Genre Draft...Really Rough!!

Please give me feedback/suggestions for this. I need them!

When I entered the program, I must admit that I was a nervous wreck. I worried about everything: the assignments, the professors, the students in my classes, the students in other classes, everything. However, once I took my first class, I was fine. I was not so lucky when it came to my first response to a student’s essay. I blankly stared at the essay, wondering what I was doing in this field, wishing the paper would disappear, hoping something or someone would interrupt me so I could push the paper to the side and come back to it at a later, much later date. This, however, was not the case. Instead of someone coming to my office with a concern, or my phone ringing, I was surrounded by total silence and solitude. I had no choice but to grab my pen and began to do the one task I had avoided; respond to student writing.
I later found out that I was not alone when it came to the “fear of responding.” In fact, I discovered scholar such as Lad Tobin, Chris Anson and Carol Jago had deal with situations similar to mine. In her article, “Responding to Student Writing: Keep pedaling!” Carol Jago emphasized how teachers’ responses can have a negative impact on students. She commented, “Forgetting to include encouragement in our responses can also turn what should be an intellectually stimulating activity into a hateful task” (56). To her, Encouragement is extremely important when it comes to student writing. Jago gave an example of one method she uses with her students when they publish class collections. Instead of doing peer response, she organized a group of her stronger writers and makes sure that every paper is proofread by those students. After this step is complete, Jago took the papers and reads them, reminding herself to maintain balanced criticism with encouragement (57). In her responses, she included encouraging phrases such as “good opening line…keep writing.”
This is exactly what I did when responding to ninth grader who I’ll call Susan. She was a confident young writer who enjoyed writing poetry, short stories, and even lyrics. While her writing was as strong as her confidence, I made sure that I praised her for the strong points of her writing. For example, in one response, I wrote, ““You did a great job at describing your idea of going to the Oscars.” By complimenting Susan on her work not only allowed her to continue her positive attitude toward writing, but it also motivated her to continue writing.
Another strategy I used to respond was including specific lines I thought were great. Let’s take one of the responses I wrote to Susan where I said, “I really like how you used simile in your poem. For example, the line that states, ‘it feels like an Eternity’ really stood out!” (more)


I’m not saying that you shouldn’t give feedback where you are confused or feel there are errors, but what I am saying is that there is a way other than the traditional red ink massacre method. For instance, in another response to Susan I commented, “When I first read the title, I noticed the word ‘Haiku’ was spelled differently. Was this intentional? I also noticed that your poem didn’t completely follow the format of a Haiku poem. The standard form consists of a 17 syllable poem, where the fist line has 5 syllables, the second has 7 syllables, and the last line has 5 syllables. You could follow this pattern very easily with this poem, or you could keep it the way it is. Your poem works good either way.” To me, this strategy gives constructive criticism as well as support without destroying the student’s confidence. (more)