Student Voice and Risk: A Reflection on Judging the Scholastic Art and Writing Competition
by Emily Perry
I volunteered to judge student writing in the Scholastic Art and Writing competition to fulfill the professional development requirement for the Reading/Writing/Literacy master’s program in Penn’s Graduate School of Education. As an elementary teacher, I had little exposure to middle and secondary writing and felt this would be a beneficial experience to help diversify my understanding of writing across the older grades. The day began with a short introduction to the competition and we began looking at the judging criteria. We were each given a rubric with three categories: originality, technical skill, and emergence of personal voice. In each category, the student could score from a 1 to a 10. The category of personal voice immediately caught my attention because of the work I had previous course work. Creating spaces where a student’s personal voice is validated and recognized is valuable, and I was glad to see that was a significant component in the competition. Furthermore, the judging guidelines specifically stated that this writing competition allowed freedom of expression as many adolescents may be grappling with complex issues. David Schaafsma discusses the importance of such a space in Things We Cannot Say: “Writing for your Life” and Stories of English Education.He encourages students “to have the courage to take risks, get beyond the silences, speak their stories, tell what cannot be told because it must be told” (Schaafsma, 1996, p. 112). This competition allowed students to take ownership of their own self-expression and experiences.
The first genre I judged was flash fiction ninth grade to twelfth grade. I was unfamiliar with the term “flash fiction” which simply meant a highly focused short story. As I began reading, I felt tentative about “judging” their writing. After spending a semester deconstructing how student writing is often unfairly evaluated in schools, it was difficult to assign a score to each piece of writing. However, I quickly reminded myself that these students chose to enter their work in this competition. Each story was vastly different from the next ranging from historical fiction on Civil War times to self-image exploration to relationship mishaps. As I read the stories, I could not help but wonder about the writers. Their personal identities were unmistakably woven into each piece of writing in complex and intricate ways. However, the authors were completely anonymous to the judges. From a teacher’s perspective, with each story I read, I wanted to know more about the author. How were they positioning themselves in this story? What inspired them to choose this genre? How have their lived experiences influenced this piece of writing? I see writing as such a personal reflection that it seemed disembodied when the author was removed completely.
I also judged the humor and poetry categories for ninth to twelfth grades. While some writing pieces were more developed than others, one aspect of the competition that I appreciated was the risk that each of these students took in entering a piece of their writing. Some were grappling with difficult ideas or testing a new genre. However, regardless of the piece of writing’s final score, these students were taking risks and exploring writing. Judging this writing competition reinforced the power that risk can have in adolescent writing and the level of ownership it produces. Overall, judging the competition was not only enjoyable, but also inspiring as I was able to experience adolescent writing spanning a wide range of topics and genres.
Reference
Schaafsma, D. (1996) Things we cannot say: “Writing for your life” and stories in English Education. Theory into Practice, 35(2), 110-116.
Emily Perry studies Reading/Writing/Literacy at the Graduate School of Education.