Reading Student Writing: Confessions, Meditations, and Rants

Lad Tobin has a decidedly psychological take on life and a characteristically witty point of view on most subjects-especially his own writing and teaching. He also has a great deal of personal insight and story telling skill that make his books, articles, and presentations notable. In Reading Student Writing, he gets to the heart of teaching writing through a blend of humor, memoir, reflection, classroom examples, and student writing. While funny and irreverent, he tackles the serious and complex issues of how to read-really read-student writing and how to read ourselves as teachers.

He organizes his book around three main topics:

• forms of student writing that we find particularly problematic
• the ways in which our values, assumptions, and unconscious associations shape our readings of student writing
• how our assessments of student writing are inseparable from our attitudes toward the discipline of composition as a whole.

In the end, Tobin opens up the world of writing, both student writing and teacher scholarship. He invites us into a place that thrives on dialogue, diversity, and hybridity, that is more flexible, nuanced, and realistic. He sets an example for reading our classrooms, for writing-or rewriting-ourselves.