I shared this idea with my students. I pointed out that, although I did not have Play Theory in mind, I did find the ideas compatible with my design of my course, especially my decision to give broad but very general guidelines for the term paper, and to only grade the final, end of semester product.
This week in the course we’re reading and discussing research in assessment, evaluation, and grading. Both in theory and practice, I promote a class environment in which there is quite a lot of assessment and evaluation but very little grading. I try to provide a lot of narrative feedback, from myself and classmates.
The big paper for the course is written in eight stages—a four page draft that goes to response groups, a four page draft that goes to me for written response; an eight page draft that goes to response groups, an eight page draft that goes to me for written response; a twelve page draft that goes to response groups, a twelve page draft that goes to me for written response; a sixteen page draft that goes to response groups, and a sixteen page draft that goes to me for written response. In addition to the required peer response groups, there are one-on-one conferences with me, both required and voluntary, and no grades till the end of the semester.
At each four page stage, students are asked to fold in a new subject area. They begin with memories of their own personal literacy. Next they are asked to theorize about their own literacy acquisition. The biggest challenge at this point becomes finding a focus, and in my written responses to their papers I try to suggest potential areas of focus. Then I ask the students to fold in a discussion of culture, looking at issues like gender, class, race, language, or disability, either their own or those they have observed in clinical placements, and how these issues might complicate their nascent ideas about literacy and the teaching of writing. Finally, I ask them to fold in a discussion of assessment.
There are many challenges that come with this assignment and my approach to it. The first stage lends itself to a chronological approach, but the papers tend to be better if the students break away from this. The culture stage always presents challenges because many students have a hard time seeing culture or cultural differences. They understand them in theory, but to see them in practice in a classroom or in their own lives is much more difficult.
The students also have to do a great deal of elaboration and revision, which drives them crazy. But this is exactly why I do not grade anything throughout this whole process. Grades prevent the students from taking any intellectual or stylistic risks. At face value, grades look like the fence in my play analogy, providing a clear boundary for the students. But, in fact, grades are nothing like the proverbial fence. Rather, my written and spoken feedback provide much more and better structure than grades do because response is so much more explicit and clear than a grade, which on its own can mean anything.
In fact, grades in this analogy become the fearful things that are out there which students avoid by being conservative and not taking risks. Students will stay on the familiar playscape precisely because they are afraid of grades. Good, useful, constructive feedback; regular, reliable response: these provide structure and security. These keep the fear of failure at bay. The fact that the students are ‘protected’ from grades makes them much more willing to take risks. They will try all sorts of things. They will even turn in drafts that are tentative, experimental, and incomplete.
Students will email drafts to me, and in the text will say things like, “I don’t know if it works, but I tried something radically different with this draft.†Or, “I know it’s really sloppy now, but after this week’s readings I really wanted to start all over again with a different approach.†These drafts would not be worthy of A’s, and we all know it, but I would never see students take these risks if they were afraid that these speculative drafts were going to come back to them with a big red C on them.
I also try to convince the students that when the semester ends after fourteen weeks, their essays will still be rough, and that’s OK. They have a hard time with this, but I have one student whom I have had more than once now that really gets it. She turned in an essay last semester that she was happy with but which she knew wasn’t done yet. She had done an excellent job in the course and I gave her an A. But around the start of the following semester, I got an email from her with a word document attached. Over the Xmas break, she had continued to revise the paper till she was truly happy with it. As she said, she needed more like eighteen weeks to finish, and the draft she had handed in as a tamat draft was really just a snapshot of an almost complete essay.
How often does that happen?
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