In my upper-division class, Late 19th Century American Literature, I thought I would change up the writing instruction a bit. Typically, I have either individual meetings to discuss drafts or I have small group draft workshops of 3-4 students, and I do more of the latter lately. That is, until this semester. I thought I would do more “front-end” work this time, taking almost two weeks of class time to discuss research, have students read and discuss the merits and approaches of a couple sample papers, and workshop a couple proposals as a class. This seemed to be a good idea at the time.
But I have begun to regret not doing the workshops in favor of doing more “front-end” work. There’s a zero-sum effect here, I should note: there’s only so much time that I can spend on writing instruction, per se.
In talking with my students about their projects for this semester, I am impressed with many of the ideas, which seem well worth the students’ efforts and truly support the goals of the class. I mean great ideas. However, having put my eggs in the front-end basket, I am left with no time to work with them individually on the back-end, where a careful reading of the draft and a conversation about it with me and their peers could really bring home an argument. I can sense that many of them will need this close attention to their writing and ideas if they are really going to bring home the significance of their ideas. I liked giving them instruction on writing on the proposal end, but I am definitely not going to give up the workshops in the future.