Thinking Rhetorically About Tonight's Common Core State Standards Objectives

I think it is interesting to place items next to one another to see what sort of conversation they will incite. I suppose, subconsciously, I did this for my Teaching the Composing Processes course with graduate students this semester. The task for the class is to begin thinking about how to best design writing instruction that adheres to best practices in the field through research and practitioner experience. Of course, this comes at a time when Common Core State Standards (re)direct the writing expectations in K-12 schools.

We read Gallagher's Write Like This and are discussing Chapter 4: Evaluate and Judge tonight in class. This, as it happens to be, accompanies Delores Perin's chapter on "College and Career Readiness" in Best Practices in Writing Instruction. Oddly, I also have students bringing in a draft of a sestina tonight.
My question to think about tonight is: "Can a poem be evaluative and judgmental or is it our job to evaluate and judge the poem?"

My National Writing Project influence has taught me that the best way to teach students the skills we expect of them is to assign them to write, write with them, and then provide many lessons to lead them towards reaching an outcome. Looking at CCSS, however, the bias towards genres of analytical and informative writing are emphasized, because (as Perin points out) writing creatively and personally is not a common practice for college and career writing. This opinion is what I hope to challenge with my teachers. Can't a teacher encourage creative and personal writing at the same time they also teach writing that judges and evaluates?

As an exercise, we will listen to a variety of spoken word poems and view several commercials that vary their rhetorical devices. The commercial above is listed as "the saddest commercial ever" and, although controversial, I plan to use it capture the ways genres often blend to make meaning. Here, I'm recognizing the scholarship of Rhet/Comp that, I presume, was most likely not at the table of those who shaped the new standards.

No. I'm not a critic of CCSS and I welcome nation-wide objectives. Still, I'm hoping to train educators to think above and beyond such standards to truly create critical, questioning students.

A lofty goal, perhaps, but that is what's in store for tonight's class.

It's October, everyone. Have you picked your apples yet?