Peer Response....Something for Everyone

Now that I've read all of the material for this week, I'm thinking more and more about peer response. Yesterday in class, there were a lot of interesting observations voiced about peer response. I can definitely see where
Katie was coming from when she said that her first response to the Mirtz piece had to do with the "when the cat's away the mice will play" syndrome when it comes to indirect talk. I had the same thought at first, but as Katie has said elsewhere on the blog, that they're not getting away with anything if they're "caught" before they begin. This one really turned some of my own assumptions upside down, and I was glad to see that I wasn't the only one who began questioning assumptions in reading this.

I think this week's readings have been really helpful in prompting me to rethink some things that I might not have realized were assumptions at all, and beyond that, these readings have addressed directly a lot of my misgivings about how to conduct productive peer response. I've always felt that peer response can be one of the most helpful ways to refine ideas and revise writing, but I've questioned how to do it in a way that students will experience all of the benefits of getting and giving feedback on writing that I have. I still to this day like to talk over what I'm writing, and often someone says "that's good, but did you think about this...." which is always the most helpful. It's difficult to always be able to examine your argument in every way to which it could possibly be responded. I have also, however, been involved in workshops and peer response groups that have not been so effective or helpful and felt like a waste of time.

I liked how each piece that we've read for this week has addressed the major problems with peer groups....being too "nice," off-task talk, the way that beginning writers don't really feel like writers yet, and probably the biggest stumbling block of all (which will probably happen in every class without fail) the lack of experiencing with giving and receiving useful feedback on writing. I think that this shows us a variety of methods that could be utilized either separately, together,or piecemeal to address these issues. At this point, I'm not that sure where I come down on how I will go about doing peer response and how I will pull from these resources, but I feel better in thinking that there are many options available. I think the anonymous approach that Johnson discusses would be very good for subverting the being nice problem, as well as the complexities of social behavior and relationships within the classroom for a first year class in the beginning of the semester. I was surprised in reading it, just how effective the students' responses were, and how in not having to share their identities as responders that students really stepped up and wrote productive responses that were not directed at the writer as an individual, in the way we talked about in class. I think this exposes something beyond the "being nice" problem, these are relational politics, and what better way to defuse it than to remove the identities?

I also like the idea of become a responder yourself, the way that Freeland discusses. I think we're all aware that a writer's ability and desire to write, particularly early on, are quite fragile and can be derailed easily. True, we can't be discouraged from writing at this point in our careers, but we really don't count in this argument. We're pretty experienced writers, and we have had time to build our confidence through both successes and failures, unlike the freshman-level writer. I think that Freeland's idea of treating the inexperienced writers as writers in the sense of conferencing and showing them that they not only have choices, but that those choices are theirs alone and that they should be dictated by their needs and the needs they perceive from their audiences, and not "awk" or some other thing we write on their papers. I think that dealing with our students as writers is the best way to help them build their confidence in their ability to write and to show them the choices they have available, and if they still have trouble with making the choices, we will be there to guide them.

In short, I liked the readings for this week because they each offered a slightly different way to think about all of the anxieties I have had about how to conduct peer response in a way that is most beneficial to the development of our students' writing. They have also helped me to identify some long-standing assumptions that I have held which I am not so sure I subscribe to anymore.