Evaluation

Sue Morrell

Two personal perceptions have guided my evaluation process for several years. First, I realized that every time I said "evaluation" to my students, they groaned. I wasn't fooling them. Evaluation means "grade," and "grade," to many students, is synonymous with "weapon." Second, when I began to write with my students, I saw how especially threatening evaluation can be to a writer. A teacher-writer gains a sensitive perspective on evaluation that leads to a more tender and tolerant attitude in the classroom. By writing, I learned to empathize with the writer/creator in all of my students. My evaluation techniques now grow from a base of sharing and respect.

Students in my semester-long comp courses compile all writing, public and private, assigned and unassigned, in a writer's notebook (or journal). The writer's notebook is designed not only as a course goal or assignment, but also as a self-discovery adventure. Students can fold pages of their notebooks if they need to preserve their privacy.

Two times per semester, I collect and read those notebooks and respond to each student in a personal letter in which I mark growth, encourage additional risks, and share ideas from my own and other's writing. Two additional times (usually at quarter and semester grading periods), I ask the students to re-read his/her own journal and write a letter to me in which he/she identifies personal growth, writing frustrations, questions, and personal perceptions. The student also assigns a grade to the notebook, so I place the grading "weapon" in his/her hands. At these self-evaluation points, I read all students journals again, but instead of writing individual letters, I write an essay to the entire group of student writers. In my essay, I take special care to share the best of what I have read from/by them and I encourage them to continue the writer's adventure into "self."

Periodic conferences are also helpful evaluative and motivational tools. Once or twice a semester, I schedule a one-on-one conference and ask each student to read to me a selected 'personal best' from the writer's notebook. I, too, read to each student a selection from my writer's notebook. The conference promotes an understanding between artists, and, as a bonus, I find it impossible to criticize a student's work of art to his/her face because he/she risks so much in reading that work. Sharing our art, we build mutual respect, tenderness, positive reinforcement, and praise.

All writing need not be judged, of course. Each semester we publish at least one anthology in which students contribute their work and share it with school and community members. For a surprise, we solicit art work and invite teachers and students in other disciplines to submit their original work to be published. These anthologies are evaluative, in a way, because students typically polish and produce their very best work for their public. The anthology represents to most students (and teachers) a chance to publicly share their art.

A final word of advice: When you put pen to paper with your students, expect the best. Writing growth should be the focal point of a writing course. Where evaluation and the stigma of judgment can divide a teacher and his/her students, the shared art of writing bonds writers regardless of age or expertise. Evaluation is secondary to art because creation is heart-born.