7/11 SI "Bad" Writing

Great takeaway idea today --- I really want my students to interrogate the notion of good and bad writing.  I believe freshmen come to college with a lot of ideas about this.  If they self-identify at all as a writer, it’s as a “bad writer.” They will say this, and then cite evidence to support this, ranging from poor grades in “English” in high school to their SAT scores.  So how they are valuing themselves, seeing themselves as writers has everything to do with external measures of “good writing.”  What I enjoyed today in class was thinking about an adaptation of Ben’s Demo, wherein I could ask students to bring in a sample of their “bad writing” and then delete names, shuffle, and distribute to a different class. That class would be asked to provide feedback, which then would work its way back to the original writer.  Just thinking on the page here . . . wondering how to upset my students’ self-assessments as “bad” writers.