Just Another Lesson Learned

My second semester teaching, I implemented what I call self-evaluation assignments in my composition classes. I can't recollect what engendered the idea, but I imagine I must have read about someone who assigned something similar. After teaching at UIS one semester, I learned how to use this assignment more effectively and made quite a few changes.

Basically, students reflect on and analyze their writing practices including process, writing strategies, language mechanics, and feedback from readers including myself, classmates, and possibly friends, family, or writing center staff. This is probably the most challenging assignment my students tackle in my first-semester writing courses. Their responses must not only be thorough and thoughtful; they must provide specific examples from their own writing which they analyze in order to support their self-assessments regarding the effectiveness of the writing they produced.

Despite the challenge of this assignment, I believe in its power to transform the way my students think about writing, thus their ability to write effectively. I have noticed an unsurprising trend. Those students who perform well on their self-evaluations--that is, those who actually do the assignment correctly--have made drastic improvements in their ability to write more and more effective prose. Those students who don't take the self-evaluation assignments seriously, have literally made no improvements in their writing skills.

I have done all I can think of to reach a generally apathetic, uninterested, and completely disengaged group of students and have failed to help them see the importance of proficient language skills to their present lives or their futures. Unfortunately for most of them, based on the trends I've seen on their rubrics over the course of the semester, I foresee only a handful of students passing. Perhaps in retrospect, as they struggle to pass this course again next semester, my words will echo in their minds. Perhaps they will work harder to achieve what they are all capable of.

They somehow think minimal effort is enough to get them by. They don't seem to understand that the effort they are putting forward is not even close to the minimum it would take to pass. They see the A's and B's and C's on homework assignments and quizzes and somehow forget that their writing portfolio counts as 60% of their final grade. When most of them are receiving below expectations in most categories on the rubric, I can't even begin to fathom how they have deluded themselves into thinking they're all set to pass the course. Many will be learning a hard but much needed lesson if they don't change their attitude and work ethic asap because what they are currently submitting just isn't cutting it.

Most of [you] hiding

Others are shining

You know when you find it

In your darkest hour, you strike gold

A thought clicks, not the be-all, end-all

Just another lesson learned