Dear Student C,

 

Thank you so much for your vulnerability and for exhibiting such thoughtfulness throughout this essay. I am so impressed by your introduction of this new emotion, “gansable,” and think that you do an excellent job of fully realizing the birth, effects, and the eventual overcoming of this term. I think the success in your definition and mastery of “gansable” stems from the organization of your paper, and further from your examination of negative emotions as “rules” that can further impact one’s success within the classroom. Your use of Rose and Elbow to explore that difficult relationship between the “want” and “incapable” aspects of what gansable delineates. Introducing writer’s block as emotion, rather than just a set of rules, really shows me that you’re a creative individual who is extremely capable of reimagining the academic issues you’re facing and handle them using the skill set you have brought to this classroom. I would suggest that you go back through and read aloud your sentences, there are times when I feel you are trying to write around a subject instead of engaging with it, and therefore sometimes I think you repeat yourself without stating what you want to convey to the reader. Thank you for your work and your participation!

 

Grade: Full Points

 

The moment I began reading this text, I was overwhelmed with my sudden hyper-attention directed towards this student’s lack of grammatical correctness and spelling issues. Instead of focusing on the really wonderful content that I was able to explore once I disengaged from a grammar-only reading of the text, I was immersed in the rules that I have so often professed to hate, to consider privileged, academic language. Fortunately enough, the student was able to utilize their topic to share with me the way they communicate, and the failures that they see themselves perpetrating through the experiences they simply haven’t had the opportunity to engage with. In other words, this student’s second language is English, and they feel much more comfortable communicating in their first language of Spanish. I feel very strongly that it is important to understand a student’s background, whatever they’re willing to share with me, because I think those literacies absolutely determine their successes or their struggles when it comes to writing. I understand that grading needs to put forth some sort of standard for completed work, but I believe that the rubric for this particular project should be the ideal guide to evaluating a student’s work. This execution might appear to several students who have been more privileged in their studies, lives, and literacies as potentially boring or not motivating, but I believe that it is important to structure the course around a foundation of equality of opportunity for students to succeed.

Many of my students have disclosed to me some literacies or some experiences that have really hindered their motivation or their positive thinking that they can direct towards this class. Listening to my students and their needs instead of relying on the academic framework, the rules of academic writing, or a rigid rubric has actually benefited my students and my classroom discussion.