On Classroom Celebration and Self Expression
In many ways my educational experience has been very privileged, especially when it comes to writing. The dialect of English I spoke at home was the same one my teachers used, and my mother always encouraged me to read and write for pleasure. As a result I wrote stories often, and I have some formative memories of being praised for my writing in school. This validation meant far more to me personally, than any grade ever did. English class became my escape from a rocky home life, and one of the few places (if not the only place) that I felt completely accepted, and capable.
My most impactful memory to this end, is the time that Mr. Tyner had me read my story in front of the class. It was October of my fifth grade year, and our assignment was to write a scary story. We composed the first paragraph together as a group--as I recall it started with the protagonist taking their first steps into a creepy, abandoned house. Everyone then finished the story differently, and I had thought of a special twist: in the last scene, a director yelled “cut!”, revealing that all the prior action had just been a movie being filmed, and the protagonist in question had been played by none other than Pamela Anderson (because, hello, it was like 2001).
The day before Halloween, Mr. Tyner set the scene for us to read our scary stories aloud. He drew the blinds, dimmed the lights, and brought a stool up to the front of the room. He picked the first student to read, but after that each reader was selected by the previous one. I listened intently as each of my classmates read their story, silently praying that I would be called on next. The only problem here was my social standing in the fifth grade: I was goofy, precocious, and generally ostracized by everyone except the one friend who enjoyed playing unicorns with me in the field at lunch. In keeping with the pattern of most of my social experiences up until then, I was not picked to read.
But when we all filed into the classroom the next day, Mr. Tyner dimmed the lights again. He brought the stool to the front of the room. “I thought you all might like to hear Chloe’s story,” he said. “It’s very good.”
I would pay money to see a picture of my little face at that moment. I was beaming from the inside out. It was that moment more than any other that really anchored in a sense of confidence for me around at least this one thing: I was a good writer. My stories were worth listening to. Part of me at least, was good and acceptable. I genuinely believe that having this idea instilled in me at such a young age has carried me through tough moments of my academic career. It has helped me continue on in school, and given me the confidence to express my heart and mind to others.
This is the experience that all students deserve, but not all of them will get it--and this remains true throughout the entirety of their educational experience. It’s not even necessarily about the instructor praising them, it’s about facilitating experiences where students feel truly heard and valued by their community. It’s about celebrating their work, their efforts, their stories. It’s about using celebration to make the classroom a place where they feel supported and uplifted. This is the approach that is made possible by contract grading: a course where feedback is given instead of grades, and effort, excellence, and progress are celebrated in a communal fashion.
Assessment scholars like Asao Inoue have pioneered this concept, and written about its power at length. While I am a newer teacher myself, I can speak to positive experiences creating this dynamic in the classroom. My favorite example might be the creative writing workshop I used to teach before the pandemic. It was an afternoon elective at a private ESL school, and as such, the concept of “grades” was already somewhat irrelevant. My only objective in that class was to provide students with a safe space to explore expressing themselves in English--and to then share their work with their classmates, if they wanted. I only made suggestions about their grammar if they asked me to. Largely, my interactions with them were generative. I would come up to students who seemed stuck on what to write next, and make suggestions.
E.g “Ok so I see that your superpower is teleportation...so you can’t go to jail for robbing a bank! You can just teleport out of the cell...where do you think you will go with the money?”
The experience of the class was unlike their structured grammar classes in that it was meant to be a time for them to play with language, without fear of repercussions. A time for them to trade ideas and hear each other. It became one of the most popular classes at the school, and never failed to provide students with colorful new English phrases to use.
I was lucky in my position there, having pretty free reign to make the workshop whatever I pleased. I know this will not be the case for every teacher or every position--my aim here is to argue that providing even an essence of that workshop will be transformative for any writing class. It’s transformative because it makes the class a place where students know their efforts are valued by their instructors and their peers. And maybe the change can be as simple as making writing class a place where, at least once in the semester, we dim the lights and read our stories to each other.
