While, for the most part, I enjoy reading my students essays, I find myself constantly wanting to comment about “what I would have done” when reading a section that doesn’t work (because either it doesn’t relate to the thesis or the misplacement of [relevant] support interrupts a decent organizational scheme). I have tried to keep these comments to a minimum, they mostly only appear when I can see that a connection could be created between the support and the thesis (especially if the support is extremely unique). However, the thought of removing the voice of my students and replacing it with my own voice makes me cringe.
The fact that many of my students really do seem to be “writing for a grade” (I’m pretty sure this appears somewhere in Lynn V. Bloom’s “Why I (Used to) Hate to Give Grades,” but I cannot find exactly where) makes this fear a possible reality. There have been far too many, “I don’t know what to do, how should I do this?” conversations between myself and my students during class for me to feel comfortable.
While I enjoy writing and revising my own work, I’m fairly certain that having to read 44 of my own essays would make me smash my face into a wall. Literally. In the correct sense. Don’t question my habits.
However, there are also those students (in my case, the singular form is more accurate) whose desire to improve their grade causes them to actually write something that is both well-written and enjoyable (I’ve found that these two terms are not synonymous). In these cases (or, well, “this case”), explaining how I would handle a piece of support to better connect to their thesis sometimes leads them to other avenues of exploration.
Of course, that fear is still there.
Due to this fear, I’ve found that implementing multiple group based pre-drafting exercises is highly beneficial. By limiting the amount of time I can speak with an individual student, the students have come to rely upon themselves and their peers. While I still get the occasional question about “what I would do,” this question doesn’t come up as often as it did three weeks ago.
Of course, that fear is still there.