I just had the loveliest morning with a friend, talking about teaching. 
Well, O.K.
Full disclosure.
It was mostly lovely because I got to hold her six-week-old baby while talking about teaching.
Hold her and kiss the top of her head and straighten her socks and kiss the top of her head again.

But.
There really was talk about teaching, I assure you.
And about how to make more efficient the process of critiquing student work, which takes (those of you who do it, know this) forever. I’m sure I’m not alone in obsessing, reading multiple times, commenting on every little line break and word choice.

But today we stumbled upon something really important, I think.

It is the broadest, most universal lessons and messages that resonate most deeply with our students, that are transferable to multiple students, numerous manuscripts, and various circumstances. It is the broadest, most universal lessons that help writers grow their craft overall.  It is not the icky-picky nitty-gritty edits to any particular piece that really matter. (Those are best used in critique groups and in the pre-publication stage.)

So, what this says to me is that my energy should be spent on hugely focused, engaging, exploratory class sessions. Helping students see patterns (the good, bad and ugly) and encouraging them to act on those.

Each individual piece? That’s practice. That’s personal. That’s yoga. 
Not that there aren’t ways I could comment on those pieces in order to allow my students to see the challenges and opportunities more clearly, but that’s secondary to what I should offer in a larger sense. 

Most of their stories and poems (most of my stories and poems, too, if I’m honest) aren’t ever fully realized. 
We run through their hoops in order to learn something. 
So as teachers, we shouldn’t devote all our energy trying to help any one student make any one piece perfect. 
Instead, our efforts should go into helping all of our students become more conscious of their own work so that, moving forward, there will be something truly fine there to critique.

(Now we’ll see if this actually changes the way I read my students’ work.)

(And maybe you guys already realized this 5 years back, you critique with speed and ease, and play croquet in your spare time.)

(In my spare time I’m going to hold more babies and kiss the tops of their heads and straighten their socks and kiss the tops of their heads again. So there…)