Slice of Life Post for March 26, 2025 (6:20-6:51) by Barb Edler

I’m a cowpoke. Yep, an online tutor for Kirkwood Community College for their online writing platform fondly called KCCCOW. Hey, I live in the Midwest. The acronym stands for Kirkwood Community College Center’s Online Writing.

Being a cowpoke means checking my Kirkwood email periodically throughout the day. Most of the emails I receive to review a paper arrive after 6 p.m. so during this slice of my day, I’m generally checking for any requests.

Students will usually send a note explaining what kind of advice they are looking for, but I often have several questions after reading their paper. (I’ll keep this nice:) One question that often pops into my mind is whether or not they need to be citing sources using APA or MLA. Another is whether or not they should be using first person point of view. Writing subjectively is a mystery for many writers.

Most students need help with sentence fluency and organization. Writing a thesis statement intended or implied can be challenging. I remember spending plenty of time instructing students how to write a thesis.

The greatest challenge is not being able to review the instructor’s assignment. If I could read the expectations, it would help immensely. I know I used to give very clear and detailed expectations along with graphic organizers to help with structuring an essay. Plus, I provided plenty of model essays to further demonstrate the format or style they were attempting to emulate. Needless to say, I ask several questions when sending back my suggestions to the student.

Being a cowpoke is fairly easy, but writing is difficult. Giving students timely and specific feedback will enable students’ writing success. As a seasoned instructor, I suggest chunking the focus of your feedback. Do not try to “fix” everything. It’s too much. Three-minute conferences can also be beneficial. As a college instructor, it is easy to have students schedule office time to provide individual conferences, but I know this can be difficult in a high school setting, etc. However, if you have a teaching partner or someone to collaborate with, I bet a plan could be devised so that one or both teachers could simultaneously provide feedback while the other students are completing peer reviews.

So, life like this post is often boring. My apologies if you’re still reading. One final bit of advice: students need lots of writing practice. Not everything should become a final product. Developing a safe writing space is as valuable as supporting student voices. May writing with your students be a joy rather than a toil.

I often fail at writing, but I do not take rejection too hard for very long. I just love to write even when it’s sharing a slice of my boring life.

Here’s a sijo I wrote, and I can see why it did not win any prizes, but writing a sijo is fun even when it’s a failure.

Soulful Flight

When I dream, my spirit soars
across green fields, blue mountain streams.

My heart sings, sweet freedom rings—
a fancy flight on angel wings!

When I wake, my blest dreams dissolve,
locked behind gray prison walls.