Well, I was in the house at Nixa High School for the LAD Fair. I have to admit, English 405 is a lot of work, but this should be an addition to the class. It only took four hours total. Why you might ask?
We will see so many terribly written papers in our careers, in every genre possible, that it is nice to be exposed to what students and faculty feel to be the best. My group was responsible for judging narration, dialogue, short fiction, original novel, graphic novel, and written work with/without illustration. We found many gems, and some that were obviously still "diamonds in the rough" (Aladdin).
I was pleasantly surprised to find myself grading in a group of three, the other two judges being professors at none other than Missouri State. It was an opportunity to judge and interact with these individuals on a peer-peer level, as opposed to faculty-student. It was also easier because they were only slightly older than me.
I think one of the most amazing things that happened was the final decision about a winner. The groups must select winners in their individual categories and award placements accordingly. The final step is to take the first place in each category and determine a sole winner from the lot.
When it came to this final decision, I had chosen a graphic novel as my favorite and Brian Shawver had chosen a play as his. The bad thing, if it is one, is that we both thought the other had chosen an exceptional work, We couldn't decide. Ah, the beauty of number, we had three in our group! When it came down to Matthew Calihman, he of course, agreed with me....and Brian. We had two winners and we couldn't choose between them.
We decided to make them both winners and submitted the form with both entries on the form. We were unsure of the finality of our decision, and were unsure if it would be overturned, but we gave it a shot.
I liked the experience a lot, and enjoyed the reaction of the other two judges. For them to agree with me on the importance and merit of the graphic novel, instilled me with a renewed confidence and pride in my abilities.
As if I needed an ego boost!
~Stan
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3 comments:
would MUCH rather have been there than grueling over the praxis....too bad the schedules conflicted.
Sounds awesome! Too bad I didn't hear about LAD until this semester.
That's a great experience. I have been wanting to volunteer there for a couple years, but have always been busy on that day. Im glad that you got a lot out of it as an English teacher.
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