Student-Teacher Writer's Conferences

And what happenes when you don't have to grade essays all weekend

A lesson to teach: Writer’s Conferences

I take my student’s writing very seriously.

I plan each unit around the essay that students will write at the end of the unit. I teach them how to write a thesis and back up that thesis with evidence. I give them gobs of primary and secondary sources to use as evidence. We practice writing analysis. We outline and we write and write and write and write.¹

I love teaching writing. I love sitting down next to a reluctant writer and convincing them that they can do this hard thing. I still remember my first year teaching when, after helping 12-year-old Guadelupe brainstorm her ideas, she took a deep breath and said “Okay. I’m ready to write.” Then she wrote her first essay in English. Teaching students how to write is immensely gratifying.

But then, I have to grade those essays.

Like, actually grade them.

I look at every sentence. I double-check sources. I compare thesis statements to pieces of evidence. I think about how students are contextualizing their sources. I frown over sentences that seem generated or plagiarized. I fill out rubrics, leave comments, and input grades.

It’s pure torture.

Grading essays is the bane of my existence. It’s boring and it takes forever. I spend about 5-7 minutes on each essay. This doesn’t seem long, but that’s 2.5 hours per class, not counting the break I give myself after every 5 essays so I don’t go insane. If all my classes are turning in essays, that’s 15 hours worth of grading. An entire weekend: gone.

It’s worth it though, all this time spent grading.

• It’s one of the best ways to get inside my student’s heads and figure out what they are learning and thinking.

• I teach based on their essays. For example, if students are all having trouble analyzing quotes, then I plan better lessons around analyzing quotes.

• I leave tons of comments on essays and students can go back and improve/resubmit those essays for a better grade.

• Students know I grade carefully and they adjust their effort accordingly.

DO NOT TELL ME ABOUT HOW AI CAN JUST GRADE FOR ME!!!!!!!!²

I need to understand how my students write because I need to teach them. Even if AI could give my students useful feedback³, I would miss out on learning valuable information about what my students do and do not know. Teachers look at their student’s work to understand what they are and are not learning. An AI report or score analysis is nowhere near sufficient.

Like Peter Greene, discussions about how students and teachers should bypass thinking/learning/teaching by just using AI leads to a “…gut-level reaction is similar to my reaction upon finding glass shards in my cheeseburger…”

Since I’m sick of losing weekends grading and unwilling to offload the task to AI, you’d think that I would have been ecstatic back in August when my friend and fellow teacher (Hi Brad!) told me all about how he’d spoken with another teacher about student writing conferences - sitting down individually with each student to discuss/grade their writing in class rather than doing it at home.

Initially, I was skeptical. What do all the other students do for the entire week it would take to complete 1:1 meetings with every student?

However, after my fellow teacher tried student conferences and came back to me with rave reviews, I decided to give it a try.

I printed off 100+ packets of independent work and set aside a for student writing conferences.

Life changing.

First of all, the packet of work was fine. This might not work for middle school teachers, but my high school students are quite capable of self-directed work. A documentary to watch probably would have worked as well. I’m not saying it’s the most innovative teacher strategy in the world, but it was fine.

The conferences were AMAZING. Here is what I did:

• I went through the rubric, highlighted the relevant section, and asked the student how they thought they did on each piece. They’d verbally grade themselves and I’d click the rubric buttons and leave comments on the essay as we talked.

• For places where the essay was a little thin, I’d ask students questions (“Why did Europe want to colonize Africa?”) and then I’d type their answers (“Natural resources?” they’d respond. “Rubber? Diamonds?” they’d add with some prompting. “Oh, and something about colonies giving them more power in Europe!”) in a comment box. “Yes!” I’d affirm. “Put THAT in your essay!” It’s nice to remind students that they know more than they think they know.

• I highlighted things they did well. This is teaching/critiquing best practice. If you show students where they excel, they’ll do more of that in the future. But so often, when I’d grade alone in my house, I slide into editing mode and just point out problems to be fixed. But when a student is sitting right next to me, the natural inclination is to praise more than critique.

• A few students needed some reminders about not using AI to do their thinking for them. I’d highlight suspicious sentences like “Francis Kwame Nkrumah was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary”⁴ and then I’d ask what “political theorist” meant. They’d have no idea. Also, where did they get the “Francis” from? In our class discussion and documents, I’d only referred to him as Kwame Nkrumah. Then we have a little talk about plagiarism and AI. An individual conversation in front of evidence is way more impactful than a class lecture about not cheating.

• I recorded each conversation on Loom, which captures the screen and an audio record of our conversation. After each conference, I post a link to the recorded conversation on the top of the student’s essay so they can watch it as they are editing. I wondered if anyone would actually do this, and they did! I get an email every time a kid clicks on the Loom link.

• I met with every single kid! Sadly, there are often a few kids who slip through the cracks in classrooms. There are always kids that never raise their hands and quietly do most of their work, and therefore receive little teacher attention. It’s crucial to have a system to reach these students, and 1:1 conferences are one way to accomplish that goal.

Having in-class writing conferences with each student meant that I didn’t need to spend an entire weekend chained to my desk, bored out of my mind, grading essays. This meant I got to read books, watch the Seattle Mariners, and go troll-hunting with my family.

A place to explore: Bainbridge Island with my family, since I didn’t have to grade essays all weekend

This was the first weekend in months that I didn’t have a 12-mile run to complete, an all-day cheer competition to attend, or a big article due. I would have had to spend the weekend grading essays, but that’s done too!

So I got to spend the weekend with my family, riding ferries for the sole purpose of smelling the salt air, going on tiny hikes, exploring trolls and ducks in public parks, and reading.

This .5 mile trail down to the water starts across from the north end of Battle Point Park. This and every picture taken by Jenna Vandenberg.

Pia the Troll is at Sakai Park on Bainbridge

Heading to Seattle on the ferry from Bainbridge Island

Mt. Rainier from the ferry

A book to read: RUN by Ann Patchett, since I didn’t have to grade essays all weekend

I usually don’t read novels that were published over a decade ago. I love shiny, new books and “this year’s top ten” lists. If I’m going to go back and read something nobody is talking about, I want to go waaaaay back and read stuff published in the 1880s or the 1930s.

However, my mom gave me a copy of Ann Patchett’s RUN a couple of months ago. I discovered Ann Patchett in 2013 (with THIS IS A STORY OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE) and RUN was her 2007 novel.

RUN is about Bernard Doyle, the former mayor of Boston, his long-dead wife, and their grown children: a biological White son and two adopted Black sons: Tip and Teddy. As their names suggest, Bernard is desperate for his sons to have storied political careers.

After Tip, Teddy, and Bernard attend a Jesse Jackson speech, a Black woman pushes Tip out of the way of a car and lands herself in the hospital. Her 11-year-old daughter is also at the scene.

The novel unfolds to reveal all the hopes, dreams, pasts, and connections between all the characters in ways that I cannot discuss because this book is full of twists and reveals.

I loved the book. It’s been criticized for glossing over family race dynamics and/or being too “politically correct” (remember that phrase, before DEI and snowflake?), which Patchett seems to lean into. At one point in the book, a character sees an OBAMA 2012 sign. Ann Patchett discusses the sign in the Afterword, which she wrote in 2006:

By including the sign, I have dated myself and my novel…This edition will go to press before the convention, and then of course there’s still an election ahead. What do I know for sure, other than I’m hopeful, as hopeful as the person who first put the sign in the window…

So I loved RUN. And I’m hopeful of feeling this hope again. Some day.

Happy teaching, traveling, relaxing, and reading! See y’all next Sunday.

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1. “We” means me and about 90% of my class. I won’t gaslight you fellow teachers into thinking I’m some sort of perfect teacher who manages to get every kid to write an essay. Despite my best efforts, there are those kids who sleep all period, don’t show up at all, or only manage to write 3 sentences after 5 class days of work.

2. I guess you can tell me whatever you want to, but I’m gonna fight you on that one.

3. Which it cannot. Not yet.

4. That sentence is actually from Wikipedia, but you get the idea