Directions for Essays Written in Class

 Rocks and Shoals for Essays Written in Class

 

1. The scoring matrix employed in typed papers still obtains.
2. The essay must be legible.  Print if you have to.
3. Double space in order to leave room for peer review and teacher review.  If in a moment of intellectual enthusiasm you neglect to double space once or twice, that’s okay; simply keep going.
4. Do not throw anything away.  If you have written yourself into an awkward moment, write your way out of it.  Your old teacher is looking for careful reflection (thinking, not feeling) expressed in careful writing, not a Little House on the Prairie schoolroom paper tied together with a pretty ribbon.
5. Please – no drama.  No soulful sighs, no theatrical crumpling of paper and flinging it angrily into the wastepaper basket recycling bin, no tapping the pen, no displays of artistic existential angst.  If you annoy people with any look-at-me behavior you will be required to run laps around the teacher.
6. If an assignment cannot be constructed without a first-person pronoun, minimize the use of I, me, my as best you can.  Write about the thesis you have developed, not about your feelings.