Shedding My Martyr Role
Examining What I Value in the Writing Workshop
I know my role as an English teacher martyr and have played it well many times: assign lots of writing, look overwhelmed, grade a few papers per night at home, look more overwhelmed, eventually grade a class set of writing, hand it back and watch students who have long forgotten what they wrote about merely look at the grade and toss the three week representation of my work in the recycling bin.
After years of playing the martyr, I knew there had to be a better way.
Last summer I was accepted as a fellow into the Greater Madison Writing Project and started research for my Teacher Workshop. I sought a solution to this dilemma; I wanted to give more meaningful feedback to move writers forward. After studying, researching, and prepping my teacher workshop, I had more questions than answers.
To sort my questions, I started by focusing on what I valued about student writing in my classroom by creating a list of what I valued about the writing process. Then, I created a list of what my assessments said I valued. Here are the results of that process:
While there were a few words that overlapped, most of them differed. I focused on students completing a writing assignment based off of my preconceived idea for what it should look like rather than the students discovering what they needed to say.
For my classroom to be focused on growth, I needed to align my assessments with my values — no excuses. I was sending mixed messages to my students by teaching writing one way but offering formative and summative feedback another way.
From this realization, I created a list of my assessment practices that guided the way in which I operated my classroom this past year. These practices allowed me to focus on writers’ growth rather than writers’ grades.
Doucette’s Assessment Practices
Some of these practices are adapted from Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle.
- Read writing from a reader’s lens, not a grader’s lens.
- Read all assigned drafts, but don’t hijack first drafts.
- Feedback should vary per draft, and ultimately, focus on two things: content and craft.
- Prioritize conferencing for feedback and instruction.
- Personalize assessment, and pair feedback on final assessment with student reflection.
- Avoid sucker punch grading. Writers need to be heard.
- Offer timely, respectful feedback.
- Eliminate traditional grades on writing assignments.
As I reflect on the implementation of these tenets, I am proud of how I have shifted my classroom to be more value-based, focused on growth, and student-centered. There is still much work to be done, but I plan to permanently trade that martyr role for a more productive purpose.
