A guide for YWP College Mentors

 

The Young Writers Project (YWP) is a nonprofit dedicated to improving students' writing and finding audience for their best work. YWP believes that writing is a way for young people to develop a voice, as well as skills that are necessary for success in school and in the workplace.

 

Audience and feedback are the core concepts in YWP's approach to helping students write better. YWP helps students find audience for their writing by publishing the best of it in its weekly Newspaper Series and throughout the year in other venues. It also maintains youngwritersproject.org, a Web site where 4,000 Vermont students post their stories, poems and essays, share podcasts and videos and give and receive peer feedback.   And YWP builds and supports Digital Writing Classrooms for schools, where students can share their writing with their classmates and give and receive feedback in a safe, robust multimedia format. 

 

By providing both an audience for and feedback on student writing, YWP mentors play a vital role in helping students write better.  Students are thrilled to know that someone is reading their work, even if it does not get published in the newspaper.  And they find it invaluable to get both encouragement and suggestions for improvement from an older, more experienced writer.

 

It is essential, though, that this feedback be authentic, deep and useful. YWP wants the feedback to help students reflect, revise and improve their work.

 

 

By becoming a YWP College Mentor you will have an opportunity to positively impact the work and experience of young writers in Vermont and parts of New Hampshire. Your feedback is incredibly important to students. It helps them organize their thoughts, express themselves with greater clarity, develop their ideas more fully and learn some of the basic elements of good writing. Most importantly, your feedback encourages them to keep writing. 

 

Reading and commenting on other peoples’ writing has the additional benefit of helping you become a better writer. It helps you think more like a writer and gives you a chance to hone the critical thinking skills that are necessary for writing your own creative writing and academic essays and, in class, in how you participate in discussions and debates. 

 

 

As a YWP College Mentor, you will read and comment on the student writing posted on youngwritersproject.org.  You will be listed as a college mentor on the website and we'll post a brief biography about you if you like.  Your primary task will be to read student writing posted on the site and to give feedback about it.

 

Students submit their writing on youngwritersproject.org as blog entries or submissions to the Newspaper Series. Blog entries include all genres and are posted by students independently when they want to share their work with the online writing community at YWP. As a college mentors you are free to read and comment on blog entries, but YWP asks that you focus you comment on submissions to the Newspaper Series. 

 

Submissions to the Newspaper Series are often written in response to weekly prompts provided by YWP at the beginning of each year (click here to see a list of this year’s prompts). You should familiarize yourself with these prompts, so you understand the motivation behind the work that you comment on. Many of them are submitted by whole classrooms of students as part of a weekly writing assignment at school. Others are posted by students who love to write on their own and hope to have their work published. 

 

 

As a mentor, you are not asked to evaluate student writing or judge whether you "liked" or "disliked" a piece, but rather, to view it as objectively as possible as a trained reader. What in the piece engaged you? What confused you? What made you think? What provided a vivid image? What was missing? What was distracting?

 

In your feedback to students, YWP asks that you follow the general format of ONE + ONE: tell the author ONE thing that you responded to favorably as a reader, and ONE thing you think they could do to improve it.   It’s important to include as much detail as possible when you write your comment so that the writer can understand what you are telling him/her. It is, of course, fine to mention spelling or grammar problems, but mention those last and do not make them the focus of your comment.

 

Keep in mind the age/grade of the author, visible in the keywords at the top of the piece. YWP accepts submissions from students in grades K-12 and expects that mentors will modify their expectations accordingly as they comment on the writing of students of different ages. A fifth grader’s writing should be viewed differently from that of a 10^th grader.

 

Your comments should be both encouraging AND constructive. Sometimes mentors seem to fear that students will feel discouraged if they point out an area for improvement, and they are almost apologetic when they do so. Students really appreciate that someone is willing to take the time to read their work, and they genuinely want to know how to make it better. So be sure to give a suggestion for improvement. Be truthful; but adopt a tone that is gentle and supportive.

 

As you make suggestions, think about how the student will use your comments. They may not not have the time or desire to revise this particular piece. How can they use your advice in future writing? How can they see the general wisdom of your comment?

 

Always proofread your comment to ensure that it is free of spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors. 

 

There is no one correct way to mentor students.  It takes time to develop the skill of reading to give feedback. Practice and persistence will ensure your success.

 

 

Keep in mind that online comments tend to come across more harshly and negatively than intended. You don’t have the advantage of seeing the student face-to-face and thus can’t gauge how you are being received. So be truthful, but keep a calm, pleasant, respectful tone. You do not have to be too effusive; these kids do want constructive criticism.

 

 

Sometimes students respond directly to mentor feedback. It’s fine for mentors to reply back to students if they feel inclined to do so, provided the exchange is constructive and on topic. YWP suggests that you not engage in a prolonged debate.

 

 

Yes! If you ever have questions or concerns about student work, how to comment, or about how the site works in general, please email Geoff Gevalt or Lee McIsaac.   They can be reached by phone at 324-9539 or 324-9537. They are also interested in hearing any feedback you have at any time about mentoring. 

 

At the end of the semester, please send them a brief report on your experience as a mentor. What did you like? What worked? What didn’t? How would you like to see the mentoring program changed to make it better? 

 

 

Yes! The YWP is beginning a pilot project to match mentors with students. More than simply finding and commenting on student work, you will have the chance to message directly with a student, or to consistently comment on one student's writing. Additionally, there is a new section of the forums for college mentors to discuss specific areas of the writing process with members of the YWP.

 

 

As you read through the student work on youngwritersproject.org you will come across varied abilities and many different types of writing. Some of the writing can pose challenges.  It may often seem easier to skip work that you cannot relate to or feel at a loss about how to comment on; however, you will find it more rewarding if you at least attempt to constructively comment on writing that you do not immediately understand.

 

These are a few examples of some of the writing that has been posted on YWP and their mentor comments. We have organized them around different kinds of work you might come across, and have picked good examples of responses to these types of writing.  The Mentor comments are italicized.

 

 

 

 

Through my window I see a beach. With waves crashing on the shoreline, leaving behind a trail of shiny shells. I live in a beach house or as we like to call it a shack. It’s not much of anything with its peeling evergreen paint and worn down screen door. But I love it here and nothing could make me move away from our beach. Ever since I was little it has been my dream to look out my window and see a beach. Everyday I walk on the beach inspecting every inch of it. The sand is pale white and it feels like heaven when I sink my toes into it, and the water is a perfect shade of blue. I couldn’t imagine waking up every morning and seeing a boring, run down highway through my window. This beach makes me realize what’s important in life.

 

 

 

Mentors often have trouble relating to the more raw emotional content in poems or narrative pieces. Though you will certainly find poems that seem over-dramatic or too emotional to you, it's certainly possible to relate to the work on its individual merits. Of course, any time you come across something that causes you concern, contact the editors.

 

“Twinkle,” by an 8^th grader

 

The first time I saw you,
you had a twinkle in your eyes,
a twinkle I had never seen before.
It was comforting in a way,
that made it special to be in your presence.
As time went on
we got closer,
and closer.

I never thought
you would leave the way you did.
You left me buried in the dust.
The dust left behind,
by the one you chose over me.

And now I know to cherish
all the time I shared with you.
The time that was spent
staring into your amazing eyes.

But I will never forget the twinkle.
That is now lost in the dark abyss
of our forgetful memories.

 

 

  

 

You may also come across writing that seems unedited or disorganized.  In these situations, mentors sometimes forget to address both the form and the content of the post. Do not jump to conclusions about the writer or feel obligated to proofread the entire piece. This mentor praises the information conveyed, but suggests tangible organizational changes:

“Divorce is a horrible thing and the people that have gone thought it have gone through the good once and the bad once. Tell you what you want to either A) not get a divorce at all or B) be on the good side of the divorce because it will be better for the kids. In this essay I will show you what divorce does to children of all ages, what happens to a family, how the divorce affects the parents, and what are the long term effects?

Clearly, the reality of divorce has a very large impact on all members of the family and parents who are considering divorce naturally worry about the effects on the kids. To show what happens when your parents get a divorce I am going to write about what could happen to different age groups. Kids from 0 to 2 need the safety and security from their mother. One thing to expect from babies is crankiness, regression, because the reality is that their lives are upset. For kids from 6 to 8, the divorce a undermined his or her advances in the new world and there is a strong tendency for the child to deny what is right in front of them; that is, their parents conflict. Kids from 9 to 10 are becoming more understanding of the situation and realize that they can take advantage of this like make get you to get them things make them do what you want or get want you want and also the child will try to understand more and try and help more. And finally kids from 11 to 13 may rush into risky behaviors because they can not mange life’s realities without you and also that they may deny things about life being different because they don’t want to admit they’re upset. So you see that no matter what age your kids are in the divorce it will affect them. Even to get back to a normal developmental progress the parents will have to work together to make it better again. One more thing is that make sure to talk to your kids even if they look like they are ok because they could just be hiding it and that isn’t good for them.
A divorce happens when a mom and dad don’t love or care for one another any more and they try and fix it by seeing and therapist and working out their problems but sometimes things can’t be fixed. Sometimes the kids want the divorce because they can see that the parents don’t get along because they are always fighting and can never agree on any thing or don’t even talk to one another. On the other case kids think that if they behaved better and did everything better their parents would be together. It’s normal to feel lots of different things, including anger, fear, and sadness, and even though it may seem like your whole world just fell apart, with time, things will be better again. It can feel good to know that you have two homes where you know were you are loved. One more thing is that even if you are mad make sure never to take your anger out on any one but your therapist. . . . .

 You make a lot of great points here and have gathered a good deal of information about the effects of a divorce--I especially like how you discuss the developmental stages of children and how each age experiences the changes a divorce brings to their lives. One suggestion would be to expand this section slightly to include advice for parents on how they should react to a child's particular needs. Perhaps giving one or two suggestions for each age group to highlight the positive moves parents can make?

Could use more detail

Many of the poems are anchored in complex ideas and philosophies. As always, a careful and close reading of the piece is important. 

"Who dictates who you are, what gives them the right?" by an eleventh-grader

Duck into your own world to get
through this one.
But what happens when your world just
makes it worse?

A man looks towards the ones before him
to tell him who he is.
What if the ones before him
aren't what he thought they were?

The man looks to himself to find what
he is.
What if he's not the man he thought
he was?
Living in a man he made for himself
to get away from those pressures of the world.
That man he made for himself turns out
to be worse than the original.

At that point who is the man?

What does the man do?

Does he live in the parallel man he made for himself?

Does he continue to live in that double life that he's been forced to live?

Or does he find who he really is...can he find who he is...will the man he becomes be worth it... is the journey for the man worth taking if it's just going to make it worse?

Why would this man care for who he is?
Is it to please the rest of the world?
Why does this man hesitate to find himself?
Is he afraid of what he will find?

And why does he feel compelled
to please the world?
Does he think it will make him feel
better about himself?

Who is this man...
Why is he here...
Why must he have these questions answered?
Will he be happy with the answers?
Even if he isn't, will it be better that he knows?

In a desperate attempt to find answers a man, this man, finds the questions he wants answered..

A man is what he makes of himself
...what do you make of yourself?

 The title of this poem is really profound, and sets up some of the important and interesting philosophical questions that the narrator asks in this poem: "What if the ones before him/ aren't what he thought they were?" and, of course, "What if he's not the man he thought/ he was?" The question of what happens when a person takes the time to get to know themselves is very thoughtful, and the fear that they may not like what they find is very real.

Though your words are beautiful, I'd encourage you to anchor your wonderful thoughts in details. Actual moments that the narrator could refer to, images/descriptions of the real world or metaphors that the reader could relate to would take your (excellent!) cerebral poem, and make it an even more well-rounded piece of art.

Great job!

 

 

The OWL at Purdue.  Purdue University’s online writing lab. Discusses some of the writing obstacles most frequently faced by beginning poets and fiction writers and offers suggestions for addressing these issues when working with students. Also includes links for grammar help, internet literacy and much more.

 

Elbow Room: Tweaking Response in the Secondary Classroom. A detailed description of how one teacher changed her teaching in high school and college freshman classes, emphasizing the importance of peer editing and responding to other students' work.