April 19, 2007 8:00 AM

Grading

Assigning a grade to an essay never comes easily. One must make various decisions in the process regarding content and form and adherence to guidelines and mastery of material, etc. One must consider the esteem of the student at the other end of the process. Multifarious decisions with multifarious ramifications are at stake when grading essays. Grading, in general, is a dangerous game, but a requisite one. Like it or not, as educators, we are in the business of grades.

 

Grades are complex signifiers. They attest, at times, to raw effort of a student. They attest, also, to the mastery of material or knowledge base. Assigning them is at once decyphering what they might finally mean and engendering on some level that meaning as well. One must also consider that the grade one assigns does not assess the essay or test alone, but can serve as an assessment of course content, quality of instruction and success of the teacher as well.

April 4, 2007 9:03 AM

The Writing Process and Publication

Springtime is generally when I turn to personal writing, and what that means is I turn to writing poetry. It is that time of year that I find myself more prolific than other times of the year. I've been following a certain cycle for about the past fifteen to twenty years.

I tend to submit work to various periodicals in the fall, read in the winter and write in the spring. The reading is the key to the writing, and it takes several months of probing reading to write anything of linguistic interest, for me anyway.