When any teacher using the makerspace remarks that a student’s work is insufficient, that really means that the work is not substantial enough to garner feedback. Often this remark is made in person; occasionally, it is flipped online as part of general feedback.
The trick, if there is one, is that students don’t need to be told when work is insufficient. They need only self-awareness, integrity, and a post or two like the one you’re reading now.
Time Enough
The point of a makerspace is to create something meaningful. Look at this section of our skills and traits:
This is the reading/thinking/writing of all learning. Many assignments in English, of course, focus on writing, and with good reason:
Writing gets us at the truth, and sometimes the capital-T Truth, while making our understanding clearer and our learning more permanent. The writing must be substantial, as a result, which is why students are always given enough time, in and out of class, to do their work.
This goes hand-in-gnarled-hand with the lecture-as-instruction-post on working harder, because all work in our space needs to reflect the time allotted to it. This isn’t subjective. In a grade-abated course, it’s more like a sorites paradox: when a heap becomes a heap. It’s obvious when the work is substantial.
What follows are examples based on common English assignments.
Example: Essential Questions
Essential questions are a staple of English classrooms. They invite us to consider timeless issues, personal beliefs, and societal norms. The most common assignment, at least at first, is to respond freely to the questions — to write, for a class period or more, without worrying about anything but getting ideas down.
Here is a set of essential questions used in several units in our space:
- To what extent can any of us trust our senses?
- To what extent can any of us trust our memories?
- How do ignorance, knowledge, and happiness interact for us? In other words, would you want to be ignorant and happy, or have knowledge and be miserable?
- To what extent and in what ways does power corrupt?
- In what ways are any of us ever truly alone?
- To what extent are people naturally self-destructive? What does it mean if we are?
- At what point and for what reasons should a group stop an individual from doing whatever he or she wants?
These seven questions were assigned to a junior-level English class on October 31, 2018. Students had three days in class to write, with encouragement to expand on their ideas at home.
Here is an example of insufficient work:
Here is another example of insufficient work:
It is not obvious to every student, without context, that these responses are insufficient. The questions are answered, and the assignment is checked off. But a single response to those questions ought to be this long:
Notice that writing more led this student to something interesting. That’s the power of an essential question: Writing more almost always leads to something more interesting. Writing more almost always justifies the effort.
Example: Short Essays
What if the prompt asks for an essay? In October of 2018, students in various classes were given a series of prompts based on this instructional post.
Here’s what is possible with one day of writing and a day to finish at home:
The point of an essay, sometimes, is to practice the act of writing. It’s to prepare for a discussion. It’s to freeze understanding. 850+ words is possible, and the more often a student pushes toward saying more, the more possible it becomes.
This is also acceptable:
That’s the comment I left, too, to highlight this point: A short essay can be 800 words or much shorter, but it has to look like an essay. It has to have a purpose and a shape. It needs to have a reason to exist beyond the assignment.
This is not an essay:
There is one original sentence in that. The rest is quoted material. That quoted material could be turned into something, though, and that’s the real loss: More substantial writing would almost certainly produce an opportunity for feedback. That the subject of these essays is akrasia and procrastination just highlights the problem.
Here’s another example:
I’m using this to highlight my response to the student. They’ve taken issue with the number, as you can see, but that number has context only through the copious instructions and explanations here. This is also a common refrain: that substance ought to trump length, and that writing just to pad the length is a bad practice. It is. But for most of us, there’s a simple truth: Substance almost always comes from length.
Writing succinctly is a goal. Brevity with precise insight is a goal. It takes a long time and a lot of practice to reach that goal. A half-page essay that mostly summarizes an article has not reached that goal. Writing more, when the assignment asks for it, is a way to garner more feedback and better direction for the writing. The point is to get feedback, improve, and work toward being succinct and precise. It’s the rarest student who excels at that from the start.