CHAPTER 18.

ENGAGING IN RESISTANT
GENRES AS ANTIRACIST
TEACHER RESPONSE

Shane Wood
University of Southern Mississippi

This essay focuses on teacher response through contract grading and ex-
plains how rhetorical genre studies (RGS) offers opportunities to inves-
tigate teacher response in antiracist writing assessment ecologies. How
do grading contracts change how teachers respond to student writing?
How can we better understand teacher response as dynamic genres in
antiracist writing assessment ecologies?

The practices of giving letter-grades to language performances and responding

to student writing colonize our students just as they engage meaningfully with
them. Letter-grades signal who has authority over classroom assessment, and
teacher response has been a site for appropriating student writing. Antiracist
writing assessment ecologies that use alternate assessment practices and genres
(e.g., grading contracts) may democratize, and even attempt to decolonize, the
writing classroom, but they too have limitations and constraints. Classroom
writing assessment practices, including teacher response, are never neutral.
Teacher response to student writing can perpetuate inequalities and inequities
just as much as assigning letter-grades on language practices reinforce power and
control. Genres of response (e.g., marginal comments, rubrics) help establish
meaningful exchanges between teachers and students but can also be a source
of harmful communication and interactions, such as privileging habits of White
language over other linguistic variations (e.g., Black English). As rhetorical genre
studies (RGS) helps us see, genres are “reproducers of culture—in short, ideolog-
ical” (Bawarshi & Reiff, 2010, p. 27).
So far, we have good work on grading contracts through antiracist frame-
works, such as how grading contracts can challenge White discourse (Inoue,
2019), but we don’t know how grading contracts change the way teachers re-
spond to student writing and how response functions in antiracist writing as-
sessment ecologies. How do grading contracts change how teachers respond to

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student writing, and how can we better understand teacher response as dynamic
genres in antiracist writing assessment ecologies?
Grading contract research often focuses on contract construction (Daniele-
wicz & Elbow, 2009; Inoue, 2019), how contracts are implemented in classes
(Moreno-Lopez, 2005; Shor, 1996), how contracts are a part of a larger ecology
(Inoue, 2015), or student perception and consequences for using grading con-
tracts (Inman & Powell, 2018; Medina & Walker, 2018). Most of the literature
makes an argument for grading contract use, but there is little written on what
it is like to respond to student writing or how teacher response can comple-
ment grading contract ecologies. Grading contracts, of course, vary in design
and implementation. In short, grading contracts are assessment genres that re-
flect pedagogical values (e.g., negotiation, compassion) and classroom initiatives
(e.g., social justice, antiracism), shape identities (e.g., of student, teacher), and
help carry out particular actions and consequences. It would seem likely, then,
that grading contracts would change the nature of teacher response because the
values, actions, and consequences of contract ecologies are different than tradi-
tional assessment practices; for example, traditional assessment ecologies often
emphasize a “product” that is frequently connected to writing “quality” which is
tied to Standard Edited American English (SEAE).
I focus on teacher response through contract grading by paying special atten-
tion to antiracist writing assessment ecological theory and RGS. Both can serve
as frameworks for understanding response in the context of contract grading.
Antiracist writing assessment theories have reconceived how we might approach
assessment through grading contracts. RGS helps establish a more nuanced view
of response as dynamic genres which allow us to see how power is situated within
response practices/performances and how genre uptake affects communication
between teachers and students: “Genres have the power to help or hurt human
interaction, to ease communication or to deceive, to enable someone to speak or
to discourage someone from saying something different” (Devitt, 2004, p. 1). I
propose an analytical and pedagogical framework that can be used to critically
examine genres of response. This framework investigates how habits of White
language can be embodied in response genres that circulate in classroom ecolo-
gies. In short, the framework provides teachers and students an opportunity to
study response and to resist White language supremacy.

COMPLEMENTING GRADING CONTRACT

VALUES WITH TEACHER RESPONSE
In Alternatives to Grading Student Writing, Stephen Tchudi (1997) describes dif-
ferences between responding to student writing and assigning grades and reflects

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on the tension between teacher instincts and institutional pressures. He shares

how teachers have an inclination to move away from grades and move toward
response practices. Tchudi (1997) writes that response offers the “greatest range
of freedom because it is naturalistic, growing directly from readers’ reaction to a
text” (xii). He sees response as good and preferable because teachers have more
agency in responding to student writing, which comes from a lower degree of
institutional pressure. Antiracist writing assessment ecological theory explains
why institutional pressure is bad: Institutional pressure is a pressure toward a
system of White racial habits of language and judgement that tends to ignore
the politics that create those very habits as preferable and simultaneously uses
those White biases as a way to punish some students and privilege others. The
standards for judging language are racist because they privilege a White, middle-
to upper-class, monolingual English user.
The institutional pressure to judge language can be minimized by shifting
the classroom assessment practice. Teachers can adopt contract grading, for ex-
ample, which delays the production and distribution of grades, and thus de-
creases the pressure to judge language. So grading contracts offer different peda-
gogical affordances and assessment values than traditional assessment ecologies.
The assessment values – the priorities and assumptions in an assessment ecology
– influence the nature of teacher response. Labor-based grading contracts, for
example, value negotiation and compassion (Inoue, 2019). Teachers can use la-
bor-based grading contracts to invite students to participate in negotiating labor
standards, tasks, and responsibilities. Teacher response to student writing, subse-
quently, ought to come alongside labor-based grading contracts to complement
its assessment values (e.g., negotiation and compassion). This interconnected re-
lationship between response and assessment values should help support the larg-
er ecology. So far, we don’t have much research that talks about the relationship
between teacher response and labor-based grading contracts or how an emphasis
on labor, negotiation, and compassion informs how teachers construct responses
and what effects it has on student writing. Marginal comments in a labor-based
assessment ecology might contain a more negotiable tone that asks questions as
opposed to directive statements because the ecology seeks to minimize teacher
control over student writing. A teacher might ask a student in the margins, “Do
you want to explore this idea more, or do you think it gets at your purposes?”
This kind of marginal comment embodies a true sense of negotiation. Or may-
be the teacher writes an end comment that praises the students’ creativity and
perseverance in the revision process, thus embodying compassionate practices.
Knowing the assessment values can help restructure the purposes for re-
sponding to student writing in an ecology and can provide a way to examine
whether response aligns with such values. Understanding teacher response as

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a genre that circulates in assessment ecologies, interacts with other genres, and
impacts people within the ecology seems important. If response genres are repro-
ducers of cultures, how can teachers use response to support contract ecologies
that value antiracism? It would seem likely that teacher response in an antirac-
ist writing assessment ecology would actively deconstruct monolingual English
ideologies that circulate in traditional writing classrooms. Teachers might choose
to use marginal comments to encourage students to use their regional dialects
and language habits as a means for meeting or intentionally subverting genre
expectations. Classroom assessment practices, including response, would need
to align itself with antiracist aims in order to complement the antiracist grading
contract ecology.
Asao B. Inoue (2015) identifies seven interconnected elements that help con-
struct antiracist writing assessment practices. Inoue’s framework shows the rela-
tionships that exist within and beyond classroom writing assessment systems and
the power and politics embedded in assessment practices. He invites teachers to
think through the nuances of judging language and asks them to construct more
“critical, sustainable, and fair” ecologies (Inoue, 2015, p. 119). The seven elements
help inform and organize the assessment ecology and can be used to investigate the
“fuller conditions under which [students’] writing is judged” (p. 174):
Power: the ways of disciplining and control, the instruments,
techniques, procedures, and tactics that produce docility and
control people
Purposes: the explicit reasons for judging and assessing
Places: where and when do things happen, the figurative and
material locations that de(con)fine people and their learning,
the locations of shock and change
People: agents in the ecology (e.g., student and teacher)
Processes: what and how things are done, labor practices
Parts: codes, constructs, and artifacts (e.g., texts, rubrics,
feedback)
Products: learning, results, consequences, and decisions

One reason this ecological framework is important is because it shows how

teacher response is one genre in a much broader system. RGS has used the terms
“genre systems” (Bazerman, 1994) and “genre ecologies” (Spinuzzi & Zachry,
2000) to describe the nature of genres working within and beyond broader
structures. In Inoue’s ecological framework, teacher response is considered a
“part,” an artifact, text, document, or instrument. As RGS helps us see, response

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can be better understood as dynamic genres that help make visible values, biases,
actions and interactions, and power within a genre system or ecology.
Inoue (2019) also focuses on how classroom assessment practices, such as
labor-based grading contracts, can challenge power indifferences and standards
that privilege Whiteness. His ecological framework (Inoue, 2015) does not ac-
count for the intricacies, complexities, and inner workings of teacher response.
It does not indicate how response shifts in contract grading ecologies and how
genres of response carry uptakes, “complex, often habitualized, socio-cognitive
pathways that mediate our interactions with others and the world” (Bawarshi,
2010, p. 199). Together, antiracist writing assessment theory and RGS offer a
more nuanced perspective on how to investigate teacher response to student
writing in grading contract ecologies. It’s possible we risk undermining grading
contract ecologies, and contract values, if we don’t recognize how ecologies and
genres ought to agree.
Jane Danielewicz and Peter Elbow’s 2009 article, one of the most cited in
grading contract literature, creates an assumption that responding to student
writing doesn’t change when teachers use grading contracts. Danielewicz and El-
bow (2009) describe how they give evaluative feedback and respond to “strengths
and weaknesses . . . just as [they] used to do and as most teachers do” (p. 247).
They fail to acknowledge how response ought to shift to complement new assess-
ment ecologies and values. This oversight is problematic because it can lead to a
fractured classroom and fractured relationships between teachers and students.
For example, if a teacher chooses to use contracts to resist monolingual English
ideologies and to invite students to use linguistic varieties, then decides to write
a marginal comment telling the student to use “formal” language, or consider
their “academic” tone when the student chose to use their regional dialect, the
teacher’s response undermines the assessment ecology and values (e.g., in an an-
tiracist writing assessment ecology). The feedback, which might have been con-
structed in a traditional assessment ecology that values SEAE, compromises the
antiracist grading contract ecology and sends mixed messages to students. This
kind of comment counters antiracist beliefs about writing and language. It also
positions the teacher in an authoritative role over linguistic patterns, much like
traditional assessment ecologies that give power to teachers to judge language.
As teachers, we need to make sure our responses are complementing our
assessment ecology and values. As we adopt new and alternative classroom as-
sessment practices (e.g., grading contracts), and as the ecology shifts, genres of
response used to carry out actions within those contexts need to evolve. RGS
offers genre uptake which can be used to encourage teachers and students to
consider the social-historical-material conditions that help construct genres of
response in grading contract ecologies.

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GENRE UPTAKE: POSITIONING TEACHER RESPONSE

IN ANTIRACIST WRITING ASSESSMENT ECOLOGIES

RGS provides opportunities to know more about genres, what genres do, and
how genres interact, thus offering the ability to examine how response practic-
es/performances fit within antiracist writing assessment ecologies that can help
complement contract grading. RGS frames genres as dynamic rhetorical forms
(Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995), as social actions (Miller, 1984), and as organiz-
ing structures (Yates & Orlikowski, 2002). RGS has explained genre functions
and interactions through genre sets (Devitt, 1991), genre systems (Bazerman,
1994), and genre ecologies (Spinuzzi, 2004; Spinuzzi & Zachry, 2000). Charles
Bazerman (1997) describes genres as “ways of being . . . frames for social action”
(p. 19). Genres help mediate actions and relationships; genres are social, typi-
fied, recognizable, and they organize and construct social realities. RGS helps us
see how genres of response (e.g., marginal comments, end comments, rubrics)
invite different social actions and consequences. This allows us to study how
responses are relational and performative, and how genres of response can help
or harm communication between us and our students.
These characteristics of genres, of course, are also characteristics of writing
assessment ecologies (e.g., relational, fluid, interactive). Inserting genre termi-
nology implicates other ecological elements, like how genres mediate relations
of power (Schryer, 2002; Seawright, 2017). RGS can help explain what’s hap-
pening in assessment ecologies when teacher response occurs. For instance, after
reading a teacher’s comment and being confused, a student might revisit the
writing prompt to see if they misunderstood some aspect of the assignment. This
interaction between the student’s paper, teacher’s response, and writing prompt
shows how genres inform one another in a broader system or ecology and how
genres can facilitate and coordinate action. The student takes up, reads, and
interprets one genre (e.g., teacher response) and then consults another genre
(e.g., writing prompt). Understanding teacher response as dynamic genre per-
formances allows us to explore the multiplicity of factors that inform what hap-
pens when we respond to student writing. This nuanced view of response helps
us investigate genre “uptake” (Freadman, 1994). Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo
Reiff’s (2010) comprehensive book on RGS provides a definition that can help
us better understand how uptake is beneficial to analyzing response in grading
contract ecologies: “Uptake helps us understand how systematic, normalized
relations between genres coordinate complex forms of social action” (p. 86).
Bawarshi (2016) adds how uptake “challenges us to consider history, materiality,
embodiment, improvisations, emotion, and other agentive factors” (“Account-
ing for Genre Performances”).

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RGS gives us something that hasn’t been offered in grading contract litera-
ture and antiracist writing assessment theory yet: A means to explore and identi-
fy the complex social-historical-material conditions of response and an opportu-
nity to identify the uptakes that exist through response practices/performances.
Danielewicz and Elbow’s (2009) understanding of response in grading contract
ecologies, for example, doesn’t account for the history, materiality, emotion, and
other agentive factors at play when teachers respond to student writing or when
students take up, interpret, and use response. Teachers and students have com-
plex histories and memories giving and receiving feedback which can affect and
inform their attitudes on current response practices and performances.
For example, a first-year writing student gets their paper back and sees a mar-
ginal comment that tells them to provide more evidence for a claim. The student
has experienced this comment before in a high school English class. So the sit-
uation produces a particular kind of uptake. When the student experiences this
marginal comment, even in a new assessment ecology with different values, they
do the same thing as before—they decide to provide more evidence to support
their claim because the marginal comment is connected to the students’ history
and the actions and consequences that came from their previous experience.
Those experiences, often, come from traditional grading ecologies that contain
different values and relations of power between teachers and students. These
histories and memories have implications for how response is received and taken
up in grading contract ecologies.
And these experiences with response have different consequences for differ-
ent student identities based on the ways in which language was judged. Dan-
ielewicz and Elbow (2009) don’t consider how traditional writing assessment
practices—judging language based on quality—are connected to standards that
privilege a specific kind of languaging, and thus a specific student identity (e.g.,
White, monolingual English user). The A letter-grade, according to their grad-
ing contract, is reserved for students who demonstrate an ability to meet qual-
ity-based standards that are set or determined by them, as teachers. But really,
that standard is centered on social-historical-material conditions that extend
well-beyond Danielewicz and Elbow’s perception on writing quality. Quality
is constructed on linguistic prejudice—implicit or explicit language standards
(e.g., SEAE) and biases that privilege White bodies.
So we can’t respond in the same ways as we used to through grading contracts
because the system, and thus the values, consequences, and power relationships
between teacher and student, are different. We need to investigate how responses
are constructed and conditioned by traditional assessment values and judge-
ments of language—and how students experience and remember these genre
performances in grading contract ecologies. People, places, and languages are

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interconnected, and systems and structures are racialized (Inoue, 2015). As writ-
ing teachers, we work in and through conditions that have established language
hierarchies and standards that inform our responses.
The concept of uptake helps us better understand actions and consequences
in antiracist writing assessment ecologies and ecological elements (e.g., power,
place, people) by calling us to examine specific genres of response (e.g., marginal
comments, end comments, rubrics) and how those genres serve as a connection
between a person’s actions, memory, relationship with others, and within his-
torical, social, cultural, and linguistic moments and contexts (Bawarshi, 2016).
Teacher response is “situated, embedded, enmeshed, and imbricated in social and
material contexts” (Dryer, 2016).

HABITS OF WHITE LANGUAGE

I have argued so far that writing teachers need to change their response prac-
tices if they choose to use contract grading because the ecology is made dif-
ferently, and the elements are different in nature and function. Some of the
most common values in grading contract ecologies include emphases on agency,
antiracism, intrinsic motivation, labor, effort, participation, compassion, equi-
ty, negotiation, and democratizing learning. Genres of response are bearers of
meaning from cultural and social ecologies, sites inside and outside the class-
room that are ultimately influenced by how systems and structures accept and
value language use. It’s possible for response genres in antiracist grading contract
ecologies to support the deployment of habits of White language even while the
class works to resist dominant discourses.
One difficulty teachers encounter are the contexts and conditions in which
they’ve been trained to respond to student writing. We are informed by our
linguistic habits and dispositions, “which are not simply linguistic but embod-
ied” (Inoue, 2019, p. 278). Many of us have been conditioned to identify and
respond to “strengths and weaknesses,” which is how Danielewicz and Elbow
(2009) describe their practices in grading contract ecologies. We have been en-
couraged to evaluate strengths and weaknesses in students’ writing, so they can
further engage in the writing process. And these kinds of responses become ha-
bitual. Part of the problem exists in the conditions and the standards used to
determine what is strong and weak. Strengths and weaknesses relative to what
set of language habits? Teachers use these terms to rank, sort, and respond to
students. Many of us have used traditional assessment practices at one time or
another to teach and assess student writing. Many of us have been educated
through traditional assessment ecologies where the teacher has had the power to
decide what the strengths and weaknesses are. We have histories and memories

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that inform how we take up and respond to student writing. In short, universi-
ties—sites constructed historically for and from Whiteness—have influenced our
concept of strengths and weaknesses in student writing and our perception on
what language habits are strong and which ones are weak.
As teachers, we invite students to perform and play with language all the
time. We often ask students to deploy certain habits of language that will help
them take up, navigate, and perform writing tasks based on rhetorical situations
(e.g., purpose, audience, context). After asking students to write, we respond
to the linguistic habits they chose to use. What’s problematic is when teachers
ask students to perform the same version of language while not acknowledging
language differences, dialects, and linguistic varieties; what’s problematic is not
talking about the historical, social, and political power enmeshed in language
and what students are being asked to do; what’s problematic is an unseen stan-
dard or assumption that privileges one linguistic pattern (e.g., regional, social,
cultural), which takes the form of SEAE. As Vershawn Ashanti Young (2010)
says, “It’s ATTITUDES. It be the way folks with some power perceive other
people’s language” (p. 110). We are always-already asking students to deploy
habits of language. So the question becomes what habits of language are teachers
promoting and what attitudes do they have toward language differences, dia-
lects, and linguistic varieties. When teachers respond to strengths and weakness-
es in student writing, attitudes and biases exist about how students are choosing
to deploy language.
Identifying students’ strengths and weaknesses is important in Danielewicz
and Elbow’s (2009) grading contract, specifically between the A and B grade,
because it is attached to traditional ecologies that reward students who can pro-
duce or imitate one kind of languaging. Danielewicz and Elbow (2009), there-
fore, reserve the A letter-grade for students who can meet a specific linguistic
standard by acknowledging they respond “just as [they] used to do and as most
teachers do,” thus indicating a connection to their previous traditional assess-
ment ecologies (p. 247). This is one example of how teachers can adopt grading
contract ecologies and use responses (e.g., rubrics) that embody traditional as-
sessment values (e.g., quality), reinforce power indifferences between teachers
and students, and privilege the deployment of one version of language, and thus
a specific identity. Rubrics, for example, might help teachers respond to student
writing and be a marker for labor/participation in grading contract ecologies.
Teachers can problem-pose rubrics by examining how many expectations are
tied to unseen standards connected to White middle- to upper-class monolin-
gual English users. Examining academic discourse and assessment genres often
reveals manifestations of Whiteness which influence how we see and respond to
student writing.

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Inoue (2019) identifies six traits of Whiteness that can be used to analyze
how power is embedded in judgments of language:
an unseen, naturalized, orientation to the world;
hyperindividualism;
a stance of neutrality, objectivity, and apoliticality;
an individualized, rational, controlled self;
a focus on rule-governed, contractual relationships;
a focus on clarity, order, and control. (p. 27)
Standards associated with quality which are closely connected to SEAE ben-
efit middle- to upper-class White students:
The dominant discourse that informs those judgments are
already constructed by racial structures, for instance, a white
racial habitus, or a dominant white discourse, which we might
for now understand as a set of linguistic codes and textual
markers that are often not a part of the discourses of many
students of color, working class students, and multilingual
students, but is a part of many white, middle-class students’
discourses. (Inoue, 2015, p. 17)
The first habit, the unseen, naturalized orientation to the world is often mar-
ried to others, like clarity, order, and control. This means that when Danielewicz
and Elbow (2009) say they still respond to strengths and weaknesses, they are
not acknowledging with students where their habits come from, especially when
they award an A letter-grade based on “quality.” It’s easy for students in that ecol-
ogy to accept the teacher’s ideas as universally right. And it’s easy for students to
be colonized by a discipline and classroom that only make present a dominant
White discourse. Inoue (2015) asserts that racism is pervasive in writing classes
because “most if not all writing courses . . . promote or value first a local SEAE
and a dominant white discourse, even when they make moves to value and hon-
or the discourses of all students” (p. 14). Like Inoue, Laura Greenfield (2011)
connects SEAE with White bodies: “It is no coincidence that the languages spo-
ken by racially oppressed people are considered to be inferior in every respect
to the languages spoken predominantly by those who wield systemic power:
namely, middle and upper-class white people” (p. 36).
Inoue (2015) and Greenfield (2011) see how academic institutions and writ-
ing classrooms demand students produce a dominate discourse linked to White
bodies and then “judge them on their abilities to approximate it” (Inoue, 2015,
p. 31). And they challenge writing teachers to consider the material conditions

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of the classroom and students’ lives. This reminds us, once again, to think about
the habits of language we ask students to deploy through writing tasks and con-
sider our attitudes and biases about language difference and linguistic varieties.
Through RGS, genre uptake invites us to consider histories, memories, and ma-
terial conditions, too. What has shaped our understandings and dispositions to
language? How have we been conditioned to see and respond to student writing?
Whose language or linguistic habits have been historically privileged in academ-
ic institutions?
Genres of response can circulate and reinforce White biases without teachers
being aware of the impact or power indifferences being created through response
practices/performances because of the histories, memories, and material condi-
tions that have shaped our understanding of language and writing. For example,
a writing teacher might not comment on students’ writing asking them to use
SEAE, but those biases might be embodied through marginal comments tell-
ing them to “be clearer.” When a teacher chooses to respond this way, they are
usually referring to meeting a standard of clarity that either conforms to White
academic discourse or conforms to their own disposition of language which has
been informed, more often than not, through trainings in academic contexts
that embody Whiteness. The comment indicates a deficit—a students’ lack of
knowledge and ability to perform to a certain standard (e.g., SEAE). This kind
of teacher response privileges a specific type of languaging and thus student
identity—middle- to upper-class White students. Inoue (2015) explains how
writing teachers “cannot avoid this racializing of language when we judge writ-
ing” (p. 33).
So responses are never just about strengths and weaknesses because we know
more about how dominant or hegemonic language practices make particular
ways with words “strong” and others “weak,” and that these understandings
are perceptions filtered through White biases inherent in how language must
be judged. Genres of responses are racialized and have racialized consequences.
Habits of White language can be investigated through uptake which materializ-
es through genres of response interacting between and beyond grading contract
ecologies as well as the conditions and communication by which those inter-
actions occur and are remembered. Habits of White language can be traced
through the exchanges between assessment genres within the ecology, as well
as other genres, and the way those genres are acting and being acted upon by
people. This kind of analysis is tied to genre uptake. Even though genre up-
take is difficult to pin down and study because “uptake processes are largely
non-visible,” the writing classroom can still be a site for uncovering histories
and memories of genre performances and for asking students to intentionally
reflect on their own uptakes (Bastian, 2015).

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Writing teachers can start by considering how teacher response is already a

product of a racialized structure. White bodies have always been invited to par-
ticipate within U.S. universities, which means that White bodies have shaped
the standards and the judgments of language. They have shaped the responses
and patterns for responding to student writing. SEAE has historically been val-
ued as the superior form of language in U.S. university contexts. This is no co-
incidence. SEAE is associated with habits of White language. SEAE is not better
than Black English. SEAE is just tied to White bodies, and White bodies have
historically had power in higher education. Thus, response practices can support
the deployment of habits of White language which harm students of color even
in grading contract ecologies. So we have to think about the patterns we use to
respond to student writing and the consequences of those patterns.

PATTERNS OF RESPONSE
Most teachers establish patterns for response. Danielewicz and Elbow (2009) write
how they respond by identifying strengths and weaknesses in student writing. I
want to consider Summer Smith’s (1997) good work on the genre of the end
comment because her research helps provide a more nuanced understanding of the
patterns teachers develop through response as well as the actions and consequences
of those patterns. Even though Smith doesn’t use grading contracts, her research is
valuable in its intersection of RGS and teacher response. I’m attempting to tie her
work into more recent complex views on genre uptake. She writes:
The teacher could have written anything, but she chose to
script a statement that closely resembles not only her previous
end comments, but also the end comments of other composi-
tion teachers. Why? Part of the answer, at least, lies in genre.
(1997, p. 249)
Smith describes how routinized end comments help generate “expectations
for both readers and writers” (p. 250).
Her data lead her to identify and analyze three groups of primary genres (in-
formed by Mikhail Bakhtin’s speech genres): Judging genres, reader response
genres, and coaching genres. These three groups help reveal the “relatively stable”
content and structure of end comments, which helps establish what teachers do
when they use end comments or how teachers choose to respond given the situ-
ation and socially defined context that results in producing end comments. Each
primary genre has a list of descriptors that situates the nature of these responses
and what knowledge and action is being communicated through the end com-
ment (see Table 8.1 from Smith, 1997).

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Table 8.1. Smith’s Frequencies of Primary Genres in Sample Table

Primary Genre Total Number in Sample
Judging Genres
Evaluation of development 199
Evaluation of style 118
Evaluation of the entire paper 106
Evaluation of focus 105
Evaluation of effort 96
Evaluation of organization 88
Evaluation of rhetorical effectiveness 82
Evaluation of topic 63
Evaluation of correctness 52
Evaluation of audience accommodation 51
Justification of the grade 48
Reader Response Genres
Reading experience 67
Identification 43
Coaching Genres
Suggestion for revision of current paper 155
Suggestion for future papers 88
Offer of assistance 37

Table 8.1 shows how the majority of end comments teachers produce are
judging genres (n = 1,008) compared to reader response genres (n = 110) and
coaching genres (n = 208). Judging genres include evaluations of development,
style, focus, organization, rhetorical effectiveness, and correctness. These data
help us see how genres of response, such as end comments, become routinized
by their nature and the actions they ask students to take up. The number of re-
sponses considered judging genres is particularly interesting because of the vast
difference in quantity compared to the others (e.g., reader response, coaching)
and because of how closely the comments feel connected to habits of White
language. It feels as though evaluations of development, style, organization, rhe-
torical effectiveness, and correctness are asking students to conform to a kind
of standard language practice, particularly one that privileges White discourse.
It’s possible teachers respond in the same ways from student paper to student
paper even though the student, and subsequently their writing, is unique because
there’s a recurring situation in the writing classroom. Teachers develop patterns of
response, or routinized responses, because there’s an invitation for students to take

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up a writing prompt and engage in a line of inquiry, and then turn in their writ-
ten performance to receive feedback. Because of their routinized nature, response
genres can embody characteristics that harm interactions (e.g., habits of White
language) with students. Writing teachers are being conditioned through the re-
curring situation and the genres that help form that situation, for instance, the
writing prompt and the student’s essay. These uptakes and response performances
can be influenced by traditional classroom assessment practices and social ecolo-
gies, or spaces outside the classroom, that continue to support White discourse.
Inoue (2019) writes that White language supremacy is “structured in assessment
ecologies in such a way as to function simultaneously as an ideal and as the norm”
(p. 28). The patterns we develop and the genres we use to judge language can
act as mediators, carriers of knowledge, reproducers of history, artifacts in stu-
dents’ memory, and circulators of biases that continue to oppress students of color.
Genres of response can impact different students differently.
Writing teachers can explore genre memory and uptake by having students
think about their previous experiences with end comments, for example. In my
class, for instance, I would ask students to identify a specific moment receiving
an end comment, how the comment made them feel as writers, and what they
chose to do with that response or what action they decided to perform, and
what benefits or consequences came from that action. For example, maybe a
student has a memory of a teacher using an end comment to tell them to go to
the writing center to get help with grammar. How was this experience perceived
and taken up? How is it still affecting the way the student sees end comments?
This kind of investigation of genre uptake and memory with teacher response
can reveal a lot of nuances. Prompting students to think about memory can
generate productive conversations in the writing classroom about how response
genres influence actions in grading contract ecologies.
Did the student take up the call to go to the writing center? Did the student
focus on grammar during their revision? Understanding the memory, emotion,
action, and consequences of past experiences with response can help classroom
ecologies, like my own, talk through uptakes and the dynamic performances of
response. I would use this experience to talk about how that previous comment
was working to contribute to White language supremacy by molding the stu-
dents’ language to conform to habits of White language, and how that experi-
ence might impact how response is felt, perceived, and taken up in our grading
contract ecology. It’s important for me to label and connect these comments to
White language supremacy and habits of White language. In this example, we
also see how teacher response is interconnected with other systems and ecolo-
gies, like writing centers. In class, we would also talk about how the end com-
ment perpetuates the notion of writing centers as grammar shops or sites for

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skill-and-drill. The old comment had a very particular set of linguistic standards
in mind—it was subtly entrenched with notions of standardized grammar and
an expectation for the student to align with habits of White language.
It also indicates an attempt to remove student agency. This end comment isn’t
seeking negotiation or reaffirming students’ rights to their writing, which are often
values in antiracist writing assessment ecologies, but instead is working to repri-
mand the student’s language practices. My class would talk about how our grad-
ing contract ecology values negotiation, compassion, and students’ rights to their
own languages. We would spend time acknowledging how our classroom ecology
is different in nature than that previous experience, and how we need to investigate
ecologies to see how genres are interacting and influencing actions. You see, a quick
glance at that old end comment looks and maybe even feels negotiable. It feels like
the student can take up different actions. It masks itself in empowerment. But what
were the consequences, and what did the student learn through that experience
that would affect them in my classroom? In the past, maybe the consequence was
a bad grade. The student still draws on this memory and experience as they read,
interpret, and use my end comments, which affects what they choose to do when
they revise, including the risks they are willing to take. So even though my grading
contract ecology values taking risks in writing, the student might choose not to take
any given this past experience. That memory, and the actions and consequences tied
to that experience, is very real, and very much felt by the student.
The recurrence of teacher response, the fact that response happens by de-
fault in specific spaces on the page, like in the margins or at the end, across
various institutional writing classrooms, and the reality that response is meant
to produce another action (e.g., revision) reveals the complexity of responding
to student writing. Uptake gives us the lens to explore these patterns more. It
also shows how response should be investigated closely in antiracist classroom
writing assessment ecologies because those classrooms don’t have the same values
and initiatives as traditional ecologies. And as a result, alternative responses are
needed to reflect these different values.

TEACHER RESPONSE AS RESISTANT GENRES:

AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK FOR RESISTING
HABITS OF WHITE LANGUAGE
I have argued that writing teachers should think more closely about how their
responses are complementing their assessment ecologies and values, and how
habits of White language can be embodied in response genres that are routinized
and circulate in grading contract ecologies. I have also shared how genre uptake
can help classes talk about histories, memories, emotions, and attitudes about

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response, thus revealing how teacher response can affect students differently be-
cause comments can be attached to habits of White language that privilege some
students over others. Teacher response is a product of racialized structures, that
is, a product of institutions, classrooms, and traditional grading practices that
have historically privileged Whiteness and habits of White language. Teacher re-
sponse to student writing is also racialized; racism and habits of White language
are reproduced through genre performances of response.
I offer resistant genres as a way to conceptualize how response can be understood
and designed to complement antiracist writing assessment ecologies and grading
contract values. What does it mean to see teacher response as resistant genres? It
means teachers and students, together, can problematize how response practices are
threatening agency for students of color and working to reinforce habits of White
language. It means teachers and students can investigate internalized linguistic rac-
ism and can use response to complement new pedagogies and practices centered
on linguistic justice (Baker-Bell, 2020). For decades, teacher-scholars have asked
us to reconsider how we understand, evaluate, and talk about language and literacy
(Hooks, 1994; Kynard, 2013; Lippi-Green, 1997; Smitherman, 1977). I offer a
framework that asks us to carefully analyze how response practices/performances
have the potential to benefit the deployment of a specific kind of languaging while
dismissing linguistic variations and other language performances. Centering teach-
er response as resistant genres would intervene (Bawarshi, 2008) and disrupt what
genre performances of response typically and traditionally do: Privilege students
who can produce habits of White language. Intersecting RGS and antiracism in-
vites conversations on response as a dynamic genre working within antiracist writ-
ing assessment ecologies and can help us investigate different ecological elements
that might be informing response practices/performances.
For example, teachers and students might investigate the place (e.g., the
classroom), the physical and material location where teacher response happens,
and how that impacts people (e.g., student and teacher) and their attitudes on
response. This means examining genres and participants within their ecologies.
Teachers and students might consider how the writing classroom (e.g., place) has
historically threatened people of color through notions of standardized English
that attempt to establish power over marginalized populations and disadvantage
minoritized bodies. Teachers might examine how agency can be developed and
circulated in a number of elements in an antiracist writing assessment ecology,
like how it is primarily located in the power relations (the first element in the
ecological framework) but embodied in the people, enacted in the processes, and
understood and felt by everyone in the place. Inoue (2015) describes how seeing
the “relationships between elements” can allow teachers and students an oppor-
tunity to “consider local consequences” within assessment ecologies (p. 11).

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Teachers who use grading contracts don’t have the institutional pressure of
judging language with a letter-grade, which is a significant barrier to overcome
when attempting to challenge traditional cultural beliefs about writing and lan-
guage and to respond in ways that are more compassionate and inclusive. Using
grading contracts often requires more attention and a higher production of feed-
back because of assessment values on effort, labor, participation, and negotiation.
Writing teachers can examine genres of response, and the patterns they use to re-
spond to student writing, with hopes of uncovering White biases. In an antiracist
writing assessment ecology that uses grading contracts to complement antiracist
aims, I believe this work is necessary for taking a resistant approach to response.
Grading contract ecologies afford opportunities to spend more time talking about
the politics of language and how genres of response might privilege certain stu-
dents over others. In a traditional assessment ecology, teacher response is often
used to justify a grade on a final draft. In a grading contract ecology, where grades
aren’t emphasized, classes can devote time and energy to analyzing the social-his-
torical-material conditions of response, what response is doing, and how response
brings up memories and emotions that can impact actions.
So how can teachers and students analyze genres of response for the purpose
of resisting habits of White language? I offer a four-step heuristic that allows
teachers and students the opportunity to engage in critical reading and to prob-
lematize response together. This framework can be used to help center discus-
sions on resisting habits of White language and can be used to reflect on genre
uptake of response:
Step 1: Identify the genre of response (e.g., marginal com-
ments, end comments, rubrics) to analyze, and then select
comment(s) to examine;
Step 2: Use Smith’s (1997) research to pinpoint different
purposes for response (e.g., judging genres, reader response
genres, or coaching genres) and the nature of the comment
(e.g., evaluation of development, reading experience, sugges-
tion for revision of current paper);
Step 3: Use Inoue’s (2019) six habits of White language to
identify how White discourse is informing the response prac-
tice/performance that is circulating in the ecology; and
Step 4: Reflect on genre uptake, including embodiment, emo-
tion, relationship between other genres, memory, and possible
actions and consequences tied to the response that can be
experienced and/or taken up.

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This framework is designed to bring together teacher response with anti-

racist pedagogies and RGS. Some teachers might use this heuristic to talk with
students about their own responses and bring attention to problems that might
be embodied in those practices/performances. Some teachers might use this as
an out-of-class activity for students to reflect on their histories with previous re-
sponses. I think this framework can be used to have conversations about the so-
cial and political nature of teacher response in grading contract ecologies. I also
think this framework can be used in other spaces, such as in faculty workshops
or WAC/WID contexts to help train teachers to examine their own responses.
I use this framework as an in-class activity after my class has had time to
become familiar with antiracist writing assessment theories, informed by In-
oue’s (2015, 2019, respectively) Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies and
Labor-Based Grading Contracts, and RGS, informed by Bawarshi and Reiff’s
(2010) Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy.
Having these foundations is necessary to centering teacher response as resistant
genres. I draw on teacher responses in Twelve Readers Reading: Responding to
Student Writing (Straub & Lunsford, 1995), a foundational text that theorizes
feedback and offers 60 sets of comments from 12 well-recognized teacher-schol-
ars, to engage in the four steps. The first thing I do in class is talk about how
Twelve Readers Reading is full of response practices from White teacher-schol-
ars which allows us to problematize the absence of diverse racial identities in
the text, and thus investigate the material and social conditions in which these
teacher-scholars are responding to student writing (e.g., R1s, predominately
White institutions). I address this lack of diversity first.
I find it necessary to talk about the voices we hear in research and the sites
in which those voices come from since they often inform what many teachers
do in practice, especially in literature like teacher response. Acknowledging ab-
sences and needs for expansion (Green, 2016; Jackson et al., 2019) is critical
to this antiracist framework for response. Twelve Readers Reading becomes an
opportunity to talk about different institutional locations, and then it becomes
a starting point for us to observe and investigate response as a dynamic genre in
assessment ecologies. This allows us to turn our attention to resisting the pro-
motion of habits of White language in response practices. Using feedback from
Twelve Readers Reading (Straub & Lunsford, 1995) shows how teachers can
do the normal good response practices, and doing so can still be a way to value
habits of White language.
I select a writing prompt and final draft with comments from different teach-
er-scholars in Twelve Readers Reading before using the framework in class. For
example, I choose the same prompt and same draft with responses from Edward
White and Donald Stewart. Choosing the same prompt and draft allows us

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to have conversations about how writing is interpreted differently and how re-
sponses can invite different actions and ideas even on the same text (e.g., student
writing). Using the same text helps generate conversations about the subjectivity
and biases of reading and responding to writing. It’s easy for us to see, for ex-
ample, how teachers, like Edward White and Donald Stewart, can look at the
same piece of student writing and have different judgments and comments. We
read the prompt and draft as a class, and then focus on the responses. Teacher re-
sponse is always working within and between other genres (e.g., writing prompt,
draft) in an ecology, so this becomes one way to think more intentionally about
the different genres and ecological elements (e.g., power) interconnected with
response.
Step 1 is to identify the genre of response to analyze and select the com-
ment(s) we are going to examine more closely as a class. I use this first step to
complement my grading contract ecological values: Negotiation, compassion,
decentering my position of power and authority as the teacher. I ask students
what end comments they want to focus on and analyze more closely to further
emphasize that students have agency in making decisions in class and in their
writing. They select two to three sentences from each end comment:
White writes, “Parts of this paper are very fine, rich with
detail and emotion. But sometimes your language gets very
general, as if from a greeting card . . . look closely at the top
paragraph on p. 2 for an example of ways to revise, to make
your language more clear and detailed” (as cited in Straub &
Lunsford, 1995, p. 51).
Stewart writes, “There’s not much to say about the organiza-
tion of the paper . . . I’ve already commented on aspects of
style of this paper. The good details tell us that you are capa-
ble of fresh insights, but, for the most part you do not provide
them or cloth them in language which is distinctive. I wish
you would consistently work up to your potential” (as cited in
Straub & Lunsford, 1995, p. 56).
Most students have experienced these types of comments before—responses
about their writing development, style, and organization. It takes critical reading
and analysis to understand how comments like the ones above can be problem-
atic because honestly, to many of us, they seem fine and can probably lead to
some good revisions. The notion “good revisions,” itself, is problematic, though.
Good determined by who? Based on what standards? We talk more about how
we label and associate words with linguistic habits in class. I explain how one of
the difficulties we face as teachers and students are the histories and memories

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that influence what we consider or define as good revisions. So as a class we

share our experiences with what has made revisions “good” and where that mea-
surement or its attachment to language comes from: A society that perpetuates
White language supremacy. We attempt to replace those older associations and
reconstruct newer conceptions of good revisions that align with our resistant
practice and our grading contract ecology.
I also make it a point to tell students I’ve produced comments like the ones
above on development, style, and organization, and they might see similar
comments from me because how I’ve been trained to read and respond to stu-
dent writing, and the patterns I’ve developed through those experiences. Those
comments aren’t inherently bad. It’s the unseen standard, or what’s assumed,
or the attitude about language differences or linguistic varieties, and the conse-
quences that standard, driven by response, has on specific student identities that
makes them problematic. It’s that these responses are often pushing students
to a White discourse that reasserts one language practice is more valuable. This
problem-posing allows us to analyze how the structure and system for response
is always-already problematic, or how power is unevenly distributed through
response, or how good intentions might lead to negative uptakes and memories.
It’s important, too, for the class to talk about how comments similar in nature
– on development, style, and organization – can be used for good and can come
from good values and beliefs in antiracist writing assessment ecologies. I stress
the importance of seeing response as dynamic and complicated.
After students select two to three sentences from each end comment, we
move to Step 2 and turn attention to Smith’s (1997) article that establishes dif-
ferent groups of response (e.g., judging genres, reader response genres, or coach-
ing genres) and the nature of those comments (e.g., evaluation of development,
reading experience, suggestion for revision of current paper). We reread White
and Stewarts’ end comments (as cited in Straub & Lunsford, 1995) and deter-
mine their purposes and natures based on Smith’s work. The conversation is
lively because it brings attention to how responses are layered and how students
perceive and experience comments differently. There’s not a unilateral consensus
or feeling, which again, allows us to complicate teacher response and the dispo-
sitions teachers bring to writing and the histories and experiences students have
when reading, interpreting, and producing action after receiving response. Some
students, for example, think White’s “from a greeting card” comment is funny
while others interpret it as sarcastic and downgrading.
Almost organically, these reactions bring up the complicated nature of re-
sponse. I use this moment to facilitate conversation on how teacher response,
much like the end comments from White and Stewart (as cited in Straub &
Lunsford, 1995), and the ones we produce as teachers, have multiple purposes

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and interpretations. Reading response and doing something with it (e.g., re-
vising) can be really hard. It takes some nimbleness to listen, make sense of
comments, and produce a plan for action, both for first-year students and teach-
er-scholars. So we talk about how end comments contain more than one idea or
thought or action to be taken up and how students can navigate these different
courses of action.
This helps us to see that even two to three sentences in an end comment can
draw on all three primary genres: Judging, reader response, and coaching. We
try to do the best we can to come to some sort of consensus to classify the end
comments we’re analyzing. In this instance, the class decides Whites’ comments
(as cited in Straub & Lunsford, 1995) are judging genres and coaching genres.
Students feel like White offers encouragement in his first sentence (e.g., “very
fine, rich with detail and emotion”) and then suggestions for revision in his sec-
ond sentence that align with coaching genres. Students also think White offers
an evaluation of development and style in his second sentence by telling the
writer that their “language gets very general” and “ . . . to make your language
more clear and detailed.” These comments fit under judging genres, they say.
Next, we analyze Stewart’s response (as cited in Straub & Lunsford, 1995).
Students feel like his comments fall under judging genres and reader response
genres because he references “organization” and “style” in his first sentence, and
then talks about the students’ inability to produce “language” that is “distinc-
tive.” Students collectively agree that the purposes of the first two sentences
are tied to judging genres, but they aren’t necessarily sure how to identify the
nature of them. I decide to write all three observations on the board: Evaluation
on development, evaluation on style, evaluation on rhetorical effectiveness. The
last sentence, according to students, is linked to reader response genres because
Stewart is offering his thoughts and/or feelings based on his experience as a read-
er. He wants the student to do more, to “work up to [their] potential.”
Step 3 draws on Inoue’s (2019) six habits of White language in Labor-Based
Grading Contracts. Like Step 2, this step invites critical reading and often cre-
ates energetic conversations that help us understand the politics of language
and how response can privilege some identities over others. Even though my
class is familiar with conversations on antiracist writing assessment practices,
this step takes a lot of prompting because this kind of problem-posing activity
is often new to them. Most students don’t have experiences in writing classes
that center antiracism and teacher response. So, analyzing the nature of teacher
response and how comments might contribute to White language supremacy
can be difficult. Using Inoue’s six habits, I ask questions to help generate con-
versation: “Let’s take a closer look at White’s comments. Does he take a position
that assumes the student can see the truthfulness of his observation as if they

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share the same perspective? Does White focus on clarity, order, and control in
the students’ writing? When we read his comment out loud, does it sound like
he positions himself as knowledgeable, rational, and reasonable? How so? Is it
because he says what is ‘wrong,’ and then offers what is ‘right’?” Questions like
this have been more productive than asking students to look at the six habits and
provide an analysis based on those characteristics alone.
It also helps students see how habits of White language can manifest in dif-
ferent ways through an end comment, much like the purposes and natures of
response show how genres of response are complicated. Students, for example,
will talk about how White (as cited in Straub & Lunsford, 1995) describes
the students’ language as “very general” and how he suggests the student be
“more clear and detailed.” This observation is multi-layered because it con-
nects with Inoue’s (2019) first habit – “unseen, naturalized, orientation to
the world—an orientation (or starting point) of one’s body in time and space
that makes certain things reachable” – and Inoue’s sixth habit – “clarity, order,
and control—a focus on reason, order, and control; thinking (versus feeling)”
(pp. 278-279). It’s possible White assumes the student understands what he’s
talking about and has the knowledge to obtain this goal, or ultimate good—
the ultimate good here is specificity. As a responder, he positions himself as
logical and reasonable. He values rigor and clarity. Students talk about these
ideas and start seeing how they are connected to a particular kind of languag-
ing. We problematize and ask more questions: “How does White determine
what is ‘general’? Why is ‘clarity’ and ‘detail’ so important? Clarity to what
standard? Who determines that standard?”
Students share how it sounds like White (as cited in Straub & Lunsford,
1995) is saying the students’ language is not good enough when he says their
writing is “general.” They even describe how it feels like White is saying the stu-
dents’ language is “weak,” and therefore, it needs to be made “stronger.” Again,
we talk about whether White is possibly drawing on unseen standards that priv-
ilege White discourse. We analyze how White seems to be referring to a very
specific standard that values depth and clarity—that feels closely connected to
what students say they’ve experienced in other classes that emphasize “academic”
or “formal” language use in writing. This leads to more detailed conversations
about SEAE and White language supremacy and allows us to talk more about
traditional assessment ecologies versus grading contract ecologies. We problema-
tize how quality, which is often connected to SEAE and habits of White lan-
guage, is being prioritized. Some students use the word “conform” to describe
what White is asking the writer to do. So, we problem-pose, “Conform to what?
What standard? What language? And whose body is attached to that standard
and language habit, or who is being privileged?”

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This probing leads to critical reflection of how genres of response can embody
habits of White language, even in grading contract ecologies. For instance, we
talk about how the same external norms and pressures from society can reproduce
the same kind of comments that can circulate in a grading contract ecology. It
should be noted that White (as cited in Straub & Lunsford, 1995) doesn’t attach
a letter-grade to the students’ final draft; instead, he asks them to revise. He’s not
using grading contracts but probably a portfolio system which offers some similar
ecological values (e.g., attention to process, deemphasis on grade). After spend-
ing time analyzing White’s end comment, the class gains more confidence talking
about how habits of White language can manifest in teacher response. So whenev-
er we turn our attention to Stewart’s end comment (as cited in Straub & Lunsford,
1995), students are more familiar with the questions we ask, what to look for, and
how they can talk about habits of White language.
Students explain how Stewart’s end comment focuses on organization, style,
and language choice, much like White’s. They revisit what we wrote down when
describing the purposes and nature of Stewart’s response based on Step 2. They
talk about how his last sentence focuses on his experience as a reader. I ask,
“What do you think that means in relationship to the characteristics of White
discourse? When we read it out loud, do you feel like that last sentence feels in-
dividualistic? Does it come across as a matter of fact—as ‘truth’—as something
that needs to be said?” When I ask these questions, students point to Inoue’s
(2019) second habit of White language (hyperindividualism). Students explain
how the sentence “I wish you would consistently work up to your potential”
feels self-focused in that it doesn’t provide much in terms of the students’ writing
and/or ways to revise their writing. It sounds more like a critical judgement of
the student and their ability to write or perform. The class feels like Stewart (as
cited in Straub & Lunsford, 1995) holds his own perspective to a higher level
and that his interpretation of the students’ writing and labor (and potential) is
ultimately “right.” I try to weave in understandings of uptake to this conversa-
tion because it helps us transition to Step 4.
For example, I ask students to talk about what sentences come before this last
comment. Students mention that he responds to the students’ organization and
style and language. As a class, we connect that to the first habit (unseen, natu-
ralized, orientation to the world) and the sixth habit (clarity, order, and control),
and we discuss how these comments might inform or tell us something import-
ant about Stewart’s (as cited in Straub & Lunsford, 1995) last sentence, which
feels more hyperindividualist in nature. Doing this invites us to talk about how
uptake exists while teachers respond to student writing. Stewart’s last sentence,
for example, might symbolize how he and the student have already established a
partnership. For instance, this might be the second or third writing assignment.

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They’ve had in-class conversations, perhaps one-on-one teacher conferences

where they have developed a kind of rapport. That means Stewart has experi-
enced other pieces of writing from that student. He has observed their writing
and labor. He has probably seen the student produce work that exceeds what he
is currently reading and responding to. I ask students, “Do you think Stewart is
drawing on previous experiences and memories with the students’ writing that
might inform his last comment on the students’ ‘potential’?”
This question is about uptake, which leads us to Step 4. Step 4 invites us to
explore emotion, attitude, memory, action, consequence, and the relationship re-
sponses have with other genres with/in and beyond writing assessment ecologies.
I have three overarching purposes in this last step: (a) to encourage students to
reflect on what other genres are working in an assessment ecology that are inter-
connected with response that interact and inform actions and consequences; (b)
to challenge students to reflect on their histories, memories, and experiences with
response; and (c) to invite an honest reflection on how we, as a class, can resist the
production and circulation of habits of White language in our responses (both
mine and when students respond to their peers). I want us to be actively antiracist.
I want us to be aware of how White language supremacy creeps into seemingly
mundane practices and experiences like teacher response to student writing.
We talk about the long-term social consequences of genre performances of
response; we focus on social-historical-material conditions of response and how
we can better pay attention to how power and agency are connected to response.
Step 4 is about critical reflection. I want us to think about the “interlocking
systems and forces at play in performances of genres” (Bawarshi, 2016, p. 52). I
want students to think about our grading contract, my responses, our assessment
values, their memories with response in other classroom ecologies, and emotions
they’ve experienced receiving feedback from others. I want students to reflect on
actions they’ve produced based on previous experiences with teacher response.
My hope is these reflections lead us toward intervention and resistance. As
a teacher, I want to construct responses that resist White language supremacy. I
also want us to come together as a class to talk about why this kind of interven-
tion is important. I challenge students to reflect on how power is positioned in
response and how teacher response can privilege some identities over others. I
ask students to write down a memory or experience they have had with teacher
response that embodied some of these habits of White language. I ask them to
reread White and Stewart’s (as cited in Straub & Lunsford, 1995) end comments
and reflect on similar experiences they’ve had receiving this kind of feedback,
and I ask them to jot down what actions they produced based on those re-
sponses. I share an example of how this happens: “Have any of you read an end
comment that asks you to go to the Writing Center for help? Or has a teacher

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asked you to come to office hours so you can talk more about your ideas? Or has
a teacher ever made a comment about your grammar or spelling? What did you
do? Did you listen and take up their advice? How did that comment make you
feel? How have you taken that memory and experience with you to this class?”
These questions prompt students to think about uptake and the actions and
consequences that can come from genres of response.
Some of these reflections are personal for students, so I don’t ask them to
disclose or share them with the class or turn them in. My only goal here is to
have students think about these experiences with response and how responding
to writing can be harmful. How response has made them feel. How response has
resulted in action and consequences. I want us to consider uptake, so we can
really start pushing against and resisting response that reproduces and circulates
habits of White language in our grading contract ecology. I want students to be
able to identify it as soon as they see it—and I want them to feel comfortable
holding me accountable for my own response practices.
The goal of this analytical framework is for teachers and students to inter-
vene, problematize, and resist habits of White language embodied in genre per-
formances/practices of response. The framework helps illuminate how respons-
es, such as end comments, can support habits of White language, thus creating
an unfair, unjust classroom that counters grading contract assessment values in
antiracist writing assessment ecologies.

CONCLUSION
The four-step analytical and pedagogical framework I suggest provides one way
to investigate genre performances of response in grading contract ecologies. RGS
offers us a way to problematize teachers’ responses and students’ readings of those
responses in order to cultivate antiracist agendas or antiracist writing assessment
ecologies. Teachers can do the normal good response practices, and doing so can
easily be a way to reproduce White language supremacy. Good intentions can
still have violent consequences. Using antiracist writing assessment theories with
RGS opens new conversations in teacher response. This kind of critical reading
and attention to response takes a lot of time, on top of the time and energy it
already takes to respond to student writing, so we might need to rethink curric-
ula and simplify the amount of labor and assignments we assign students, so we
can truly center our classes on teacher response as resistant genres. One primary
aim of teacher response should be antiracism. We should always work towards
being antiracist responders to student writing. In my class, I frame teacher re-
sponse as an antiracist practice and attempt to resist monolingual English biases
and habits of White language. Critically investigating response, and addressing

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inequalities and inequities, and changing how we give feedback is just one more
way to uproot White language supremacy.

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