Responding to student writing

So far in my field I've been lucky enough to encounter a lot of student writing. They've been writing reviews over the books they read for lit circles. It's a neat way to get the students thinking about their text critically, and I think it would be worth considering when in the real teaching world. (My host teacher is Mackenzie Everett-Kennedy, if you'd want to ask her anything about the lesson). I think the biggest problems facing students writers (or the biggest problem I've faced in the Career Comm class) has been writing that goes nowhere. "This book is an example of what people can do when they're facing adversity. John faces adversity throughout the whole book. He has to deal with it when he was a kid too. One time his mom had cancer and their house burned down. It would be tough for anyone to have to go through all this, and it was really hard for John too." That's not a verbatim example of student writing, but that's what I've seen so far. (But who knows, maybe the papers other than the other 2 or 3 I've looked at are brilliant). This is especially hard for me to address with the students. I can tell that they've been working hard to get what they have so far, so I'm afraid to say "This is all redundant, scrap it!" I try to say something like "let your voice shine through" or "spend less time talking about what happened in the book and more time giving your impressions." But sometimes I'm scared that this may be too advanced for them. Sometimes I feel like they're just at the stage where getting something down is important, but I feel compelled take it further. However, I don't want to frustrate the kids.

I really try to ignore grammar when I look at their papers, but it's just too easy sometimes. Against my better judgement, I've wasted time on the easy clerical stuff before, sacrificing an analysis of what's really going wrong in the paper. I love the Charles Cooper quote on page 77, "It's easier to persist with commas if you know you're engaged in some fundamentally important human activity that has very great consequence for your full development as a human being." It is easier. Grammar correction is the monday morning quarterbacking of the writing world.