my own classrooms. Drew, your point about upcoming teachers being able to "do things differently" is a great one. Since I am new to this, why not develop innovative practices now? It's not like I have a set curriculum that has been tested by years of teaching experience at this point.
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