Today has been one of those days where I am spending a lot of time criticising, though mostly in my head, the work of various students. My own college students are so often disappointing, whether it is in writing and thinking quality or in the common failure to read assignments directions carefully. And high school journalists often disappoint me, mostly because they often have great ideas but rarely produce the quality storytelling that would elevate their reporting.
Yet I carry on. It's almost masochistic but I continue to write the same basic advice over and over to individuals and to publication staffs (including their advisers). My message has been sharpened over many years and I think I am doing a better job of providing "rules of thumb" that can cut through all the somewhat extraneous comments I could make.
For instance, I still comment on fragments and run-ons and obvious typos, but I try to couch those comments in arguments such as "Our credibility diminishes every time a reader is distracted even a bit by our grammar and spelling and punctuation errors."
I often follow that sort of comment with something like, "It seems a shame to have your excellent ideas and arguments overlooked by readers who can't move past your lack of control of the language."
That sounds "snooty," even as I type it, but I do my best to be honest.
When critiquing student media, I often follow my comments on type choices or design choices or lead writing choices with something like, "It all begins with choices... after all, there is so much that happens in a high school over the year that we have no hope of covering it all. Consider tightening our topic choices but deepening our reporting."
My assumption is that this very sound advice (in my head, at least) mostly is ignored, whether for my college writers or for those high school editors and advisers.
A large chunk of the blame has to go to the medium of sharing: online writing. I hate to assume that my reader knows nothing, so I assume instead that my reader has been rushing or is unable to find enough hours in the day or some other excuse.
I suspect that I could truly help all those writers and all those young journalists if I could just sit down with them and have a back-and-forth, where I could see their confusion and we could expand on whatever is not making sense for them.
A friend mentioned recently that it was too bad that what I do best -- interacting live with students -- is not longer a possibility in my online teaching life.
And there it is. My online teaching as a tactic is the problem that I need to continue to tackle, though at 75 I wonder how many adjustments and techniques I can develop until I am quietly ushered out to pasture.
On the other hand, the good news is that a 75-year-old online instructor could easily be a hale and hearty 35-year-old instructor in terms of how the course is organized and the feedback I deliver.
On a third hand, I suspect that the 35-year-olds are having similar challenges as the 75-year-old.
We all just need to tone down our criticisms, I guess. They are not moral failings and no one really intended to do substandard work.
I just got a note about next summer's courses and my plans. I suppose I will take on another summer writing class knowing full well that I will be sitting in a hot office quietly fuming once again.
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