No offense? None Taken!

I've got my students' workshop responses back, and I'm pleasantly surprised with what I've found. :)  To "set them up," I gave them a detailed guide to workshopping for our first essay: a complete set of rules/guidelines as to what they should be looking for, what not to comment on (grammar), and how they can be of help to their fellow students by offering commentary in full sentences and telling them what they see as a reader. All of that changed for essay 2. This past workshop (Nov. 14), I'd set up the room as I'd done before: I moved the chairs so that there could only be 4 to a group, and I got out my markers. However, instead of writing up a list of rules or bringing up my guidelines to project on the screen, I asked my students to take five minutes and write their own guidelines.
*blank stares*

Rules:
1. No grammar notes.
2. Check for interesting ideas/expanding on ideas.
3. Check for biases
4. Check citations

What ended up happening was this: one student walked up to the board to write her rule down (rule 1), and she ended up staying up there to write the other 3. Nobody else got up - they just told her what to write. Because it was just a rough draft, I completely stayed out of this process. I provided the markers, and said nothing as the rules were written. When my student had been standing there in silence for a sufficient amount of time, I asked if they were good with just those 4 rules, they said they were, and then they began (sans strict guidelines) in a Joshua Shynn-esque manner: the author read the paper, the students listened, offered commentary, asked questions, and then the author was given a chance to speak up. Once they were finished, they left.

Wednesday, one of my students spoke up in class and said that she was frustrated with the workshop because she saw that she'd been too dependent on me to give the questions. Here's a segment of her Journal response:

     I got a lot out of our first workshop, so I was really looking forward to the one on Monday, November 14th. However, the workshop on Monday was not very helpful. I think that it was hard for us to  critique each other's papers because the guidelines were very linient - -we didn't know exactly what to look for. At the first workshop, my paper was full of marks which included suggestions and ideas on ways that i could improve. However, on Monday, I found that when I received my papers back, there were little to no marks on any of them. I was pretty frustrated, because I feel like my paper could use a lot of work, but I'm kind of lost and overwhelmed with where to start making changes. This is a learning experience for us, though, because it is critical that we learn how to do things on our own, and find a way to do them well. Even though I don't feel like much was accomplished, it was good for us to learn how to construct questions and procedures on our own, so we can do better at it next time.

Another of my students felt empowered:
     I noticed in my group, one of my peers had a good topic, but they did not state a clear thesis sentence. I was able to explain to them that a reader would be lost and lose interest in their paper if they did not have a good structured thesis statement. This amazed me because it showed me that I learned what to look for in a paper, since I have always had low confidence in essays I write. After this workshop, it showed me that I have learned in this class how to think critically when starting a paper so that way in the future I know how to start my essay and keep the ideas I have in flow for the reader to understand and become interested in as they read. 

A third student just really likes workshopping:
     The work shops we do to review each others papers are extremely helpful especially for me. One of the ways its helps me the most is reading my paper out loud. It's not because I need help in public speaking but because when I read my essay I can see my errors. It's not just spelling and grammar errors I find but also sentence flow[...]. Also when we read our paper out loud we think of, or at least I think of, great ideas or sentences that could have fit in my paper. The second most helpful thing I get from workshopping is the peer editing. It was easier to head criticisms from your friends and classmates then from a professor, no offense M's Ellis you are super cool and down to earth but your still a professor, and I don't want to hear that somethings wrong from you, professor. 

We do have another workshop coming up on Wednesday, and I'm going to help them come up with questions this time. Also, I'm going to open a discussion board for weekend discussion should they choose to talk with each other over the weekend as their paper is due next Monday. What I wanted them to gain from the experience has been gained. The majority of them either questioned their authority and wrote what they should have said, or they wrote about what a positive experience they had in finding out that they were capable of critiquing a piece without my help.  :)  I only had one student write about all the things he didn't say that he wanted to - that the paper he read was biased, boring, and lacking in research... to which I wrote on his journal: "If you feel your peers' papers aren't meeting the expectations you feel they ought to be, TELL THEM! Peer workshops are all about giving positive & negative feedback so that your peers can succeed! Wouldn't you want them to tell you if your paper were biased before turning it in and getting the same comments from me?"