No Red Pens, Please.

Okay. First, I thought much of what was included in Ch. 9 of Roen was rather helpful and/or interesting; I especially appreciated Kahn's clarity and concrete specificity -- overall, a great article.

I'm totally fixated on the "I/you" debate. A quick anecdote: when I taught writing-heavy AP Lit & Composition, "paper-handing-back" day was stressful for both me and my students. They were anxious to know their grades but were not anxious to have those grades become reality in my gradebook; I was nervous that my beloved students would take my comments personally -- which some of them did. More than once, a student would receive his or her paper, flip to the grade in the back, and dramatically flop his head on the desk and exclaim, half jokingly, "Ms. Spooner, why do you hate me?!" These reactions occurred once in awhile despite my repeated passionate assurals that I critique their writing, not them, and I still love them as people -- I just don't always love their papers. When grading their papers, I also always made a conscious effort to make statements like, "The paper starts to lose focus..." instead of "You tend to lose focus..." I just feel as though using "you" in statements like that only contributes to the way students often feel that teacher criticism is inherently personal. When making margin comments, I know I slip more and write things like "What are you trying to explain here?" or "Your logic is confusing in this paragraph," but I also know that the conversational style for margin comments is often the most practical and effective.

I think students will always take paper criticism personally, because for the majority, their papers are a reflection of themselves somehow -- their time, effort, ideas, etc., and nothing is more fragile-y personal than our ideas. I do think that doing things such as replacing "you" with "I" or "the paper/essay" and writing conversationally in the margins helps, as does limiting comments to a few main ideas. I saw the most overwhelming teacher comments IN THE NATION on a Writing Lab paper today -- holy cow. I couldn't discern what comments went where and what the teacher really wanted, and the student was rightfully confused. I'll probably bring this example up in class today, so I'll avoid a detailed description here.

Oh, and I really believe in banning red pens except for artistic purposes; I've never used them to grade and never plan to do so. Red is associated with terror, alarm, and blood, none of which are usually pleasant and do not become so when associated with an academic paper. I love pencil. You feel the need to rephrase a comment, and you can easily do so. Just a thought.