I was planning an inservice on writing for the faculty at my school. I had a double whammy against me: inservice is never popular, and inservice about writing, even less so. The time had come for the hardest part: an email to the faculty telling them what was coming and asking for their input.

I spent 45 minutes of prep time composing that email, trying to get just the right balance of cheerful tone and useful information, trying to make sense of all the notes I had taken during the planning, checking for spacing, paragraphing, typos, and all the other lapses I would be horrified to have another English teacher see in my writing. I was rather pleased with myself by the time I clicked “send.”

The first response was a single word: “Ugh.”

The colleague knew I would understand the humor he intended. But he really didn’t give me any useful feedback.

His comment caused an epiphany. My mild frustration was comparable to what happens when a student writes a paper and gets back nothing but a grade at the top, and a grade “C-” at that!

I personally provide student writers with more feedback than that, but I have known colleagues who just slap a grade at the top and hand back the papers. Still, I do tend to write notes on the papers more than I talk with the students.

I don’t care how time consuming it is — I’ve got to do more conferencing. It’s the only way I can coach the kids and prevent that frustration of not really knowing what part doesn’t work. Feedback should be more than just “Ugh!”