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Product as Process 111 boxes to invite specific written engagement. Beyond this stipulation, the rubric is our editors’ creation. Instead of inheriting the language from the previous year’s rubric, they read the most recent volume of the journal in order to develop their own. This retrospective approach allows the new editorial board to identify values previous editors have established , and to notice what else they should have valued. They then work collaboratively to arrive at a preliminary list of criteria. They discard some of the criteria, combine others, clarify their terminology, compare what they have written with the previous year’s version, and then finally apply their rough draft of the rubric to a carefully selected first essay that we read and discuss in class. The question is not whether the essay is good—we try to give them a good one—but whether the rubric helps them to think about and then to articulate for their classmates exactly why and how it is good. If the rubric isn’t flexible enough to cover the entire range of essays generated in the various FYW sections, if it doesn’t permit editors to respect and engage essays that are effective in different ways, they can agree to revise or add to its terms. We happily accept the inevitable fumbling that occurs in these initial stages in exchange for the conversation and sense of ownership engendered . In our editors’ most recent rubric, for instance, “Clarity of purpose (may be exhibited as the point, message, thesis or intent)” replaced a line from the previous year that read “clear, focused, relevant purpose that is achieved.” The shift introduced different language, but it also pointed toward our editors’ recognition that the earlier version would have subtly confined them to questions of whether “it does or does not do something,” instead of freeing them to think more deeply about how each essay works. Our editors then collapsed the twelve criteria from the previous year into seven criteria, decided that the resulting list should be hierarchical and reordered it, then ended by adding a space to comment on “potential.” The final version allowed our students to consider what an essay could be as much as it helped them to engage with what it already was. At a deeper level, it helped our students to see themselves as editors entrusted with assessing potential, rather than judges tasked with assigning a grade. co M Men Ti ng o n ST uden T T ex T S The student-centered approach carries over into the process of reading , evaluating, and discussing submissions. To prepare for class, every editor reads the same batch of submissions and writes comments in the 112 T EAC H In G WI T H ST U D EnT T ExT S rubric’s expandable boxes for the top two essays. The editors are thus always literally on the same page, with an emphasis on extended close attention to each individual essay. We help our editors direct their attention by offering particularly good examples of comments written by the previous year’s editors, along with the essays they commented on. These models underscore the importance of clear analysis and specific references to the text in question. In their comments, we want our editors to recognize each essay’s strong points and to acknowledge its problem areas. We want them to weigh different facets of the essay against one another. And we want each editor to earn his or her “thesis”—a yes, no, or maybe vote—instead of simply justifying an initial impression. While we do offer written feedback on our editors’ comments, we find that they arrive at more meaningful insights when they exchange feedback on each other’s comments. These “Comments on Comments” activities give our editors a chance to point out where their fellow board members could be more complete in their analysis and more clear in why they voted as they did. Equally important, editors gain a very immediate sense of their colleagues’ different values, tactics, and insights. In some cases, the pairs of students simply remark on the contrasts. “I’m not sure if I’ll change my approach,” one student concluded in her response to a classmate, “but we’re so different—it’s interesting.” If nothing else, these two student editors will have a better sense of their audience when they make their arguments on essays’ publication potential . In other cases, though, the students see opportunities to revise their...

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