Wednesday, July 9, 2008
workshop worries
The workshop continues to shrink. Part of this is due to the grading conundrum. I have to assign grades for the work students turn in. I have no problem assigning grades in a comp class, where it is possible for virtually every student to earn an A, given enough work, but in this kind of class, every student is not going to become a wonderful writer of creative work. They will learn and pick up strategies and techniques, and that is what I must grade them for. However, some people come to class blessed with inborn and cultivated abilities. How to acknowledge that without punishing people who simply and admirably want to explore writing without having those ready-made abilities? It is a problem for me, and I have lost yet another student because of it.
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2 comments:
When I taught cr. wr., I did not assign grades to creative work. Instead, I gave students credit for attempting the assignment.
There's a trap in there, see it? "Attempting the assignment." If the assignment called for images or a setting that gives meaning to a character or revelation of character through dialog--then to do this is the only way to earn credit. How well one does it becomes, as you have found, a matter of some aspect of creative talent.
There are other ways of giving grades, too--journals, peer critiques. Sometimes, a student wants to take a creative writing class because he or she mistakenly believes that "creative" means writing anything one wants--what I call the 3 a.m., light the cigarette, pour another inch of whiskey "anything." I used to tell them that we are all free to write anything we want, but for this class, I'll be teaching via assignments.
Hang in there. Precious things come in small boxes and small workshops.
That's how I started out, but I found I wanted to reward the excellent attempts more than the okay ones. I guess I shouldn't have succumbed to that.
I am still enjoying the workshop very much, but it is discouraging to have so many drop, as you know.
Oddly, now that I have started poetry, with a class that for the most part has no clue where to start with it, it is not as easy as I thought it would be. Oddly, fiction was more clear cut, since there were certain places to start and everyone knows what a story is; that's not true of poetry.
You feel you need to teach everything all at once: sound, sense, diction, form, lining, metaphor, and of course, this isn't possible.
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