Taking the Bull By the Horns: The topic of control in teacher commentary

In one episode of the office, Dwight claims that, “In the Schrute family we believe in a five-fingered intervention. Awareness. Education. Control. Acceptance. And punching.” If you were to remove the “punching,” (at least in the current decade where corporal punishment is illegal) I think Dwight’s approach to life is how many teachers often approach correcting a student’s paper.

However, I agree with the Richard Straub’s article, “The Concept of Control in Teacher Response: Defining the Varieties of ‘Directive’ and ‘Facilitative’ Commentary,” which advocates for the removal of teachers imposing “control” when editing a student’s paper. The article focuses on how teachers respond to student writing and the amount of power they assert over a students work through their commentary. Straub argues that teachers are often too eager to insert themselves into their student’s work, altering the student’s overall experience and inevitable product and feelings of accomplishment.

When posing the question, “How do different kinds of response create different images of the responder and establish various relationships with the student?” Straub forces his reader to consider how the teacher’s tone and commentary can not only influence a student’s writing, but their perspective of the process and the teacher. I have found this to be a questioned answered by my own experiences with editing:

When I was in middle school, I had a teacher hand back my paper early bleeding in circles and comments. Although inadvertently, she embarrassed me by singling me out, only turning back my paper and making me hyper aware of my flaws as compared to those of my classmates. Furthermore, she did exactly what we were taught not to do from the very first day of class, soaking my paper in comments and a using a tone that was discouraging and disappointed. From my point of view, what had happened was that I had experimented with dialogue for the first time and as a result, butchered many of the grammatical and formatting policies that come along with a specific style of writing. With that said however, instead of looking through the entire paper and realizing I was just making the same 3 mistakes over and over again, she circled every single flaw so that the ink from her pen was basically jumping off the page. Although she was a nice teacher with good intentions, I was discouraged by her behavior and began to see her as a negative figure, someone who was bringing me down instead of guiding me. Despite the fact that I could have used help, I became embarrassed and frightened, no longer wishing to seek her help. Straub comments on the theory behind a similar sort of situation saying, “Generally speaking, the more comments a teacher makes on a piece of writing, the more controlling he or she will likely be.” Despite this being so long ago, I remember this moment and paper vividly because my teacher was so controlling that she instilled within me a negative fear that was more counter productive than anything else. Like Struab argues and this anecdote illustrates, not only can asserting control through overbearing comments be overwhelming for a student, but can destroy the relationship of trust between a student and a teacher which allows students to grow and take risks. It was these kinds of negative experiences that caused me to feel completely insecure about my writing abilities up until my sophomore year of high school.

However, when I got to high school, I was met with teachers who did not let the focus of their criticism lie with “sentence structure and correctness,” but instead focused on the content of my work and like Struab suggests, attempting to get us to “consider the rhetorical situation or to try some technique of revision.” From watching my writing fellow conduct his sessions, I can see that this is an effective method because it gets the writer to think about the solutions themselves, allowing the writing consultant to work as a sounding board and to get the writer to acknowledge or see what they might not have seen before. The approach that my writing fellow uses reflects what Struab praises in commentary, where the” comments refrain from directly telling [the student] what to do.”

Similarly, I saw the effect changing tone in commentary can have on a student from the exercises we have done with editing in class. The first time I corrected a paper, I used “You” in almost every comment, coverings the margins in an attempt to be specific, but abandoning my reader by forcing them to figure out for themselves what I was meaning when I made comments like “I am a little lost here.” However, after more practice and guidance from class, my goal is to execute what Struab suggests when he claims it I more effective when you are “keeping [your] tone positive, keeping [your] emphasis on what is working and what could be made to work better.”

Although I agree with almost everything Struab argues for in his article, there is one claim that has me a little puzzled. He says, “Of course, the optimum style of response for any teacher is going to be a function of her personality and teaching style.” Although I agree that this may be true, I wonder if it is something to advocate for. I have a friend who has helped me correct one of my papers before and while he is very intelligent and makes good suggestions, his personality is honest, sometimes brutally so, concise and sarcastic. Although as a friend, I am used to it and find it refreshing, in a tutoring situation, I have a feeling it could come across as uncomfortable for a student, making them feel discouraged. I think that maybe what would be a better argument for Struab to make is that every “optimum style of response” should be a function of their most presentable and understanding selves while maintaining their natural teaching style.