Bev, the magic draggin'

Yesterday I was crowing over how beautifully my students had sparkled in a difficult class discussion; today I'm puzzling over student prose describing a character as a "savor." The ups and downs come way too quickly in this profession: one minute I'm hitting all my marks and eliciting brilliant comments from students and the next I'm responding to an email that I will quote in full: "whats the name of the textbook." Two weeks into the semester!

I've adjusted to my new classroom spaces and figured out most (but not all) of my tech problems. On Zoom days I'm trying all kinds of tricks to transform students from names on a screen to actively engaged learners, but it's rough going and the methods I'm resorting to make me feel like we've regressed to third grade. In my composition class I'm so desperate to overcome one particular problem that--well, I'm a little ashamed of what I'm planning to do. Whips and chains are not involved but tomorrow I'm planning to offer a smidgen of extra credit to motivate them to do something that every writing student ought to do anyway.

The problem is that these students refuse to offer specific suggestions on each other's writing. We do this frequently throughout the semester--in fact, every time they turn in a low-stakes writing assignment, I make each student read another classmate's writing, point out something that classmate has done well, and offer a specific suggestion for improvement. 

This semester, though, almost all of their comments consist of vague statements like "This is fine the way it is." If we talk about qualities of an excellent title and then I ask them to read a classmate's writing and suggest improvements to the title, they will write, "The title is fine," even if the title is literally "Homework assignment"--or if there's no title at all. In fact, I see very little evidence that they are even reading their classmates' (short!) writing assignments.

But, as I keep reminding them, writing frequently and getting focused feedback on that writing is the best way to improve, so tomorrow I'm raising the stakes. They've all been having problems integrating, punctuating, and citing quotes, which is normal at this point in the semester, so we'll spend some time at the beginning of class talking about the Quotation Mantra (and yes, I do make them chant the phrase Integrate! Punctuate! Cite! in unison) and looking at a handout modeling these skills, and then I will ask them to look at a classmate's online writing assignment and point out one area where quote integration needs further work. Any student who posts a specific suggestion that provides the correct method will receive some piddly little amount of extra credit, hardly enough to make a dent in the grade but possibly enough to motivate some real attention to student writing. 

But maybe not. Maybe they'll all pull a Bartleby. That's who I think of when students hide behind a name on a Zoom screen or put their heads down so I won't call on them in class: Bartleby the scrivener turning his head to the wall and saying "I prefer not to." Well guess what? I prefer not to resort to third-grade methods to motivate students to engage in learning, but if that's what it takes to drag students away from the brick wall, then let's get draggin'.