Peer Writing Conferences

Peer writing conferences can be a positive, valuable, confidence-building experience for students. When I attended Grant Mac, I participated in several such writing conferences under the watchful eye of Dr. Farvolden. At first, I didn't like the idea of peer conferencing. This was a brand new concept for me. I felt anxious about the process. I wasn't comfortable letting strangers see inside my head. I was even less enthusiastic about opening myself up to potential praise and constructive criticism of my work. Part of my concern stemmed from the fact that I didn't know or trust the other two people in my assigned group.
Though we had been warned not to write about anything we weren't totally comfortable sharing, it turned out that, in my group, all three of us had a tendency to write from our hearts, so to speak. In a way, I guess that was a good thing because we each had some of the same anxieties about sharing our writing. We discussed our feelings from the get-go and decided collectively that if we wanted to experience good sharing and honest responding we would have to build a climate of safety and trust. And, that's just what we did.
"Try to figure out what the writer is trying to convey before you respond with suggestions" (p. 224). After reading this quote in Routman's text, a point I remembered and thought was interesting was that during our writing conferences we were always encouraged by our prof to read our piece of writing two times. On the first read-through, peers were only to listen and not give any response. The logic here is that since peers don't have a paper copy of your writing in front of them it's hard for them to give helpful feedback with only one reading to go by. During and after the second read-through, peers were expected to be constructing responses. The big focus of these conferences was to enable each writer to walk away having gained some concrete feedback from peers to help the writer make the writing better.
I loved those conferences! They were so beneficial to bettering my writing. I always walked away feeling like I had given and had gained. I believe that all of our experiences - from feeling vulnerable to feeling empowered and confident - will help us to better understand and be able to relate to our future students and their feelings. I hope this will be encouraging to anyone who might be feeling a little anxious or uncomfortable about participating in peer writing conferences.