“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
-George Bernard Shaw
When I took on teaching the Advanced Placement Literature class 7 years ago, I thought I would receive 60 of our school's brightest students that all had the same passion for literature and analyzing literature that I did. But like many things in teaching, our ideas do not always become a reality. I have walked into the classroom every day greeted by... teenagers. Normal everyday teenage students who are more motivated by grades and their class ranking, sprinkled in with the outliers who truly love analyzing literature. The majority are overworked 16-17-year-olds fantastic at finding ways around fully taking in the learning process. These walking college applications were taught throughout their educational career that the best is the busiest.
These impressive humans understand that they will read and write more than a general English class and many have aspirations for big things with their lives and they believe that college is the way of reaching these dreams. The class is an intense amount of analysis and writing which means it is an intense amount of feedback on my part.
So many times, I have spent hours upon hours pouring my heart into comments and feedback and then see the students glance at the score and throw it into a folder that looks like it will explode at any moment. I became bitter about commenting and their lack of participation in this part of their education, but I did not see my part in the problem. I never stopped and questioned if I was giving feedback incorrectly or at the wrong time in the writing process. I gave written feedback the same way I always received feedback... at the end of the writing process. I began to wonder what happens to student growth and quality of work when provided feedback throughout the writing process and the ability to revise after feedback is given?
The Research
This realization that I never stopped to ask myself why I was giving feedback the same way I received it in grade school, felt a bit like a punch in the gut. I cried, lamented my wasted hours that I would never get back, put on my big girl pants, and set out to understand what others in the educational world were saying about the benefit of feedback for a classroom of writers. Most of the conversation centered on finding time and getting students to take an interest in the feedback.
In one article I read, “A Formative Assessment System for Writing Improvement,” Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher pointedly explain that “Feedback that is deferred until after the summative task has been completed is unlikely to affect student understanding because students’ attention is now focused on a new topic” and this logical idea hit me in the gut. While juggling sports, clubs, other higher level classes and teenage hormones, who would focus on improvement for a task they feel is already complete? The hundreds of hours I have spent on feedback over the last 10 years has helped me know and love my students, but I don’t know if I can honestly say it has benefited them as writers. In these years, I have never stopped and thought about when I give this feedback.
As I further delved into the research, I realized that this is not a new conversation. Underwood and Tregidgo began this conversation in their 2006 journal article Improving Student Writing Through Effective Feedback: Best Practices and Recommendations. They explain that “studies show that feedback should not be given at the same time as overall grade” because students see this as a grade justification rather than feedback for improving their writing. This is true for my grade hungry 11th graders. Every time I pass back their essays with my time consuming comments, they whip out their calculators to see what impact this score will have on their overall grade and then look at the comments I have given as a justification for what they see as a good grade or a poor grade.
This conversation has continued and evolved in the world of English education. In 2018 David Carless and David Boud, in their article The Development of Student Feedback Literacy: Enabling Uptake of Feedback, they discuss that grade based feedback causes students to stand by in their education. They also state that “This may lead to passive student reactions to feedback and perceptions that it is the teacher’s role to tell students what to do to achieve high grades.” Carless and Boud continue explaining that students not only do not see themselves as an authority in writing but they are not developing a literacy in feedback. As a result, students are lacking the tools for giving feedback or understanding the feedback that they receive.
All of these scholars agree that feedback needs to be given throughout the writing process and that students should be participants in the feedback that they receive, but none consider how making this a regular thing in the secondary classroom will amount to more time spent giving feedback.
My Advice
I became a tad obsessed with the idea of feedback and how to find a way to give more feedback without spending more time giving feedback. I imagined a world where the students were the one putting in the work while I sat back, sipped a cup of coffee and got paid the big bucks for my expertise. And even though I am making a cheap joke here, this is honestly what should be happening. I am not an editor that is here to correct small mistakes, but an educator that has 12 years of expertise in writing that should be used to teach my students to get from one starting place to another and I was honestly wasting my time correcting small repeated mistakes and not focusing on big skills.
I may not have gotten my utopia, but in conducting my own research I somehow found a way to get my students out of the passenger seat and place themselves in the driver’s seat. They became active participants in their understanding of the skills of writing and analysis. I also somehow found a way to make the feedback process less of a stressor for me, so I can assign more writing and give more feedback.
From my umpteen hours of research and mistakes, I found four key kernels of wisdom for success in my classroom:
YOU DON'T HAVE TO LOOK AT IT ALL: I know as good humans and educators we feel a burning desire and responsibility to look at and comment on everything our students write, but at the end of the day, we have too many students and not enough time to do this. Students can write for the sake of writing and practicing. A coach does not feel responsible to watch every throw a quarterback makes during practice, but will watch tapes after the big games to discuss their performance. We should do the same. Allow our students to take risk without a fear of making mistakes and give ourselves some time where we are not feeling the pressure of a stack of essays that need feedback.
SEPARATE GRADES AND FEEDBACK: Just like Underwood and Tregidgo stated, when feedback is given at the same time as grades, then students see the feedback as a grade justification and not feedback for improvement. To do this, I work hard giving feedback through the writing process. I do this in work groups, individual conferences or even as whole class feedback. When I give whole class feedback, I normally do this in the form of a letter and then ask the students to write a reflection as to how the feedback applies to their writing and how they plan on taking their draft from where it is to a better place. When I give their final grade on an essay, I normally only give short compliments and words of encouragement and a final grade.
USE PEER FEEDBACK TO TAKE THE LOAD OFF OF YOU: For years I could never find a way to make peer feedback work in my classroom, and I realized that I was the biggest part of this problem. I had my class set up with me as the holder of the answers and wisdom when in reality, the students were able to give just as good advice as I was able to give. Students felt uncomfortable as an authority in writing because I wasn't teaching them how to be. I started slowing down the process of peer feedback, giving students a common vocabulary to discuss writing and modeled what good peer feedback looked like. I went as far as sitting down with a group of students as a student, and having them give me peer feedback. Once they got pass the silliness of the process, I was able to push them for more information that would help the peer. This modeling and common vocabulary seemed to be the biggest key to success and students were able to quickly get feedback throughout the entire process.
FOCUS YOUR FEEDBACK: My final kernel of wisdom is to focus your feedback on one or two places of improvement. When students see a sea of red pen they are unable to focus on improvement and are mainly discouraged. If students are given a next move for improvement they can actually see how they are actually growing and moving as a writer. I thoroughly discuss these goals with my students at the beginning of the year so they understand where we are going and then they track their improvement throughout their writing.
The writing process is not a "one size fits all" thing and many times it depends on you and your group of students. At the end of the day, you are the expert on your students and their progress. This is what I have found to work in my room, but there were some messy experiments to get me to this place.
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