Long ago, a trend arose in the corporate world to have employees complete a self-evaluation and combine that with a supervisor’s evaluation for the purpose of analyzing an employee’s previous year’s performance. When I first encountered this, I thought that it was a matter of fairness. However, after reading Lynn Z. Bloom’s “Why I (Used to) Hate to Give Grades, I have come to see that there is value in self-evaluation.

While a good chunk of her article outlines the problems with grading, the important message lies in the last half.  By having the students evaluate themselves prior to her evaluation, she increases the students’ self-awareness.  Had she done this progressively throughout the semester, I believe she would have seen a greater improvement in the quality of the student’s work.

I have seen the results of this process first-hand.  My partner, for whom English is a second language, is required to do this type of self-evaluation for his employment.  I help him complete the form every year, and I can see that it has helped him become a better employee.  It really does make a difference in making a change if you identify the pattern of error or area that needs improvement yourself. After all, some of the newer adaptations of Blooms Taxonomy include “meta-thinking” in the highest levels.

The FAU Writing Department approaches this type of self-evaluation with the assigned midterm and final evaluations.  I think that as assigned, these evaluations fall short of the bar set by Bloom, and I will be adjusting the prompt next semester for 1102 to make better use of these assignments.

After reading several of Peter Elbow’s essays, I got to thinking about a New England writer I’ve read and reread plenty over the years.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, a pioneer in supernatural and science fiction writing, had a poor attendance record at school and stopped attending altogether at around age eight. Years later, he wanted to go to Brown but for several reasons he couldn’t make it happen. So from childhood on his study was as self-guided as his writing. Adhering to many of Elbow’s principles well before Elbow expressed them seems to have made Lovecraft the idiosyncratic and original writer he became. This Elbow would have probably admired if Lovecraft had been the subject of much study when Elbow was in academia. However, given that Elbow’s ideology was driven to a large extent by the progressive social thinking of the sixties and seventies, he would undoubtedly have found Lovecraft’s racial perspectives particularly abhorrent (as would anyone).

One of the biggest tensions I have with composition is the idea of “what the hell are we supposed to teach?” I’ve had numerous thoughts throughout the course.

• “We’re TEACHING STUDENTS HOW TO ENGAGE IN CRITICAL THOUGHT!” …Too disrespectful for the student. Assumes they don’t know how to think.
• “We’re like DRIVING INSTRUCTORS, teaching them how to OPERATE A TOOL!” …That implies that… well. Either writing is a technology we need to teach people how to operate (true), or that thinking is a tool we need to teach people how to operate (…t-true?)

But then I had a thought: What if I’m more like some sort of fitness coach teaching people how to flex their brains? Or… a drill instructor? Or…

…Really, the best thing I’ve been able to be is “the guy who helps you pass this state required course”.

Which is SO DEPRESSING. 

Really… the only success I’ve felt. The metaphorical Pedagasm.

…Pedagasm is not a word I should use. Forget I said that.

THE REALLY GOOD MOMENTS, were when I inspired a moment of awe in the students. Teaching them about Engfish. Showing them how to play with Grammar to change the meaning of sentences. Making them laugh.  It’s nice, but…

is that… what the University really wants? Or do they just want me to ascertain basic literacy?

Thinking on the how-centered approach versus the what-centered approach as presented in the essay “Post-Process ‘Pedagogy’” by Lee-Ann M. Kastman Breuch.

To teach writing is decidedly a complex endeavor, and codifying it as an anything-centered approach is problematic beyond the binary established by the how v. what dichotomy—even the essay submits that process pedagogy is both what-centered, content based, and how-leaning, as it “in many ways encouraged a shift away from content-based approaches”—so how, then, do I define what I do in my composition classroom if even the broadest terms of categorization leave room for a defense of the antithesis?

I don’t want to emphasize process as content, but I also don’t want to lose good writing as a model for learning.  To explain what I mean I look to the schedule on my syllabus, an exact replica of the template provided by my teaching assistantship program, to yesterday’s events.

NOV 5

PEER RESPONSE DUE

Sample Work

Sample work.  An example of the type of writing expected of a composition student in my classroom, or an example of the exact opposite.  Content, either way, what-centered, but content used and presented to facilitate activity, how-centered, not an attempt at the “mastery of writing techniques,” but an act of writing toward clarity, toward discovery and meaning, not toward some perfectly cut puzzle piece that could fit into the “mater narrative” of the writing process, whatever that is, but the opportunity for writing to occur and recur.

Does content force my students into a box with however many other pieces of the puzzle—the jumbled image of what “good writing” looks like—or is content simply the opportunity for writers to sit down at the table to take a look at what’s there?  Maybe, if I put some of the pieces out, some of the ones that I see working best, maybe then they’ll craft a piece of their own.  Maybe their picture will look better than the one I had in mind.