Presentation from Session 157 Grading Green: Sustaining Composition with Renewable Rubrics? (#GREENGRADE)

1. Make It Work:
Departmental Rubrics and Disposable Professors
Melissa J. Richard (Ree-shard)
mrichard@highpoint.edu
Twitter: @themalarkeybin
High Point University
High Point, NC
“Sustainable rubrics” are particularly an
issue for adjunct instructors of composition
courses. Composition departments and
programs often require “disposable
professors,” as Josh Boldt terms those on the
adjunct track, to use departmental syllabi,
textbooks, assignments, and rubrics at odds
with the professor’s own teaching
philosophies and practices.
How can a departmental rubric / rubric(s) be
sustainable for contingent instructors?

2. My Own Time as a “Disposable Professor”
● As a former “TA,” adjunct, and now, full-time instructor, I’ve often had to juggle
multiple composition program objectives / goals, often in the same semester.
● Difficult to keep pedagogy straight when shifting from, say, a community college
with a large non-traditional, adult learner population and a private liberal arts
college that mainly enrolls traditional, middle-to-upper middle class students. In
the same semester.
● While a one-size-fits-all rubric was not sustainable, I tried to think of what I
valued in college / academic writing, identify those values within the two
departments I worked in, and used it to keep myself sane when teaching, creating
/ reviewing assignments, creating / using textbooks and activities.

3. Adjuncts, Rubrics, Issues
“Employers often limit pedagogical choices...one writing program
administrator (WPA) handed me a textbook and a curriculum, pre-packaged
for my convenience. If I found the institution’s approach unsuitable to my
student’s needs, I would have never said so aloud. I needed the paycheck.
Despite my dedication to my students and my craft, I was not the teacher I
wanted to be.”
~Amy Lynch-Biniek, “Toward a Qualitative of Contingency and Teaching
Practice (A3)

4. Adjuncts, Rubrics, Issues
“What drives pedagogical practices in these disparate educational
environments? Are they operating within incompatible theoretical
frameworks, or could a productive synthesis be developed from a collision of
paradigms? I view myself not as an anomalous link between distinct
pedagogical worlds but as someone uniquely situated to articulate how each
of these three institutions is part of a network of forces affecting multiple
literacies. ”
~Elizabeth Allan, “The Triple-Voiced Adjunct: Finding a Middle Space while
Teaching Writing on the Road”(A2)

5. Adjuncts, Rubrics, Issues
“In my experience, rubrics generally fail in practice because they're not good
rhetorical tools. Most rubrics do not speak a language that students
understand … in trying to isolate the skills we want students to master, we
fall back on vague and abstract language that means little to them. I don't
know about your students, but telling mine that they should ‘employ
language to control the ideas’ or ‘reflect the generativity of the topic’
doesn't really help them understand why they can't seem to do better than a
C+. Yes, you can work to use more effective language on your rubric, but the
problem remains that, abstracted from actual assignments, rubrics often fail
to show students what is expected of them in real terms.”
~ David Gooblar, “Why I Don’t Like Rubrics” (Chronicle Vitae)

6. Adjuncts, Rubrics, Issues
“Dude-ric, use a rubric. Make your own. They can be harsh, programmatic,
fun, clever, dull–anything you want, as long as they are as detailed as
possible about the kind of essay that you actually want.”
~ Rebecca Schuman, “Adjuncts! Local Non-Mom Cut Her Grading WAY DOWN
with This Weird Old Trick” (Pan Kisses Kafka)

7. How can adjunct instructors implement criteria with which
they may not agree or find functional?
● Obviously, sometimes you have to. But spend time with students
discussing, understanding the rubric. If possible, provide samples of
papers that meet benchmark criteria. Focus discussion on “the why” of
the attributes the rubric values.
● Re-word it = re-think it.
● Consider student population and needs.

8. How can adjunct instructors “translate” given rubrics into
their own terms for themselves and students?
● Critical reflection on / comparison with former rubrics / standards
● Student-generated rubrics and activities
● “Double-voice” critical language - use your language when you can,
understand and articulate what it refers to with students

9. How does an adjunct instructor negotiate varied
departmental rubrics in the same semester?
● Think about “audience” = students
● Compartmentalize outlook when necessary.
● Synthesize similarities; be critically aware of difference.
● Combine goals, objectives, strategies when necessary (and don’t
apologize for it)

10. What practical steps can adjunct instructors take to create activities and
assignments that meet department criteria and satisfy instructor / student
needs?
● Use your own (free) electronic resources to streamline workflow and
revision (Google Drive, etc)
● Create a “master” rubric based on your own values and goals for
general writing courses; bend and revise when necessary.
● Include students (REGULARLY): in developing classroom translation of
standards, in examining rubrics, essay / writing samples. Be
transparent and “shrewdly intentional” - “why do these standards
equal “good writing”?

11. Link to Works Consulted
http://tinyurl.com/k69fxqe