Peer review and conferences

The greater part of this week’s blog post is inspired and supported by my writing center experience. Our latest readings have reminded me just how formative those experiences have been to me as a teacher, student, and writer. While I may differ from the authors in my plans for implementation, I consider peer revision and student-teacher conferences essential to the learning process for student writers.

Like Freeland, I see great value in both reflective writing and reader-writer conferences, and plan to incorporate them into my course. With respect to the latter, I have been a writing consultant/tutor for so long and worked with so many people that the experience has come to shape my pedagogy as an instructor. My extensive writing center experience has led me to become something of a true believer in one-on-one writing consultations and in precisely the sort of Socratic, non-evaluative dialectic upon which Freeland relies. I’ve seen countless students – many of whom were frustrated, confused, miserable, and even irate – make dramatic, fundamental improvements at all stages of the writing process. Even the most sensitive and understanding teachers are, to some degree, limited by the dynamics of a classroom setting. There are ways to make a classroom more inclusive, and I plan to do so – but in even the most interactive of classrooms, personal attention given to one student necessarily excludes the others. However, a personal conference can work outside these constraints, allowing teachers to work one-on-one with each student. I want to move away from treating my class a collective whole (which, admittedly, is necessary at times) and towards viewing my students as a group of separate, distinct writers with widely varying backgrounds, learning styles and personal inclinations. Reader-writer conferences are a step in that direction.

And while “cancelling” 10 classes (!) in order to hold these conferences seems a bit much (would we even be allowed to do that?), I see numerous benefits to them, most notably (for me) that writing conferences (as well as peer revision) allow students to see writing as social and collaborative. A central goal of my writing class is to debunk pervasive myths about writing, particularly the widely-held view of writing as an individual, spontaneous undertaking, as if brilliant prose spontaneously emanate from writers’ brains and pens at will. Woods speaks to this notion, noting that students more inclined towards “creative” writing tend to “believe that all their writing comes from within, from some deep-down burning desire to express something” (193). This is all well and good (perhaps one should be happy that students are excited about writing at all), but I want to move towards an appreciation of writing as a social undertaking in my classroom. As such, I want students to talk about their writing – to one another in peer review sessions, on the blog in the form of reflections, and to me in teacher-writer conferences. This emphasis on talk (especially with respect to revision) will hopefully foster a more Bakhtinian understanding of writing as inherently dialogic. I want them to struggle not only with their own ideas, but the ideas of others.

I also plan to continue incorporating peer revision into the classroom. The advantages here are twofold. In terms of production, students gain a wider sense of audience, writing not only for themselves and the instructor but also their peers. In terms of consumption, students learn to respond with critical empathy as readers. As an added bonus, the looming imperative of peer revision may even dissuade some students from writing those contrived emo-confessional type papers (actually, I’ll probably explicitly discourage them from those). Moreover, the prospect of additional readers may also move students away from ‘please the teacher’ type papers.

One issue with peer revision is how to introduce it, since some students are reticent towards any group work, and others see no point in using their class time on someone else’s paper. I particularly like Woods’ exercise on p.189-90 for introducing peer workshops; I think it would really help reluctant students to see the exercise as useful. I have in the past devoted almost an entire class period just to showing students how they should approach a peer’s paper. Again, this is steeped in writing center pedagogy – ask don’t tell, describe don’t evaluate, address macro-level concerns before moving to grammar/mechanics, etc. After hearing about Matt’s experience yesterday (the tutee whose peers refused to review his anti-Obama paper), I now am considering having students review some sample papers first. Peer revision, when students believe in it, can teach them to navigate between a variety of responses and expand their understanding of what it means to write.

I also want to debunk the myth that writing is the linear creation of a fixed final product. Both peer review and conferences implicitly stress the importance of multiple drafts. I want to show students – not only through what I say, but what we do in the classroom – that writing is ongoing, recursive, and subject to constant revision. I will be telling my students that they need to revise, revise, revise...but merely telling them isn’t enough; my classroom practices should reflect my goals – otherwise I’m just repeating empty words. As such, I want to avoid the rough/final draft dichotomy; students will create first, second, and third drafts.

And, perhaps most importantly, I want to really know my students, and I want them to know one another. Certainly, I will become acquainted with them through class discussion and interaction, but a personal conference affords us a chance to develop an even stronger working relationship. Having taught and worked in writing centers, I have found that it much easier to develop trust in a one-to-one consultation. Conferences and peer revision sessions allow students to share their struggles – with me and with each other – and can build the kind of trust necessary to make a classroom more like a community. I’m aware of how touchy-feely that sounds, but the importance of having a good rapport with students, of working with people who like and trust you – cannot be overstated.

Ultimately, peer revision, reflection and reader-writer conferences are all part of a larger objective: to encourage students’ to see their writing as something ongoing, fluid, and collaborative.