At the end of part 1 of Takayoshi & Sullivan, “The Work of Assessment” goes into detail about assessing students and all the behavior that goes along with their actions in the class verbally as well as non-verbal actions such as appearance, demeanor, gender, etc…and states that that we as instructors are unable to proceed with teaching without doing these “assessments.” Assessing students in accordance to learning and teaching is one thing, but when it becomes more than assessing and more of being judge mental that’s when the line becomes stretched to the point of brokenness. After reading further, “invisible aspects of writing assessments” was brought forth in a more straight forward approach rather than the initial sugar coated advance. From all the countless lectures I’ve taken it’s now funny to read into these sections that discuss the Professor as well as the TAs overall participation in the class. The Professor being of higher distinguished stature obviously and the TAs being of “grunt” status is the typically true stereotype that is evident in college. How is a truly understandable, personal connection supposed to be made when the Professor is teaching the importance of the work being taught and the TAs are taking the work being completed by the students and grading it with the mentality that their education is on the line. I can see how stress could be incorporated, and as is stated a lot of times first year MA students are the ones chosen for this grunt work.

Ending part 1, the notion that using machines to analyze and grade student essays sends a negative message that going over student writing is not worth the time of having an individual evaluating it. Yet technology has advanced in the manner that machines can do this work, but an instructor should still be aware of the strengths and weaknesses that his/her students have in regards to writing.

Going off on a tangent and discussing part 1 (and some of part 2) overall, it seems to be e personal mentality thing and all instructors are have different thought processes and pedagogical practices. Teaching one instructor to act one way and having them become successful with that approach and another, and another, etc…is eventually going to counteract the initial goal of simply teaching how to teach. You can lead a horse to water....In the long run it comes down to personal ethos and whether or not the instructor is willing to instruct with the practices accordingly, accurately and in a manner that corresponds with the ability to get the particular message across.