Yesterday my partner Jennie and I were walking home from the thrift store. We'd been looking for a pizza slicer. We've been cutting pizza with a knife for almost two years now. They didn't have one. Or a cutting board or a rolling pin - we've been using old wine bottles. But that's not the point of the story.
"So what do you still have to work on?" Jennie asked me. We were trying to figure out when to go to Target to liberate (as in buy) our pizza slicer.
"Well, I need to decide if I'm going to record my students' writing this weekend or not," I said. This solicited a slight internal groan from my partner. We live in a 436 sq ft apartment, and I can either record a reading in the living room or the bedroom. Both locations are audible at different levels throughout the apartment. While my students are producing some great stuff this semester, there's only so many persuasive essays a spouse is willing to listen to in a weekend when she has her own work to complete for grad school. Jennie is always completely supportive and totally tolerate of this process - she gave me the idea of responding to students writing this way after all - but I can imagine it would get old. Still, I persisted.
"I can't decide if I should do it for their rough drafts or later on. I want them to complete some meaningful revision, and I want them to do a peer revision, but they just tell each other that everything in their writing is great."
Jennie nodded sympathetically. I continued.
"It's like I need to teach them to peer revise . . . oh."
Needless to say, I didn't record their writing this weekend.
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