Today the faculty at Solano College gets together at 1:00 to grade Composition Mastery Exams, CMEs. It’s a painful, stressful process not only because we’ll all be working together to read through some 800 essays but also because we’ll find out how our students have done, which, of course, is a reflection on them and us.
But even though it’s painful and stressful and gut wrenching, it’s a good process that should be extended beyond our fundamental English students to all those in beginning composition classes. It would be a good test for our students and a good process for the faculty since we’d better figure out what the goals for English 1, 2 and 4 really are in terms of a paper written in English 1 that would demonstrate the ability to research and sythesize multiple references, in English 2 that would show the ability to analyze a poem, story or play, and in English 4 that would demonstrate the ability to research and make an argument incorporating multiple viewpoints. Most of all, though, the faculty would get together, as we’re doing today, to discuss the papers the students were writing and what they should be doing better.
Regardless, today it’s our fundamental English students whose writing will be placed under a faculty microscope. And I’m wondering right now — feeling my gut tighten just a little as I write this – how my students, and I, will do.
