SEG-WAY!

So, in my last entry, I wrote about the strong mentoring support I received while teaching at Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania. Commenting on student writing was certainly an area in which I received some great instruction. Most specifically from Dr. A J. Grant in his Pedagogy of Composition course. He was particularly keen to help me out as we’d both done undergrad at a time when correcting mechanics and slapping a grade on an assignment were the standard way of doing things.
There are three things I like to keep in mind when writing comments on student papers--some of which come out of spending a healthy amount time as a profession writer/editor and some of which come out of working with Dr. Grant and my own teaching experience.
One—More than anything, as a teacher you’re dealing with individuals, not a class, not an assignment, but an actual person who has put words on a pages and is looking to you for helpful feedback. This is one reason why I like my first assignment to be some sort of personal essay and to have conferences about three or four weeks into the semester. That way one can get ‘on the side’ of a student, see what’s actually going on in their process. (I like the decompression exercises for this reason) talk about the progress they’re making and where they need to make adjustments

Two – Be rhetorical in your comments. This comes straight out of the business world. If you write a boring article or an ad campaign that doesn’t focus on what will drive your audience. No one, but no one, will give a damn if the mechanics are perfect. If, other hand, one hits all the right notes in a piece but the mechanics are sloppy….well, that’s why the good lord invented copy editors.

Three—Pat, Pat….SLAP. This is straight up PR 101. Working with C Level executives, you learn quickly they’re mostly (like the rest of us, but more so) only listen when people are saying good things about them. So, delivering criticism has to be done after two positive comments. In student writing, if a paper is really off-putting I write all the negative stuff on it first and then put in a pile. Then I go back over it and insert positive feedback.