10/19: "The English Teacher's Red Pen"

Many of the people in this English 3000 classroom are prospective high school English teachers – and out of those who are not, we have all been a part of the systematic high school English course, which prepares us heavily for our SAT's and ACT's, or for some of us, our Advanced Placement tests. While we can all agree upon the evil that is standardized testing and the No Child Left Behind Act, what many of us don't realize is that our own procedures can harm students just as much as the standardized procedures we condemn.



In the chapter labeled "The English Teacher's Red Pen" in Harvey Daniels's text, Voices from the Middle, Daniels discusses the “form of mis-assesment that lingers in our English classes… the intensive correction of student writing” (Daniels 1). In this intensive correction, teachers who feel overloaded with the amount of papers they have to grade have a tendency to cross out every grammatical mistake and spelling error with a red pen. As a study from the NAEP (National Association of Education Procurement) and research by several education professionals shows, this form of grading “doesn’t work that well at all. We have not created a nation of skillful, confident, fluent writers – in fact, we have accomplished just the opposite” (1). Correcting in such an obligatory, senseless manner creates a population of students who not only write poorly, but “who hate to write, who avoid writing whenever they can, and who, when they meet English teachers at parties, joke nervously about having their grammar corrected” (1).



So what, then, is the true answer to grading a paper? What will keep students engaged? The color itself is not what’s important; whether you correct a paper in red or blue or yellow or purple doesn’t make a difference. What makes a difference is providing real, concrete feedback – which means spending more than 5 minutes to grade one paper (and what a crazy notion to spend an entire day grading papers!). “When our evaluation efforts center obsessively, punitively, perfectionistically on the mechanics of writing, we push meaning out of the center and enshrine correctness as the reason for writing” (2).



I know what you’re thinking. “Okay, Matt. Then how, exactly, do I score an English paper that is riddled with grammar mistakes?” The answer to that question isn’t a simple one. Evaluation by the school board via standardized tests, no matter how perfectly dismantling to the well-being of students and the spirit of truly exceptional English teachers, is a part of our job. You might even get nasty reactions from your colleagues and the parents of your students. As teachers, however, we need to ask the ultimate question: “What’s more important, my rating as a professional or the success of my students?” For those of us who take our jobs seriously, the answer seems simple – but, in the heat of job searching, our judgement may be clouded.



Teaching styles vary from person to person. The statistics are there; students who are barraged with X’s and circles perform worse than their peers who are graded on content. Some soul searching and self-sacrifice may be required, but the success of our high schoolers is more important than the value given to us by the government. 

Works Cited 

Daniels, Harvey. “The English Teacher’s Red Pen.” Voices from the Middle. ProQuest Research Library. December 2005. Print.