Encountering Writing Standards:
Confidence, Fury, and Self Doubt in the Third Grade

JOAN BRADBURY

Much of what happens in a classroom is cumulative, created in the millions of interactions, activities, and thoughts of those who inhabit that place for the year. The memories build up slowly and are different for each of us who lives there. But there are moments that stand out for me as a teacher when I have known something important was happening, happening for all of us. These moments have occurred when I was not expecting them at all, but there have been a few, one last March among them, that I anticipated and played a catalytic part in.

This Thursday afternoon in March of ’95 I had decided to return to the children in my third-grade class the writing sample each had written in September. We had sent these samples to the Educational Records Bureau (ERB) as our contribution to their development of a writing test for third grade; the Bureau had evaluated and scored the samples, and now I was returning them to the children with their scores.1

I was excited. We had done several things throughout the year related to standards in our classroom; all of them had been invigorating and interesting for me as a teacher and I think had value for the children as well. This seemed a sensible extension of that work, making use of the writing samples I’d had little interest in to begin with, partly because it was so unlike the work and evaluation the children were used to in our school. I thought it would be good for these children to experience this kind of evaluation, so common in schools and in the world, and that they were more than strong enough, as writers and as a group, to take it in stride. Before I continue to describe this afternoon in March, I want to return to some of the earlier experiences during the year that brought me to this decision.

I began the year trying to think about ways I could be clearer about my own standards and values with students and to help them be clearer about their own.

1. As teachers we had not made the decision to participate in the development of the test; we were informed as school began. The second week of school we were asked to have children write to a prompt: Think about a time you were surprised…Along with the prompt we were given standard test papers for children to use when writing their final drafts (name in bubbles on one side, lines on the other side to write on), a set of questions to help children as they edited their first drafts, and a timeframe (two forty-minute periods to complete the assignment). Some children struggled to do the writing in the allotted time, and children did very little editing between drafts despite a careful return to the questions and a look at Writers' Express. There were several children very concerned about whether or not they should initial their samples, giving ERB the right to reproduce their pieces (anonymously) in their booklet of writing samples scored with comments. Four children had a discussion with our principal that week about this, and most, but not all, decided to sign off. We sent off our samples.

Because of the progressive program and evaluation processes in our school, which I very much believe in, it is often difficult for children and parents to see the standards embedded in our work. Finding ways to be explicit about these standards seemed important work, both personally and professionally, and it became the focus for my tenure review.2 Children are not graded in our Lower School; teachers write an end-of-the-year narrative about each child that goes to the parent and becomes part of the child’s permanent record. In our class we had three sets of conferences: the first in September with parents, the second (November– December) and third (February–March) with children and parents. These ways of talking about children’s experience in the classroom actually allow many opportunities for thinking about and discussing standards and values, but no obvious structures. This year I hoped to find some ways to think and talk about standards and values with students and parents in the classroom, in the conferences, and other places.

During a class discussion in November, we developed a set of standards about reading, reading response, and participating in book discussion groups.3 This was our first “formal” work with standards and was something I had not tried before. Shortly after we developed these standards, I asked children to rate their reading work for the week using a four-point scale (4 = above standard, 3 = standard, 2 = emerging, getting there, and 1 = beginning).4 I rated their work that week, too, using the same scale, writing long comments in response to their own ratings and their work. This turned out to be time-consuming and difficult; I was not used to giving children critical (negative) feedback about their work: “This was a bare bones response. You could have added more detail.” “This was only partly done.” I did think it was valuable for me and for the children to do this reflection in relation to the standards we developed together. After that week we used the collaborative standard informally, reminding each other of what we expected and hoped for one another in book discussion.

During the same week, I asked children to describe in their learning logs a standard they held for their own work, any kind of work. All kinds of things came up: “I like to have my work done fast.” “I like my desk to be neat but I never have a lot of time to organize it.” “I do not like to sound dumb when I read.” “I like making things.” “I like to put a lot of detail in my drawing and I like to use bubble letters.” “I love to hold a pencil in a special way in drawing,

2. As tenured teachers at Parker, our work is formally evaluated every five years. In preparation for my tenure review year, I had participated in a “Review of Teaching as an Art” the summer before (1994) at Prospect Summer Institute 2 in Vermont, focusing the Review around this question: How can I be clearer about my own standards and values with children and parents and help them be clearer about their own?

3. See footnote # 9 for the specific standards we developed as a group.

4. I got the idea for developing a group standard in this way and using the four-point scoring system from a workshop I attended in November at the ISACS (Independent Schools Association of the Central States) Conference on “Student Led Parent-Teacher Conferences” led by Cliff Clark and Nancy Wells.

and I love to draw that way.” “I have 3 standards 1) having it done 2) do it fast 3) do it good.” “Do it slow so it is good and does not look bad.” “I like to have my work done on time.” “In math I think I’m pretty bad, in reading I think I’m good.” There was so much here about how children thought about their work, what they thought a standard might be, and about standards they held for themselves and their work. Writing back in their learning logs that week was invigorating; it provided more opportunity for me to respond to their standards in relation to their work as I knew it, to add my perspective and raise questions— with each child and for myself.

This “standards work” was exciting for me as a teacher. It raised many questions and made me think. It challenged me out of some comfortable, complacent places. I found myself describing, questioning, speculating, and pondering with my teaching partner, student teacher, and other colleagues when I had the chance. There had never been any question in my mind that third graders have standards about their work, but I was excited to see how articulate they were about their standards, and how much I learned about their way of working from what they wrote. I was struck by the way some children were so hard on themselves, while others thought they had done just fine even though their work had been late and half-hearted. I became aware that the most visible standard around work was whether it was on time (and corrected), and I began to think about ways to make qualitative standards more visible in the classroom. I wondered particularly about a few children who tended to rush through their work and declare it done. For the most part, these children did care about meeting my standards— would these children do better work if they got some kind of grades? I wrote a bit about the issues this “standards work” raised for me in a newsletter to parents and invited their responses and questions.

This class was a community of writers like none I had encountered before, so eagerly sharing their stories with one another, often writing in pairs, with imaginary characters and shared classroom experiences weaving through the amazing wealth of classroom writing. From the beginning of the year children used their writing workshop time eagerly. There was an ease and enthusiasm immediately apparent. Even the few who were uninspired found a way to hook up with friends, immerse themselves in the technology and learn the word processing programs, or find a kind of writing that interested them, such as making up math problems or doing informational writing.

Story sharing was a favorite time for all. We all eagerly awaited the next installment of someone’s series. There were Fig stories, the Teacup adventures, Ratboy, Egypt, SuperGecko, Mona Lisa, and Queen (Victoria).5 Fig was an imaginary character that one boy began writing about in second grade. He and a

5. I have used documentary names to protect individual children’s privacy.

friend built a house for Fig in Shop, and then several pairs of boys wrote more Fig stories in close consultation with the originator. Teacup was a third-grade character who had many adventures tumbling through closets into a monster’s stomach, around her grandmother’s grave, and with an Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, in addition to more familiar adventures in gymnastics class or school. She was pretty outspoken and rough and tough in her way, and the dialogue was always very funny, sometimes on the edge of off–color. The Teacup stories were written collaboratively by two girls, who also created Teacup and the Dreamcoat in clay and fabric during project time one week. In the end one child continued to write Teacup stories while the second went on to write some Egypt stories with another partner. Ratboy and SuperGecko joined forces as their authors wrote collaboratively for a while. Mona Lisa and her friends first appeared as drawings, then as residents of some of the block houses built in project time, and finally as story characters. Queen (Victoria) stories were exaggerated childhood stories written by one child, usually providing some opportunity for the line, “You can’t do that! Because I’m Queen (Victoria) and…”

The shared classroom experiences began to enter the imaginary world of classroom writing. A couple of girls wrote more stories about Otter Tail and Flying Squirrel, Native American characters they had encountered in the informational Book of Indians by Holling C. Holling. The forests and rivers remained, but the new adventures included white folks who enslaved Otter Tail. Did this come from a study of Squanto or Sacajawea? A boy and girl together began “The Voyage of the Mimi III,” taking the characters they had come to love in the study of Second Voyage of the Mimi into a new adventure. Several collaborative writing partners were boy-girl pairs. I had not seen such pairs before this year, but this was the way this group of children was with one another: comfortable, close, interested, and incredibly supportive.

One day in March or April, as we sat listening to the latest Fig adventure, who should appear but Teacup, spouting one of her now-famous one-liners. All year children had participated actively in each other’s stories, listening eagerly, encouraging with laughter and comments, occasionally raising questions or making suggestions for new possibilities. But here was a new kind of participation: The imaginary characters one pair of children had created were now participating in another character’s world.

Children did some required pieces along the way: a Native-style legend or myth, a “Voyage of the Mimi” journal entry as one character, a description of the clay “stela” they had each made about their own lives, several descriptions for science (of doing a dig, watching a tank with water and “junk” overtime, puzzling out where their pile of school garbage had come from), sensory impressions from Clark Street (the street in front of the school where we spent time regularly), possible pieces about a favorite object or character sketch. Each child kept a Fort Dearborn journal as a character who lived there or ended up there around the battle in August 1812. At the end of the year they each wrote a family history journal with required pieces about an older person in the family, a family history object, and other possible pieces about a tradition, family story, work, or migration story. Throughout the year children wrote reading responses of many kinds, wrote about math in their math journals, and wrote each Friday in their learning logs, responding to a question about their experience in school that week. We worked on cursive and quotations as a group. We helped children edit their legends for the class book of legends. Many children decided they wanted to publish one of their pieces and worked on both editing for meaning and mechanics with several classmates and a teacher or parent. As teachers we spent our writing workshop time meeting with children, for the most part, helping children who either were having trouble thinking of an idea or topic for their writing, or were stuck in the middle of a story; later in the year, we helped them edit and publish their work.

Certainly very critical as a factor in my decision to return the writing samples was the strength of this class of children as a group. Children cared about one another, always making room for one another’s eccentricities and appreciating each other’s strengths. They trusted one another and the two of us who taught them. Children supported each other in many ways and each member of the class somehow seemed to see past any temporary difficulties and always had an interest in working things through even if the process was painful. I knew returning the scored samples might be a little painful, but these children had such a sense of themselves as writers, individually and as a group, and they had done this writing so long ago, I did not believe it would affect them seriously. And I knew they would be more than willing to work through their reactions together. They would not suffer—or celebrate—in silence.

The Thursday before I returned the scored samples, we spent some time as a class looking at the ERB scoring rubric and then looking at and scoring a couple of anonymous writing samples that ERB had sent, using the rubric and making comments as we did so.6 After we had looked at the rubric itself a bit (each of us had a copy), I put one of the anonymous writing samples on the overhead. We talked about possible scores in each of the categories, with the children giving reasons for their choices, and then we looked at the ERB score and comment in that category. Discussion was spirited and good-humored. Overall the group was fairly interested in trying to apply the standards to this piece. We then gave each child a copy of another anonymous sample and asked each to score this one and

6. The “ERB Analytic Scoring Guide - Grade 3” is in a 6 x 6 grid format with phrases in each square representing a given number score (1 - 6) in each of six categories: overall development, organization, support, sentence structure, word choice, and mechanics.

make comments about their scoring choices. This ended up being mostly a collaborative activity, with many children working in pairs or threesomes. Discussion was earnest and animated, and overall children were both thoughtful and tough in their scoring and comments. They were absorbed in applying the standards to the writing samples. I don’t remember any comments about the stories themselves, which was interesting since they usually had lots of comments to one another about stories they wrote.

The next day I asked children to write about standards they held for their own writing, mentioning our work the day before using the ERB standards.7 Their comments suggest children who were certainly comfortable with their own writing and had their own ideas about what they valued, notably qualities like humor, mystery, and “sounding beautiful.” We can sense their interest in audience and their enjoyment of writing as a process. Some of the standards did have to do with handwriting and cursive, but spelling, vocabulary, detail, and organization are not mentioned (all prominent in the ERB standards). The children’s standards were very much their own and bore little or no relationship to the ERB standards they had worked with the day before. Most of the children had little trouble thinking of a time they had met their own standards; they were, for the most part, satisfied and confident about their work. With all of this accumulated work around standards and the group’s strong and positive experiences

7. Specifically I asked: What is a standard you hold for your own writing, and can you think of a time when you have met your own standard? Here are their responses (the ones I managed to copy from learning logs at the end of the year):

“I like my writing when it looks nice and when people like it. The time I met my standard was when I wrote the Pee Wee Girls.”

“[I want my writing to be] more interesting, funny, and not how the writing looks, but I want my stories to sound beautiful, too. I can’t think of one [a story that meets her standard].”

“I like my stories to be mysterious.” “My standard is putting a funny part into it.” “I like writing about my life.”

“Spaceman is one of the best stories I’ve wrote. I think it’s funny in a good way and definitely fits my style. It’s a good mystery that makes sense and the mystery part is not really hard if you focus well on the book. Spaceman is about a guy who lives in space who works for the FBI and tries to find out who murdered Abe Lincoln the 100,000,000. Actually that’s the reader’s job.”

“[standard] a good ending for my stories fast and good.”

“I like my writing to be funny.”

“I like to write funny stories because just a plain story that is not funny people will fall asleep. My favorite story I wrote in is RATBOY because it had comedy.

” “I like it to be funny. Fig is a story that shows that standard.”

“Standard 1 is…Standard 2 is…Standard 3 is…I grade my writing standard (2). My favorite piece of writing is the pioneer writing. It met my highest standard.”

“My standard is that I like it to be funny.”

“I would like to have in my writing cursive. It is very easy to think of another thing—much better handwriting.”

“I like to have my stories be cool, and have sports in my stories. I meet my standard when I see sports in them.”

“I like my writing to look like how it is now. I was reading my second grade journal last night and I was surprised about some of the words I used in the poems I wrote. But I thought compared to my handwriting now that it was very bad! example: [printed in a larger, more irregular hand] saw the big bird.”

“I like to write funny and imaginative. The story that met my standards is The Narrator and Stip.”

with writing, we thought the children would be ready for their writing samples to be returned.

So I return now to that Thursday afternoon in March. We began with many reminders about how long it had been since we had written these samples and that we knew each other’s writing quite intimately and had enjoyed each other’s work all year. Then I returned to each child his or her own writing sample; the only addition was the two sets of scores on the front side. I asked children to do as we had done the week before with the anonymous writing samples. I asked each child to score and comment on her or his own writing using the scoring rubric. Then they could each look at the scores the two ERB scorers had given them.

What followed was an incredibly painful hour for most of the children in our class. Within five minutes several things had happened. Some of the children who had scored poorly in their own eyes (1s and 2s on a scale of 6) were outspoken about their scores, groaning and complaining. Many children had discovered who had scored well, and which child had scored the highest, though the children who had scored well were not broadcasting their scores at all. There was a chant beginning, “Down with ERB, kill ERB…”

I had not anticipated the pain and anguish children were feeling. I had not anticipated the power of the scores. At this point I knew we needed to call a halt to any other plans for the afternoon and talk about this. Children were hurt and bewildered. It was so unlike other experiences they had in school. Many felt betrayed and violated. It had been my decision to return children’s scored samples to them. I was clear with the children about this. I thought it would bring our work with writing standards back around, add another layer. I thought children had enough distance (both in the passage of time and in the distance created by having scored anonymous samples themselves) that they would not take these scores to heart. I was wrong.

But we could talk it through together and share our pain and try to make some sense of it all. I do not have a record of this discussion, only my memory of it and Maura’s (my teaching partner) and comments children wrote the next day. Children talked about how these scores made them feel. Some were upset that total strangers had scored their writing. Some felt tricked; they hadn’t known their writing would be scored (we had talked about it when we wrote the samples). We talked a lot about how different these scores were from enjoying each other’s stories the way we had all year. As teachers we drew a parallel between these scores and grades, which this group had not experienced, either. It was a good opportunity to talk about why we don’t have grades as part of our evaluation process in the Lower School, and also alert them to the reality of grades they will face in Middle School. Most everyone felt bad; they hurt for themselves and/or for a friend. A few found a way to get some distance: “That was then, and this is now.” “It just matters what I think.” But that was not easy. Many children were angry and almost all of them were upset at one time or another that afternoon. Many talked more with each other and their parents that night.

The next day I asked children to respond to three questions in their learning logs:

  1. How did you feel when you got your writing test back from ERB and saw your score?
  2. How did you feel and what did you contribute during the discussion that followed (if you can remember)? and
  3. How do you feel now, a day later? Did you think about anything in a new way? Here are their responses:

    1) I felt fine because I know that I did not write enough. And when I looked at it six months later I knew I would get a bad score.

    2) In the discussion I said that we can make better stories than things that happened in our lives. And in the discussion I felt a little bit bad.

    3) I did not oven remember it today! I felt fine.

    1) Well first I felt really good because I got two fours, but when I saw [Catherine]’s I felt a little jealous. (You know how everyone tells you [you’re] the best writer? Well, this made me feel the opposite.) Then I heard that [Ellen] got 8 5’s. I was mad! But not at ERB.

    1) It made me feel a little discouraged.

    2) I was thinking to myself: it just matters what I think. 3) I really don’t care any more.

    1) I felt okay

    2) I felt much better.

    I felt bad when I got my ERB back because they could put it in a kind of book. And it was bad to see other people. Oh most say we had a better score than I did and tease you about your story.

    I feel a lot better than I did, but yesterday I felt horrible.

    When ERB graded my paper I felt like a loser. They are really the loser. I will kill them. My friend got the worst. I will kill them. I want to send them Barney and Liz. Then they will die. ERB dumb.

    I hated my score. I thought I would score much better. Actually I didn’t know I was supposed to be scored. Nobody said we would be scored so how are we supposed to know that we should write our best. I think ERB should of told us we were going to be scored.

    deabrle (terrible?) they weren’t good [when he got the scores] bad whe (way?) bad [how he felt during discussion] no way [how he feels now, a day later] P.S. No more ERB.

    1) I feel good because the ERB people gave me an okay score. 2) No 3) I feel good today.

    I was furious. Now I have a new meaning in life—to hunt the people at ERB down because they’re #@?*! Burn down the people at ERB and smash their head because they’re #(@?*s and I will kill them and for the rest of their life they will watch Barney for the rest of their life. They will watch the same Barney episode ’til they memorize the episode word by word. If they don’t those #?#!*s will have hell and squish their heads in a clamp because I hate their guts. He, he, he, hah, hah, hah, tehe. After that I’ll need therapy and put their skulls on a necklace then burn their skulls. THE END of ERB ha ha.

    I felt like a total loser. I hate ERB!!! I got the lowest score. At Hebrew school my teacher said everybody gets a mission in life. Through March 2, 1995 I found out my mission in life…To kill ERB [with picture of two helicopters dropping bombs on a building labeled ERB. The building is burning.]

    When I looked at my writing I was angry and sad. I think my writing is better than [ERB] graded I. I mostly kept my feelings to myself when we had that talk. I forgot about it. And said, “Well, if that is their opinion, too bad for them!” P.S. I physically wanted to hit the two people that graded my paper. I felt extremely angry and sad. I wanted to physically kill them. I thought my paper was better than they rated it.

    1) I felt okay, Sort of. I felt a little bad. 3) I really did not remember anything.

    1) OK ’cause I got 3’s and 4’s. 2) fine 3) No, and I feel fine.

    1) I felt very good since I had good grades, and surprised. 2) I was feeling sorry for the other people. I was thinking about my feelings. I said, ‘That was then and this is now’. 3) I still feel good. There was nothing I thought about in a new way. My score: eight 5’s, four 4’s. Extra: Nobody got a 6.

    I felt kind of bad when I got my paper from ERB.

Despite their collective scores on the ERB writing samples, this is a very powerful collection of comments related to evaluation by external writing standards. Looking at the comments closely several months later with a group of teachers8 and reading them aloud, we could all feel the children’s pain and discomfort. Many children lost their voices. They were sad and defeated: “I felt like a total loser.” “…yesterday l felt horrible.” “It made me feel a little discouraged.” Some found a voice in anger and revenge fantasies. They felt judged as writers and people, judged by strangers. This was about who’s “smart” according to an “objective standard.” The form of the judgment (a set of numbers) and its source (strangers known only by their initials) allowed no opportunity for direct response or discussion; this was a final judgment. Children did not hear about their strengths as writers here. Their writing was judged against an external set of standards, and because they each had a set of scores, comparison with others (and with the ERB ideal of six 6s) was inevitable. There was an emerging divisiveness evident in this set of comments that several children articulated powerfully: “Well first I felt really good because I got two fours, but when I saw [Catherine’s] I felt a little jealous… Then I heard [Ellen] got six 5’s.” “I felt very good since I had good grades, and surprised. I was feeling sorry for the other people.”

8. I had the opportunity to look back at this collection of children’s comments with a group of teachers at Prospect Summer Institute 2 held at Bennington College, summer ’95. This was invaluable in my growing understanding of what children were saying here and some of the possible implications.

Many had ways to try to defend against this judgment, to soften the blow. Several held to their own assessments about what their scores should have been: “I was thinking to myself: it just matters what I think.” “I think my writing is better than ERB graded it.” “Well, if that is their opinion, too bad for them!” At least one child could hold onto a little more respect for himself despite his disappointing score because he felt tricked and hadn’t known what would happen with his writing sample: “Actually I didn’t know I was supposed to be scored. Nobody said we would be scored so how are we supposed to know that we should write our best. I think ERB should of told us we were going to be scored.” Several went beyond defense. They saw this as a war, and, having been wounded, they were out to strike at the source and “kill ERB.”

One child included a picture of bombs over the ERB building. Two others, clearly having shared a good idea either in the discussion or after school the day before, thought the best way to destroy ERB was to make them memorize a Barney episode.

Children certainly tried to distance themselves from ERB and the scores they received, but they could not distance themselves from their own writing and look at it. They were collapsed against their writing and this score or judgment was about them. How many more judgments like this would it take before these children would stop writing, or write under pressure, with fear and trepidation? These voices are very different than the voices of the same children writing a week before about standards they held for their own writing, children who had been proud and comfortable with their writing, enjoying the process of writing, what they created, and the anticipated effect on an audience. These scored writing samples, returned to the children who wrote them, did not move them forward as writers, but rather, began to shut them down.

Because our class had the chance to talk about this as a group, to make sense of it together and for children to share their pain, I think they were able to put the scores into some reasonable perspective and continue to feel good about their writing and themselves as writers. There is no doubt they did continue to write and to enjoy each other’s stories through the last day of school in June. New writing partnerships formed; new characters joined the rich fantasy world already created.

But this experience gave me plenty to think about, probably for years to come. In retrospect I wondered why I did not anticipate the negative power of these scores. Had I known what would happen, I would never have made the decision to return the scored samples. Yet there is a way in which I don’t regret it. Children had a chance to confront some very hard “facts of life” in a supportive and trusting place. They had an opportunity to see, feel, and think about the effects of this kind of “external evaluation” using “objective standards” that most children are thrust into the day they enter school.

The children’s comments are powerful statements about this kind of evaluation. I could imagine someone dismissing them as extreme, the voices of privileged and protected children. I would contend it is only because these children know another kind of evaluation—informal, supportive, cooperative, responsive, and personal—and have a sense of their own developing standards that they can offer this wake-up call to all of us. Most children learn to live with these “external” “objective” standards early on, and the way they learn to live with them is by letting go and shutting down in some ways. For instance, how many children in most classrooms would react in anguish about their classmates’ experiences: “My friend got the worst.” “I was feeling sorry for the other people”? How many children who had lived with it since the beginning of school could articulate the jealousy and competitive divisiveness this child does: “First I felt really good because I got two fours, but when I saw [Catherine’s] I felt a little jealous…Then I heard that [Ellen] got eight 5’s. I was mad! But not at ERB.” How many children who had lived in a system of external standards represented by numbered and lettered scores could suggest, “Kill ERB” or even, “I thought my paper was better than they rated it”? I wonder how many children have “felt like a total loser” as the result of this kind of evaluation, yet not had any opportunity to let us know? Unless, that is, we look for the subtle signs—the downward cast to head and eyes, the slightly hunched shoulders, the silently clenched fist, the bragging comment or put-down ringing through the classroom.

My experience with the children’s reactions to seeing their ERB writing scores made me rethink issues of evaluation and standards and raise new questions for myself. I was more convinced than ever that the forms of evaluation we have in place in our Lower School make sense, that they are supportive of children’s growth. This evaluation is mostly informal, taking place within the day-to-day activities in the classroom or in comments on pieces of work. It happens in conversation, with a chance for response and continued dialogue; it is ongoing. It starts from an assumption and acknowledgment of a child’s strengths, but certainly raises questions for each child and includes suggestions for improvement. It assumes each child values certain things (usually including trying to please the important adults in his or her life) and is developing his or her own standards, and that these standards and values are ultimately more important for the child than the teacher’s standards and values.

All the work earlier in the year around standards built on these assumptions in critical ways. As a class we developed some group standards about reading work through discussion, being explicit about what we expected of one another.9 Standards always come from somewhere/someone.We worked on these standards together; they were truly public standards. We all agreed they seemed reasonable. Then I asked children to evaluate their own work in relation to them, and I evaluated their work as well (and responded to their evaluations). It was within their power to help set the standards, evaluate themselves using the standards, and do something to improve their performance. The standards pointed the way. I hope to continue to work like this with third graders this year and in the future. It was valuable for children to think about standards they held for their own work and their writing. It made children more aware they had standards, that they were striving for certain things, and that these things varied from child to child. It was important that we had the chance to have conversation about their standards and our standards as teachers and where they overlapped and where they might conflict. Again, this is something I intend to continue with third graders in the future.

The children’s first work with the ERB writing standards, when we put the standards and scoring rubric in their hands, was, in retrospect, of more questionable value. Here, children took a set of standards (embodied in a scoring rubric) that had been developed somewhere else by strangers, standards we usually refer to as “objective,” and tried to use them to evaluate writing (not their own). To know these standards are “out there,” that children’s writing will be evaluated using standards like these at some point along the way, seems vital for teachers to be aware of, but having children work with these standards in the way they did seemed to detract from their direct attention to the real work of writing.

9. Standards we agreed upon for third-grade reading work: Before:

For book discussion:

There are several big questions and areas of further exploration that remain for me out of last year’s experiences with standards, and writing standards in particular. I question the role of “objective” standards in relation to personal writing at any age, and I know that having children confront their own scores in our third grade was immediately harmful. Writing is always a personal statement, and this prompt asked children to write about their own lives. My experience with the children, and discussing this experience with colleagues, made me think about the sensitivity and vulnerability I feel about my own writing as an adult, and to think as well about what “real” writers do. They don’t write in response to someone else’s prompts, that’s for sure. They write the stories that are in them; they write what they are moved and called to write. They will send and give their work to friends and colleagues for critique, people who have knowledge and respect for what the author is about, who have some understanding of the author’s purpose. They don’t have it scored by strangers. Writers all have their own standards. It is not that they are not mindful of the kinds of standards embedded in the ERB scoring rubric, but these may be means to serve their own purposes. Organization, supporting detail, and word choice certainly make a difference in any piece. However, we would certainly hold very different standards for a poem, an essay, a memoir, or a novel, as writers and as readers.

I know as children get older they are going to have increasing experience with grading and scoring of their work using an “external” or “objective” standard (at least external to the children, perhaps developed and explicitly stated by the teacher). In our school this happens in Middle School, beginning formally in sixth grade. How can we best prepare children for this? I am sure the answer is not beginning this kind of evaluation earlier on a regular basis. The children’s reactions to the ERB writing scores are enough to convince me of this, if I had any doubts before. And, although I might sometimes wish for it, I do not believe children should never experience this kind of evaluation in their school lives. I do not think that we can effectively prepare children by hiding our heads in the sand and avoiding this completely in Lower School. Some of last year’s work may begin to point the way. Having children develop some standards as a group and think about standards they hold for themselves seem important ways to start. Having them evaluate their own work in relation to these standards (personal and group) is important, too. As a teacher I want to make it possible for this to happen and to make clear statements to children about my own standards and how I see their work in relation to their standards and my own. Children need to develop some strength and clarity about their personal standards and some understanding about where standards come from and how they develop. It can’t be a mystery or a secret. There has to be a lot of opportunity for conversation around standards, and, I think, few “final judgments” without discussion and revision along the way. My sense is that our experiences last year point in some promising directions and hold some important lessons about what to avoid, if at all possible; but finding ways in our classrooms to help develop and support children in relation to standards and evaluation will take some conscious and concerted thought and work in the years to come. I look forward to this continuing work: thinking this through with colleagues, working with my third graders in familiar ways and ways I haven’t yet thought of or tried, and thinking it through again.

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