Peer editing in Cy-Tag was a crazzzy experience! In school you had to get through so many drafts in the typical time constraint of thirty-five to forty minutes. All you did was check for grammar. Zip through it and pull out people's errors without any care of what they were writing about. And, if you were smart, your paper would come back to you just the way you turned it in. No marks of pen or pencil covered it. Most kids took one vague look through it and left the typical "it was really great" comment at the bottom. That's as far as the feedback went.
Stepping into this writing class was like stepping onto another planet (no joke intended). The kids in this class actually cared! This concept was completely new to me! A student who carefully looked through a paper and gave solid feedback was unheard of and unseen. It was an oxymoron.
But a wonderful one. I loved hearing the encouraging words that would come out of my peers' mouths. Their positivity and brightness was contagious :) I loved actually having solid feedback about my work. What made sense, what didn't, what was great, what needed improvement... I was pulled into their bubble of "passion for writing" and I began to enjoy myself more. Writing was no longer this stressful, excruciating, brain-wrenching, near-death task. Things began to flow and every day became an adventure for me.
It's only been a week and a half since class started.
What's to come is a mystery for me and you...
Great post Sarah! That's how I feel about the enthusiasm of this class. It's so catching! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Lea!! This class is truly amazing xD
ReplyDeleteVery awesome thoughts and reflections to read, Sarah. Don't forget you were an active part of this process, too--you're one of the people doing this with writing, too, not just receiving it. It's a very tough process to instruct, and as a teacher it's just a huge luxury to have this much time, small class size, and technology available. But, again, the core of it is your willingness to participate. Since we're "exploring new worlds" in our writing, we'll enjoy the adventure--and we'll leave the stress, excruciating, brain-wrenching, near-death tasks for our characters, right? Hopefully you can predict what's to come: much the same as the first week, only you've taken it up a notch and know your classmates a little better.
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