Prizing the Literature Essay

Should seventh graders write essays analyzing Steinbeck’s techniques or what’s wrong with Holden? I’m of two minds on this one. In one mind, I believe literary analysis to be a great way for kids to sharpen their ability to make an argument and support it with specific evidence. As Carol Jago, president of the NCTE, explained eloquently in a recent article, reading fiction allows kids to empathize with characters who are very different from themselves and to think about ethical dilemmas that they might encounter as they build their own lives. Writing about fiction allows them to dig deeper into the text, make meaning, and create a logical argument based on the meaning they see.

In the other mind, I keep thinking about authentic purposes for writing. Better writing usually comes from a more authentic purpose—so says pretty much every writing book I’ve read, and I also know it from experience. The seventh grade essays are pretty consistently painful. But, if I’m writing an email to complaining parents, I’m going to write a beautifully-crafted argument for why their child is actually doing fine despite the B- besmirching her record. The email will probably be better written than the briefs I wrote for law school. You don’t get much more authentic a writing purpose or well-defined an audience than those emails warding off evil parents. And I hope that’s not the best writing I do, but for certain it’s good writing—better than if someone gave me a prompt to write a pretend email.

That’s what some of our assignments are, right? “Pretend you’re writing this op-ed for a newspaper.” Or, “Pretend you’re writing this podcast for NPR.” For most others, we don’t even pretend there’s an audience: “Write a paragraph explaining a symbol in The House on Mango Street. Be sure to use at least two well-blended quotations.” Only occasionally do we give them real reasons to write: “Write an email to your congressional representative arguing for a more aggressive stance on an issue that matters to you. Remember to cc me on the email.” I’ve got to wonder, though—are those emails really going to be better written than the symbolism paragraphs just because the emails have an authentic purpose and audience? I suspect not, but I couldn’t put my finger on precisely why.

Yesterday, one of my colleagues made an interesting point about authentic writing. It’s not so much about purpose and audience—though these matter—as it is about the writer’s investment in the writing. Nell knows her vignette collection isn’t getting picked up by Random House, but she cares about what she’s writing because they’re about her life and the topics matter to her. She’s invested. And the writing is brilliant. Scout, Kate, and Sara know their podcast won’t air on NPR, but they care about the issue they’ve chosen—whether people act more like themselves with their families or their friends—so they’re invested. And the reason my email to those obnoxious parents is so brilliant isn’t that I have an authentic purpose and an authentic audience; it’s that I care about the writing. The writing matters to me. If we want students to write well, we have to get them to care about the writing: its purpose, its content, its effect.

Very often, the reason writing matters to the writer relates to how it will affect others. I want that parent email to have the effect of convincing those complainers that their child is learning and they need to get out of her way. I used to say to my classes that all writing is persuasive; authors are trying to convince us that their message is true or right. So sure, the purpose and effect of the writing make the writing matter. But the content can also make it matter. I’m writing this blog not because I want to convince anyone that I’m right, but because I care about what happens in my English classroom and I want to reflect upon my practices. I write books both because I hope others will read them, eventually, and because I care about the characters and their stories.

So I guess the way to resolve the literature essay problem is to make sure my students are invested, both in the text itself and in the thesis of the essay. Now that they’re finished with their Steinbeck books and the time has come to write their essays on “What makes Steinbeck Steinbeck,” I’m asking them to look through their notes for topics, themes, and techniques that they want to explore further. When many of them chose topics we’ve discussed to death in class, I urged them to think about who they are and what aspect of Steinbeck’s writing they connect to. “Look in your notes for items you wish we’d had more time to discuss,” I urged them. “Don’t pick foreshadowing or the power theme just because we talked about it in class. Find something that matters to you. Like, if you really care about nature, maybe you want to write about how Steinbeck portrays the natural world and the human relationship to it. Or if you’ve been in a conflict with a friend, maybe you want to explore the conflicts between friends in Steinbeck books. Find something that matters to you.”

It doesn’t feel quite as real as when I asked them to write vignettes on episodes from their own lives. With that project, it was easier for them to connect the assignment to what matters to them. But then again, and contrary to what they might think with their 13-year-old brains, the world isn’t just about them. Maybe, if we’re all lucky, they’ll choose topics they care about and learn something about how the world beyond themselves works. And maybe I will actually like reading them. Here’s hoping.

Leaning into Writing Discomfort

In her book Designing Writing Assignments, Traci Gardner quotes a line I can’t get out of my head: “Students translate an instructor’s goals into processes they can handle.” The line comes from the Mānoa Writing Program’s study of almost 200 writing students, which further concludes that students use “strategies they devised to deal with earlier writing assignments, and they may try to use these strategies again rather than risk something new.”

I’ve seen this phenomenon plenty of times. Last year, one new project I gave students asked them to make a podcast on a social issue that comes up in A Raisin in the Sun. For the project, each student was to interview someone and then analyze the interview. So if, for example, I interview my dad about his experiences with race, I might compare his experiences to my own, hypothesize why he had certain experiences, or fit his experiences into a larger framework I’ve studied. I was expecting wonderful insights in the podcasts, but instead, I got lots of summaries and descriptions, with very little analysis. If you want to talk Bloom’s Taxonomy, the podcasts were at the very bottom level of thinking, simple reportage.

I was disappointed then, and I sketched up some new lesson plans to give students a clearer sense of what “analysis” means. But now, having the problem framed for me as students doing what they think they can do because they’ve done it before, I realize my task is more complicated than defining “analysis” for students and showing them good models.

Here’s another example of how a learner changes the assignment into something surmountable. My daughter, who is two years old, calls the playground, “peegound.” It’s not an obsession with toilet training that makes her say it this way; it’s that she hasn’t yet figured out how to pronounce Ls, long As, and Rs. She deals with the L and the R in playground by simply omitting them. And the long A sound, she converts to a long E. So what is my daughter doing? She’s translating the implicit assignment, “Say the word playground,” into something she knows she can handle, “Say peegound.” And her coping mechanisms, changing or omitting problem elements, are exactly the methods my students use.

So, how can I make my students see that, as Barack Obama and César Chávez before him put it, YES THEY CAN do analysis? How do I show them they don’t have to pretend the instruction, “analyze,” isn’t there or hope their well-integrated quotations will satisfy me? Giving mini-lessons defining analysis wasn’t sufficient, nor was stating my expectations in clear and precise language. What will I do differently when I assign the podcast this year?

Not only do I need to share more models of analysis, I have to devote more class time to letting students discover what makes the good ones good. I didn’t have student models last year because it was a brand new assignment, and even this year I don’t have many student models because last years’ weren’t all that good. I’ll have to look on NPR and other radio sites for segments that analyze.

(Incidentally, I’ve been looking at The Norton Sampler as a source of good essays. It’s meant for college student writers, but the way the analogy frames techniques might help, and there’s a good companion website with links to more essays. I always say that students don’t write good essays because essays aren’t part of their reading repertoire. Time to change that. And, if reading good analytical essays translates into writing better analytical essays, maybe it’ll also translate into writing better analytical podcasts.)

Also, the purpose and audience of the podcast needs to be clearer. Why should they take a risk on writing if their only goal is to please the teacher? Why should they try something hard that they might do badly if they can do something easier and more familiar and still get an OK grade? If they’re writing their podcasts for a more authentic reason—say, to prove to their parents how much (or how little) has changed between the early years of the Civil Rights Movement and the early years of the Obama presidency—perhaps they’ll have more incentive to analyze the problem. If they’re going to bother with higher levels of thinking like comparing, categorizing, and theorizing, they need to know who they’re trying to convince and why. Perhaps I can get the podcasts published on the school website. What other audiences might motivate them?

An Open Letter to Ben (Or, Why I'm Changing the Way I Grade Papers)

Dear Ben,

More than a year has passed since I read your essay about Holden Caulfield. At the time, it was one of 62 essays about Holden that I was reading; since then, I’ve read 63 more. Still, I remember that your essay applied something you learned in a YES Institute course: that Holden had a “listening,” or biased way of understanding the world, that got in his way. I confess I don’t remember much more about the essay—as I said, it’s one of 125 that I’ve read, and it was more than a year ago—but I do remember two more things about it. One, I remember loving it so much that I told several colleagues about it, and I gushed (which isn’t something I do easily or often) about how creatively you’d applied what you’d learned in one context to something in another context. That kind of interdisciplinary connection-making isn’t something you middle schoolers do too often (not that we teachers help as much as we should), and it’s very exciting when it happens.

Two, I remember the score I gave you: 44/50.

As you know, I graded the essay using a rubric. For everything of yours that I graded, I used a rubric. I don’t have the exact rubric I used for your essay, but here’s the very similar one I used for essays this year:

Paragraph 1: Introductory Paragraph ( /5)

· Introduction explains your topic in general and leads the reader to your thesis.

· Thesis is strong, clearly stated, and interesting.

Paragraphs 2-4: Body Paragraphs ( /10, /10, /10)

· Begin with a supporting argument that helps show your thesis is true.

· Give specific, well-chosen examples from the book that show the argument is true.

· Use at least 3 well-blended quotations that directly support your thesis.

· Explain how each example proves the argument in the paragraph.

· Remind the reader how all points in the paragraph relate back to the main thesis.

Paragraph 5: Concluding Paragraph ( /5)

· Summarizes the points you made in the essay.

· Explains why what you said matters.

Writing Style and Mechanics ( /10)

· Uses clear and precise language.

· Ideas follow each other logically, with clear transitions connecting them.

· Is free from spelling, grammatical, and stylistic errors.

TOTAL ( /50)

I’ve gotten very positive reviews of my rubric. Students, parents, and tutors like that it’s clear and specific. From the rubric and the detailed comment I give at the end, struggling essayists know what was expected, what they did well, and what to work on next time. I like the rubric too. It keeps me honest, keeps me from inflating grades. If the paper lacks clear points, sufficient textual evidence, and underdeveloped ideas, I can’t give it a B+ just because I want to.

Here’s the problem, Ben. Every time—and I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME—I give a writing assignment, there’s at least one piece of writing that I want to give a higher score than the rubric tells me I should. (There’s also at least one that I want to give a lower grade than the rubric tells me I should. I’ll get to that in a minute.) Your year, for the Holden essay, yours was the one I wanted to grade higher. Your thesis was brilliantly creative and the paper was well-written. I could hear your voice in it. In a big stack of essays where some were bad and some were OK and some were pretty good, yours was by far the most interesting. If it weren’t my job to read essays, I wouldn’t want to read most of the essays I read. I’d want to read yours. So why didn’t you get a 50?

I was reminded of your essay while reading an article, an oldie but a goodie, called Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment, by a writing professor named Peter Elbow. Elbow examines three different ways teachers look at their students’ writing: grading the paper, analyzing the paper’s strengths and weaknesses in order to help the writer develop, and connecting to the writing. I have tried to make grades more meaningful by tying them to a rubric. Instead of slapping an A- on a paper because something about it appeals to me (or slapping a B- on it because something about it doesn’t), I measure the essay against important criteria of good writing. A good essay needs to have an interesting thesis; it needs to be well-organized so the reader can follow the ideas; it needs adequate support for the claims it makes. I look for those elements when I read students papers, and the score I put on the paper reflects the extent to which a student has measured up to the aspects of good writing I taught. In Elbow’s terms, I don’t just grade; I evaluate. The grade is merely a reflection of that evaluation.

Except, there’s another dimension of reading a paper. I’m not a paper-reading robot—although, when I have 60 to read, I sometimes feel that way. I’m a person. I connect with some ideas more than others. I enjoy beautiful turns of phrase. I love creative thinking that makes me pause and say, I never would have thought about it that way, or, what an interesting connection, or, YES! Reading your paper as a teacher, I gave it a 44 because it measured up to most of the standards I’d set, but according to the rubric, there were little things here and there that it lacked, or places where it needed more development, or something. (By the way, I don’t remember what was “wrong” with it. I hope you don’t either.) But, reading it as a reader, I enjoyed it. It put enough ideas in my head that I still remember the paper now.

Whenever I read anything, I write on it. When I read student essays, I write notes about the clarity of the argument, perhaps, or the effectiveness of transitions, or the development of the ideas. Evaluative comments. I write evaluative comments on other forms of student writing too: your stories, poems, dialogues, descriptions, and vignettes. I also write on published writing, but not for the purpose of grading it. I’m thinking about it. I wrote on Peter Elbow’s article: arguing with it, jotting down ideas for my own classroom and team meetings, asking questions, connecting his ideas to other articles I’ve read, noting my (rather strong) emotions. I write on fiction and nonfiction, for work and for pleasure, to note the questions and ideas and feelings and associations I make as I read. As a general rule, I like writing that gets me thinking, and the more I think, the more I scribble down. The sheer amount of commentary I write in the margins of a text is a rough measure of how much I like it. Maybe I should start reading student papers like I read everything else and give a grade based on how much I write. That would be a lot easier and a whole lot more fun.

Fun for me, but I wonder how it would affect you, and other students. What if you got back a paper, and instead of reading all the comments about what you did well and what you might have done differently, you got to read comments grappling with your actual ideas? There’d be responses to some of your thoughts and questions about others. You’d find out, through my reactions, where you’d reached me, where you’d convinced me, where you’d inspired me—and yes, where you’d confused me, where you’d bored me, where you’d failed to prove your point. You might come back to me and explain what you were thinking, so I’d get it, and I would say, OK, now go put that in your paper. We could talk about WHY I was confused. Maybe it was the lack of transitions. Or WHY I got bored. Maybe your thesis stated the obvious. See where I’m going?

Peter Elbow makes a startling point in his essay. He says that when teachers like a student’s writing, they find it easier to criticize. He says that when he doesn’t like the writing, he struggles to write comments, “trying to soften [his] criticism, trying to find something nice to say—and usually sounding fake, often unclear” (Elbow, 171). But when he actually likes the writing, when he’s excited about it, he’s also able to be more critical. I’ve discovered the same thing when I read papers. When I really love an essay, when it engages me as a reader and a thinker, I can give specific commentary on why I like it. At that point, I feel like I’ve established an intellectual relationship with the writer, like we are two scholars on equal footing, exploring an interesting idea together. On that equal footing, I feel entirely comfortable raising my objections to the organizational structure, or the wording, or the third paragraph’s content. And the student, who feels genuinely respected as a thinker, eagerly returns to his or her desk to make the writing live up to how much I like it.

I’ve seen it before. But I’ve also seen the opposite, when a student knows that even though he or she got a perfectly decent grade—thanks, rubric—I didn’t really like the paper. There was one essay this year that I remember reading, and though there was nothing really wrong with it and I think I gave it a 42, I just didn’t like it. The arguments were predictable and the prose was boring. It was fine, but it was boring, and I gave the B begrudgingly.

What’s weird about rubrics is what they do to me as a reader. I let the rubric make decisions instead of making them myself. Ben’s essay gets a 44 because he didn’t do x, y, or z. Walter’s essay gets a 42 because he didn’t do x, y, or z either, and he also didn’t do a couple of other things. Writing gets reduced to whatever categories I put on the rubric, and however thoughtful I was in designing those categories, their ultimate effect is still to reduce writing to x, y, and z. Writing isn’t algebra. (Even algebra isn’t algebra—there’s always more than one way to solve for x.) There are no formulas. There’s only me, the reader, you, the writer, and the spaceship of words that carries meaning from your planet to mine. Sure, I might not understand everything you say; I might even misunderstand, and everything you write gets filtered through the atmosphere of experiences, ideas, and biases I already have around me, not to mention whatever weather systems of feelings and thoughts are swirling around at the moment when I read.

But Ben, that’s what reading IS. It’s interactive. It’s as variable and diverse and messy as people are. I use my rubric to try to take all that messiness and make it neat and clean, but as I discover EVERY SINGLE TIME a pile of papers lands in front of me, that neatness doesn’t really exist. If it did, I’d be able to justify a C for Walter and an A for you. But then, if that neatness existed, I probably wouldn’t be an English teacher, because writing would follow easy formulas and would lack the richness and surprise that made me love writing in the first place.

So what happens now? Well, with the help of Maja Wilson’s excellent book Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment, which echoes (or rather, presages) many of the ideas I’ve put down here, I am rethinking my entire system of assessing student writing? What possibilities are there beyond the rubrics that strangle my sensibilities? How can I grade (because I still have to grade) and make sure you get that A? And so very much more importantly, how do I honor the wonder and delight I felt upon reading your essay—the relationship we now have as reader and writer? I don’t think that volume-of-commentary system is going to fly, but I am committed to finding something that will.

Respectfully,

Ms P