At the risk of sounding like a banal teacher with an insubstantial comment, I really liked the Connors and Lunsford piece.
As someone who used to write dozens and dozens of methodological studies in my former life as an operations manager (i.e., "Exploring the Filler Error Rate in Two-Part Order Picking" [translated: how often an employee fills an order for a jar and forgets the lid], riveting, I know...), I have come to admire well-written essays in the "hypothesize, test, review, summarize, comment" format. Of course, often the best of these essays are on topics that are fresh and innovative even when the topic might seem dull and lofty. Such is the case here.
Connors and Lunsford attempt to capture the seeming uncapturable in teacher response and their excitement toward the topic is palpable. Together with their "champions of the proletariat" (450), the authors show us something new--albeit scary-- about the state of teacher response. The authors cite a 1981 study that concluded that "the news from the classroom is not good" (449). I am afraid the news in 1989, a likely today, isn't much better.
Now for the negative feedback.
I won't recite all the statistics that surprised me (and largely surprised Connors and Lunsford as well). But one number surprised me the most, and it surprised me in a different way than it surprised the authors. ONE teacher out of 3,000 typed up a response that was in excess of 250 words. ONE. UNO. .000333.
250 words is one-half page, single spaced. It takes no more than 15 -20 minutes to type up such a reponse if the content is clear in one's mind. Obviously Gerriets and Lowe (article from P in C about having a discussion about student papers in dialogic letter format) didn't send their papers to the panel for review. (Although the teachers that did were self-selected, so they probably didn't think their meager efforts laughable!)
Indeed, Connor and Lunsford explain how few teachers took time to write substantive global comments (only 5% had > 100 word responses). But they also seem surprised at the time Professor Overachiever took writing his 250 words. They write, "at the same time we admired this teacher's work and care, however, we also wondered, as one reader put it, 'When does this guy ever sleep?'" Is it that inconceivable that this time and energy would be put into 250 words? Perhaps this insomniac has a class of 100 students in a lecture hall and not the luxury of our 25 student utopia. But still? Once you've read a student's paper (assuming you've actually read it), doesn't it take mere minutes to write one's thoughts at the end? Doesn't not doing so sort of spit at the concept of the importance of writing? I hope that time has changed some of this behavior in the classroom. Maybe folks back then were too preoccupied with Milli Vanelli, or tight rolling their pants, or Game Boy to comment much.
I must have been really lucky to have the teachers I had. Some of the teacher responses in this
essay are as pointed as the made-up comments we shared with each other a couple of weeks ago. I am sure you thought so as well.
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Katie,
First off--poor poor baby Jesus! This times he cries not for student writing, but for teacher response.
I absolutely see and agree with where you are coming from. As far as the statistics in the Connors and Lunsford pieces go...shocking to say the least. Although I have zero experience in actually grading (better to say "responding to" though) student papers, I do have much experience with being responded to...or not. To this day, I am infuriated by the lack of response on my own papers (when I'm unlucky enough to have it happen). As you so eloquently said, it "spits in the face" of the importance of writing. I couldn't possibly agree with you more on that. We all, probably without exception, agree on an intellectual level that writing is important and it's important for all of our students to learn to express themselves in the written form, otherwise we would not be here. Then some teachers can't be bothered to write a response to a paper that a student has put their time and effort into producing. Not only is it subversive to the way we say we feel about writing, but is just downright disrespectful to our students, in my opinion. I've gotten papers back where the professor has written say...10 words on the front page, none of them referring to anything specific about the paper or the argument or the research...or anything. I generally about hit the roof and begin wondering whether they even read it, and if they didn't, why on earth did I bother putting so much of my blood, sweat and tears into writing it? This is precisely the feeling I DO NOT, under any circumstances, want my students to experience.
It makes me wonder, why bother talking to them about an audience at all? Sure, we all advocate impressing upon them that they have multiple audiences, with which I wholeheartedly agree, but honestly, the one audience that is a "given" for them is the teacher, and if we can't bother being that audience, or at least a component of that audience, I don't know what reason they would have to bother writing at all. This whole thing sends implied messages to students that I would never espouse, and I never want that to happen (through my words or actions)in the way that some of these teachers allow it to.
I personally plan to do dialogue journals, respond in writing (probably on a separate sheet) to papers and do a writer's memo or cover letter along with drafts and "final papers." I think it's conductive to impressing upon our students that writing is a social process, (something I think most of us agree upon) by means of showing them that it is, not just telling them. I only wish I would've gotten that much feedback, especially as early as first year writing, and I plan to give it to my students. I think a lot of what I'm talking about here goes back to something we discussed very early on in this semester...that we not only need to have a theory for our teaching, but it must be reflected in our practice if it is to accomplish what we want it to.
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