Multi-genres

Well, the multi-genre papers came in yesterday.

Now what?

I'm encouraged by how motivated the kids were. One colleague said that two of her students, who are in my College Comp class, wanted her to read them and give feedback. She wasn't sure what type of feedback to give since she wasn't familiar with the assignment; however, she did state that it was nice to see that the students were willing to share their work.

I agree.

I even had a couple students sneak into my room and say that another class was writing five paragraph themes. They were shocked. I had to remind them, of course, that we too have written five paragraph themes (film review, literary analysis, persuasive essay)! I also reminded them that though I loathe them, they will encounter them in college (I recall even in grad school being told in my Literary Criticism class to basically write the five paragraph, thesis/support form for my major paper).

I'm just glad that they have come out of our English department having been exposed to a variety of forms and have been able to choose which form they enjoy most.

I'll admit this now -- I'm not sure how to grade these multi-genre papers. I'll enjoy them - no doubt. But assigning a grade will not be easy. That is one thing I - gulp - enjoy about the five paragraph essay - it's quite easy to grade and you can give students pretty clear feedback on what they could to to improve.

I realized I was in trouble with this a few days ago when I was reading a personal research paper from one of my students. She was writing a gut-wrenching paper on brain aneurysms. The essay detailed her mother's recovery from a sudden brain aneurysm. As I said, it was gut-wrenching. I felt foolish marking such trivial things as punctuation and usage errors in the face of such emotion, voice, and power.

I think I'll encounter that with these multi-genre papers too.