Running for Home - 12. September 9, 2021

September 9 2021

If I have to correct ‘there/their/they’re’ on my Writers’ Craft students’ work one more goddamned time, I’m seriously going to lose it. It’s not even a month in, and I already want to rip my hair out every time I grade some of the shit they hand in to me. Do they no longer teach proper grammar at this goddamned school? I know, I know, that’s such a bullshitty, tropey thing to say but there is no way my writing was this pathetic when I was their age. Hell, when I was younger than they are, because I only teach senior classes. I left here before I got to their age. If only I had some writing samples of mine to compare this too, but I don’t have a shred of anything I ever wrote before my days in Freedom Force. If I had those writing samples, I could either swallow my rage because I was just as bad or show them off to my classes and insult them. If a fuck-up like me could write better than they are when I was two years younger, then they need to put in more effort.

The thing that’s even more frustrating is that I’m harping on them for bad grammar, but at the same time I’m supposed to be getting them to learn how to use better meso- and macrostructure in their writing. They won’t do well in college if they can’t structure an argument properly. It’s not just about stringing useless verbiage together in between a topic sentence and concluding sentence. Oh god, and don’t even get me started on getting them to use critical thinking and some semblance of analytical skills.

Emma and Piotr both told me that I need to stop taking it so personally. Emma actually said that getting so involved and invested in my students work can make it take way more time, effort, and energy to mark things, and I need to set aside more time for myself because living and working here doesn’t mean I should always be working. I snorted in response to the obvious, but I guess I can see where she’s coming from. Maybe I could get away with that for the Lit courses since every student has to to take that class and half of them don’t care about being there. But my Writing students? They want to be good writers. They want good feedback from their instructor. That shit is important, the acknowledgement and encouragement. I sure as hell never felt like I got it. With me, it was always just a storm of red ink telling me how much I suck, but not telling me how to be better. To really make it better. Who knows how my life would have gone if I’d felt like I was actually good at something other than burning shit down back then.

Who fucking knows.

The question, now, is how do I do that? How do I give them feedback on their papers that they will receive (mostly) positively? How do I make it clear that they are constructive criticisms, and not judgements? Well, some things will clearly be judgements when they do something that is objectively wrong, and I do have to give them a grade somehow… still, I just have no clue how to do this. How much do I write onto their papers, anyway? I know that is a big time sink. Maybe I can highlight a few things and then talk with each student individually. No, that may be just as time consuming. I’d probably have to deal with a lot more grade-grubbing too. Maybe the one-on-ones I can do with my writing students, and the lit students get just comments on the paper unless they specifically ask for verbal feedback. Jesus Christ, what the fuck was Emma thinking hiring someone without a BEd or MEd? I have no idea what I’m doing with something as simple as this, and the ones who suffer are the students. They don’t deserve that. They don’t deserve to have a shitty teacher for what are arguably their most important core developmental courses.

I guess the question now becomes how much of my time I’m willing to divert from writing so that I can invest of myself in figuring these things out. Should I dive into some education books and journals? Xi’an probably has some shit for the teachers tucked away somewhere in the library. I can’t be the only one who feels like they are floundering in the dark. Pfft. I doubt it. I don’t know all the faculty here, and I don’t know how long a lot of them have been teaching or what their credentials are, but they probably have more of a right to be doing their job than I do. Why me? Why am I here?

What the fuck was Emma thinking?