"Writing Comments on Students' Papers" by John C. Bean

     I wanted to spend some time discussing how the last eight weeks have already made me a better teacher. This isn't meant to be brown-nosing post; just a sincere declaration of the appreciation for the ideas I've been exposed to since the semester started. If I hadn't read the articles for this class, I'd be conducting my classes the same way I always did.

     Each article gives ideas on best practices while highlighting what could be ineffective. As I read through each piece, I see just how much of the ineffective practices were present in my class. The same goes for a lot of my colleagues (I'll refer to us as "we" from now on). We viewed each class as if we were casting pearls before swine; the kids weren't good enough for what we were giving them. It was lost on them because they refused to do the necessary work.

     We approach each paper thinking only of ourselves and the knowledge we bring. We don't consider that a student may legitimately not understand the content, or (God forbid) we didn't cover it thoroughly enough. "Writing Comments on Students' Papers" made me think of how we practice this form of communication.

     What struck me the most is the idea of dehumanizing the writer and insulting his/her dignity. I think back to how teachers talk about students as they grade papers. Personal insults, assumptions that the student wasn't paying attention, and even remarking about the lack of hope for the student's future are common comments that I hear when colleagues grade papers. Notice how I've dropped the use of "we"? I like to think I wouldn't speak about my students this way. I don't now but I can't be certain about ten years ago.

     This year I started writing what Bean refers to as mitigated criticism. While I can't say that I notice an increase in production (these are different kids), I feel better about the way that I'm treating their ideas. My students have never really questioned grades or comments on papers, but the idea of them having thoughts like the students in the Spandel and Stiggins study is upsetting. I think most teachers assume the students look at the comments and shrug it off.

     So I'll finish this part off by saying that of all the articles we've read so far, this is the first one that really made me question my effectiveness up to this point.

     In terms of the tools we can use for the project, I was toying with the idea of choosing a movie clip as my moment of what can be possible when all the elements of a movie come together perfectly. Obviously embedding a video is as simple as clicking the mouse, so I was thinking of annotating the video. Thinglink looks interesting in that regard.