Some years ago, I was on the community college campus where I taught, walking to the library or something. I remember stopping briefly to say hi to a student I knew. Just as I started to walk away, another student approached me, and after apologizing for interrupting, introduced herself as a former student.
"You probably don't remember me," she began (I didn't), "but I took your English 100 class years ago. I just wanted to thank you. You kicked our butts."
I remember laughing out loud and thanking her for saying hello.
Best compliment I've ever received.
I taught English Composition (both transfer and non-transfer level) as an adjunct professor for a little over 20 years at a local community college. Prior to that, I taught Grammar and Composition for about 10 years to a combined 7th and 8th grade class at a private Christian school in Escondido.
That adds up to maybe a little over 30 years of my life devoted to the craft of teaching writing. During those years, it's safe to say I read and commented on every submitted paper, both rough drafts and final submissions.
It didn't hurt that in both scenarios I was a part-time instructor, nor that in both scenarios, class size was relatively small compared to most public schools. But when it comes to teaching writing, I honestly don't know any shortcut.
Reading student papers, providing personal, concrete, substantial feedback, designing reasonably clear rubrics for grading, is time consuming. But to me, it’s the only way students can learn the craft of writing. I don’t know how full-time teachers or professors do it.
At the college level, I gave out quite lot of Ds and Fs, particularly at the beginning of each semester. Most students learn pretty quickly what they can and can’t get away with and adjust accordingly or drop the class.
As semesters progressed, the grades were mostly Cs. This grade often meant the paper was rote, unimaginative, repetitive, or otherwise lacking in originality and freshness. Lower grades reflected more glaring problems having to do with structure, or sentence level issues, or failure to meet the basic requirements of the assignment.
A and B papers were rare, but you knew them when you saw them. You could hear the writer’s voice. You knew they’d been well-taught even before they arrived in your classroom. As writers, they could only get better from this point forward. Teaching at the college level, you’d think this should be the rule rather than the exception. Alas . . .
As for those D and F papers, I often allowed students to re-submit failing papers, as long as they included for final grading all previous drafts and preparatory notes (from what I understand, not all professors do this). If the re-submitted paper looked essentially the same, the grade stayed the same. On the other hand, if a student was willing to work with me, listen to my comments, demonstrate integrity in the effort of the rewriting task, then I felt obligated to respect the effort and adjust my grades accordingly.
In my way of thinking, this is what writers do. It's hard work, writing. “You kicked our butts.”
I read articles like the one I read in the Wall Street Journal (link below), and I worry about what's going on in today's classrooms. I worry about kids in grade school, junior high, college, kids raised in a world of technology, immersed in an academic environment of easy access to information and the reductive influence of artificial intelligence.
I worry about students who may end up in schools like those described in the article below, where instructors don’t seem to have the time or incentive to insist students master a craft that seems to be at risk of vanishing.
And yes. I worry about children I know. Some still too young for the classroom. My children’s children.
I hope it's not too late to turn this ship around.
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America Needs Tough Grading, by Solveig Lucia Gold and Joshua T. Katz (September 2, 2025, Wall Street Journal)
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