Evaluating and Responding to Creative Writing

So chapter 8 of Released Into Language is about evaluating and responding to student's creative writing. I'll hit some of the high points here because this chapter really reaffirmed some ideas I already had about evaluating and responding to creative writing.

The chapter begins by stating that some creative writing teachers admit that grading a student's work cannot be done. I would definitely agree, to an extent.  I think back to the first day of my Illustrated Narrative Workshop class. Our professor openly said that he didn't have the right to critique everyone else's work. We still discuss pieces and try to derive meaning and establish context, but we certainly don't want to say something that would make them revert to the fetal position. I truly believe that you can't really judge a person's creative work - unless it is obvious that they don't even care about their own work and are trying  to turn in crap.

The author also talks about the composition teacher's ability to "wash a page with red ink". That's something that I distinctly remember from junior high and high school, but it wasn't just my English teacher that made papers or tests bleed. Almost all of my teachers wielded a mighty red pen that everyone feared for their grade's sake. The red pen was threatened on many occasion.


Bishop gives us Peter Elbow's list of problems that concern tradition grading, and I especially  liked the last point about a person's intelligence or learning being "summed up on one dimension". I'd never really thought about this until my Lit. for Middle Grades class last semester when we actually got onto the subject of written exams. It doesn't matter if a test is multiple choice or fill in the blank. Either way, a test is arbitrary because it limits the students ability to show their knowledge. They can't get over 100%.  Okay, they might be able to if there were bonus questions, but they are still limited by the questions that are being asked on the test. That was why my professor hated tests.  That's why we always wrote papers in his class and we were allowed to choose the topic. He was allowing us the chance to go above and beyond and show him our insights into texts. So think about that the next time you have to write and essay.


So, what do you think about evaluating and responding? Let me know in the comments. And thanks for those torturous papers, Sommers!

BK