First Draft Advice: Don't Be Great

We’ve all seen it: the student staring at the blank GoogleDoc on their laptop, or the empty lined paper in front of them, desperately willing the words to arrive. One of my former students put it best:

“That must be why they call it a cursor; it feels like every time it blinks on the screen it’s cursing at me.”

Granted, there are some students who just flat-out refuse to write; those students to whom the act of writing anything for school has already been equated directly with pain and suffering. We will talk about those students in due time. Today, I’d like to address the students who have been crippled by the need for “first draft perfection.”

First Draft Perfection Syndrome (FDPS) is chronic among “high performing” and “ambitious” high schoolers, those tracked early into gifted and accelerated programs, but can appear within any student population. The causes of this ailment are manifold, but can ultimately be traced back to one root: frequent exposure to "high-stakes" writing environments.

This approach, unfortunately, often clashes with the philosophical rhetoric we espouse regarding writing in general. “Writing is a process of continual refinement and improvement,” we say, “all the greats went through countless drafts...do you think Shakespeare just sat down and wrote Hamlet?!” The message that’s conveyed with this approach, however, is that fearless drafting is something that’s done out there; in here those rules don’t apply.

I want to be clear: locking students into permanent grades on their first attempt at writing is contrary to the nature of recursive, reflective practice; it discourages a respect for and love of writing in general.

This is not to say, of course, that first drafts can’t or shouldn’t be assessed; in fact, taking a student’s pulse via their first attempt at a piece of writing is an essential formative assessment approach. But to treat a first draft as the be-all and end-all of the writing process establishes a dangerous mentality: don’t fly too close to the sun, young Icarus, or you will get burned. This approach tacitly encourages “safe” writing, and as a result, students are deprived of opportunities to attempt more advanced writing techniques.

I am of the rather unpopular belief that the top ten percent of our student population stagnates, on average, as much or more so than the bottom ten percent. The reason we don’t notice is because the evidence for this is in many ways obfuscated by arbitrary “ceilings” placed on high-performing students through the “far left” column of traditional writing rubrics. In short, “honors-level” students learn early in their academic careers what constitutes “A-level” writing, and in turn perpetually write to that level, rarely venturing outside the safety of that assumed paradigm. The fact that these students continue to receive high grades on their writing speaks less to their growth than it does to their systemic conformity and survival instincts. Why attempt something new, they rightfully rationalize, when this safe approach has garnered them the grades they desire?

By presenting and reinforcing an initial attempt at a piece of writing as just that: the first, awkward step in a long process, we not only contextualize the role of a writer but emphasize the metacognitive aspects of recursive writing as well. This cannot be done in a grading model that treats first (or any) drafts as final submissions; nor can it be accomplished in a classroom environment that shuttles students from point to point regardless of individual proficiency. Failure is not solely the domain of “weak” students-- it must be destigmatized and presented as a necessary step on the path to any skill development.

In giving students the opportunity to reflect on just how imperfect their first drafts are, and eliminating the negative reinforcement (or conversely, the misleading grade inflation) of first attempts in general, we provide students with a safe environment for candid self-awareness, acknowledgement of skill-deficit, and focused goal-setting for future drafts. This approach also untethers teachers from the inherent guilt in, and avoidance of, grading first submissions for what they actually are instead of what they will do to a student’s average. By supporting “conscious drafting”, we both make our students more aware of the writing process and give ourselves the freedom to assess more authentically.

My Ten Suggestions for Encouraging “Conscious Drafting” in the ELA Classroom

1. Avoid high-stakes first drafts. While one could reasonably entertain the argument of a few exceptions here, namely timed-writing in AP or standardized test preparation (another post, Matt, another post for another day), presenting first-draft writing as a “high-stakes” assessment is, in both the short- and long-term, a dangerous and philosophically compromising practice. Safe writing is, more often than not, bad writing, as torturous to write as it is to grade. By presenting the concept of drafting as one of many steps along the way to quality writing, we encourage an attitude of risk-taking in an historically risk-averse approach. Tangentially, we reinforce several “soft skills” such as perseverance, pride in craft, and developing a growth mindset.
2. Push the “90-percenters” to jump into the void. By this, I’m referring to the students who have about 90% of their paper written but refuse to finish and submit it to you. More often than not, this stems from a fear of failure developed throughout their school experience. This is one of the more overt indicators of FDPS, especially in a high-stakes writing environment. Thankfully, this can be mitigated by recognizing these patterns early and reminding students that their first draft is (to paraphrase and (erm...) sanitize the words of the great Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird) going to need significant work no matter what.
3. Reward “Functional Failure.” Challenge “Fear of Failure.” And not just in a motivational poster, lip-service sort of way. Give substantial credit for attempting a skill. Operating under a skill-based model, I give a full seventy percent of the credit for attempting (and, essentially, failing at) a skill. The student’s worst (read: first) draft is only thirty percent away from full credit. Getting on the board with that “failure credit” can often serve as catalyst for genuine skill development.
4. Conference on Every Draft. When students are held to this approach, they will read your comments and line edits; however, if your handwriting is anything like mine after a dozen papers, they’ll need to hear it from you. In a broader sense, though, conferencing provides opportunities for genuine differentiation, discussions of craft, and suggestions for next steps. In the fall, I call the conferences; by spring, they must seek me out. This brings to the fore the essential metacognitive aspect of recursive writing: if you aren’t thinking about your writing, you aren’t writing well. How could any well-meaning teacher have the time for this? Well, maybe...
5. Assign Fewer Papers. If our goal is to improve our students’ writing abilities, it is counterintuitive to have them write ten different papers, one draft apiece. We know that writing instruction must be recursive and reflective, but we often feel beholden to the flipping of the school calendar. If you must assess a different strand of skills (reading comprehension, for example) through writing, try to do so without assessing the writing skills incorporated. The National Writing Project’s Kristen Hawley Turner refers to this as the difference between “tuxedo writing” and “pajama writing.” My sophomores only have three required papers: an argumentative paper, literary criticism, and personal/creative narrative paper; yet they’re doing as much (if not more) writing due to the expectation of multiple revisions than when I assigned a paper at the end of every class novel.
6. Present Revision as an Essential Step, not a “Bonus Opportunity.” When I had subscribed to the one-and-done, high-stakes first submission approach, I often offered the opportunity of revision for a recovery of some points to those students who received low grades. I don’t do this anymore, for several reasons: it implies revision is a secondary path for poor writers; it assumes that high-scoring submissions cannot be improved; most tragically, it creates an even broader schism between “good” and “bad” students. Revision must be presented (at the very least) as a step as essential to the process as the initial writing itself, and for all students. To paraphrase English education guru Heather Rocco, genuine differentiation means that we meet every student where they are and push them to be a little better.
7. Allow Students Genuine Choice in Topics. Not every (or, I’d make the argument, any) paper needs to be “superglued” to a course text; all argumentative papers need not focus on the same issue or event. Not to belabor the point, but if our goal is the development of writing skills that are applicable beyond the limits of our class content, it shouldn’t matter what topics students are writing about. From personal experience, grading a hundred papers on the significance of Holden’s red hunting hat wasn’t exactly a sublime experience, and I found myself frequently factoring the validity of their literary interpretations into their writing skills. This generates “fuzzy grades” (which will be discussed in a later post) and is in my opinion the primary cause of evaluative ambiguity in the English classroom. “Genuine choice” does not mean “choose from a list”; it suggests an organic decision framed by the student and potentially reinforced, narrowed, or clarified by the teacher. Providing too much in the way of prompting deprives students of the opportunity to develop their own claim, purpose, or mission for their writing.
8. Discourage “Marrying” Drafts. As our students are used to submitting only one draft of their writing, there will understandably be some separation anxiety when they are encouraged to edit and revise for the next go-round. Students often “marry” their writing and are unwilling to even consider modifying their work for the greater good; some even get indignant that they did all of that work “for nothing.” Understandably, it can be quite the blow to a student’s ego when they hear that they’ll have to scrap some (or most) of their first draft; this underscores the importance of empathetic writer conferences. If this message is instilled early, however, drafts for future papers will be met with a more positive growth-mindset.
9. Parallel Failure in Writing with Failure in Everything Else. The all-state high school football player sitting in your class didn’t get to where they are without practice. Neither did the award-winning cellist, the gamer sitting back by the door, nor the artist doodling in her notebook. All of these skills started as repeated, maddeningly frustrating, but ultimately essential bouts of failure. We celebrate the forging of growth through failure in all of those fields; we avoid it in education at all costs. There are many, many reasons for this, but the end result is often the same: students maintain the unconscious belief that some kids are just good at writing (or reading, presenting, etc.) and others are not. We have a responsibility to break down this cognitive barrier, early and often, and this connection between failure in other facets of life and failure in writing can go a long way in reconciling these disparate approaches. A nice entree into this could be sharing how long it took you to feel (somewhat) confident as a teacher, and how you still struggle today. And speaking of sharing...
10. Share Your Own (Awful) First Drafts. If you think this post is bad, you should have seen it in its original state! By providing authentic glimpses into just how remarkably awful writing is when it falls out of our heads and onto the page, we not only build class trust through vulnerability, but we also demonstrate that all writing, from students, teachers, and published authors both renowned and unknown, starts as a disaster. It is our recognition of that unruly mess, and our willingness to constantly improve, that engenders true growth.

If we truly want our students to view writing as a continual exercise in improvement, we owe them the opportunity to actually demonstrate that skill in an environment that supports their efforts, both philosophically and systemically.