Summary
Throughout her elementary and middle school years along with her average being no less than a 3.0 and being on the honor roll, Shannon had no reason to not be confident in her writing abilities; that is until she failed the writing portion of her ninth grade proficiency exam, twice. With no feedback from her teacher, and classmates that were hardly passing the grade itself, she was left to conclude that her writings were merely just “bad”.
If I were Mrs.Brown id respond to Shannon by firstly assuring her that my critiques are never to put her or anyone of my students down and then proceed to explain to her exactly why I took the 5 points off including what factors my grading was based on. One of the primary reasons I think Shannon felt she was a bad writer was because when she asked Mrs. Brown why she failed the writing portion of the proficiency test, Mrs. Brown couldn’t answer her. Because of Mrs. Brown lack of communication, I infer Shannon was left to internalize her writing as “bad” and even expressed it by crying. Not only did Shannon pass her honors English class with an A but she had a televised poem that reflected her competence in writing.
I empathize with Shannon because there has been a few times in my life when I have doubted my abilities as a writer in general. My first semester of college I was accused of plagiarism and when asked why I never got a straight answer. It caught me off guard and surprised me because throughout my high school years I had a good rapport with all of my English teachers. My senior year especially, we would prepare discussions in class for certain plays along with documentaries and write about it afterwards. We’ve had many conversations regarding my grammar, punctuation etc. but plagiarism never was one of them.
I myself love to write and if I was failed with little to no feedback id question myself too which is what actually happened. Like Shannon I eventually began to not put as much effort into my responses and essays because I felt I was being harshly graded compared to some classmates that didn’t look me. Shortly after, I started to realize that I can still love writing regardless of someone else's subjective opinion. Over the years I realized my writings were for me and in that moment I looked at that situation as a way to improve rather than impress.
In conclusion, I am pretty confident in my writing abilities and my intention is to improve overall on my grammatical writing techniques, essays and responses. If I seen Shannon today, I'd encourage her to keep going and to not base her love of writing off of not only academic proficiency, but rather on the way writing makes her feel because that’s something no one can take away from her.
