One of the very annoyingnesses of assessment

Well, clearly the first most annoyingest thing about assessment is having to actually spend the time assessing (grading), but before that come other annoying aspects as well, such as figuring out how you will be assessing (hopefully that comes before the assessment but--I've heard for some people, though I myself wouldn't know--sometimes it comes after). The annoying aspect of assessment I'm struggling with right now and have been struggling with for about 2 weeks is what should ideally be the middle step before the two above: explaining to students how you will be assessing them. These days that is done with a rubric--a term and concept I had never heard of when I was in school.

I'm specifically struggling with the final paper I am going to assign my 10th graders. I was going to assign them the same research paper about a social issue that I assigned to my 9th graders, destined for publication on studentschangingtheworld .com. The problem is I have very little time in class to work with them on it, though I will have time to conference with them the last couple weeks of school after the iCAP (portfolio) is due 5/18. I'm not sure why I haven't assigned that paper yet already; I feel like they could do it outside of school, and each day I don't assign it the less time they have. Plus, I already have a rubric I feel good about as well as a good sample paper I wrote for them.

I set them up for this by asking them to write "a list of grievances" like Maxine does in The Woman Warrior, and then they had to choose 3 from that list for homework and to write forms of writing they could use to express those grievances. Their grievances included racism, global warming, getting too much homework, school starting too early, and specific things about their parents (the student mentioned in the previous post wrote a very long response about her mom). I had thought about giving them freedom to construct their writing in whatever format they chose--creative, research-based, formal/informal--to express this grievance. The problem is how to assess this. I have not found a rubric I feel good about or that I feel comfortable showing to my master teacher, who would prefer that I give a multiple choice cumulative final exam. Blech.

How do you even grade creative writing? I've looked in Bridging English (our book from last semester) and don't feel comfortable with any rubric in there. Meanwhile, while it was actually pretty easy for me to create a rubric for the paper I assigned to my 9th graders that I may assign to these 10th graders as well, this is really challenging and frustrating me. For that paper, I just knew really clearly what I want. For a creative piece where they have way more freedom, does a great poem = a great research paper? won't they all choose something that takes much less work?

I guess the question is, ultimately, what is my purpose for this assignment and what would accomplish it? My purpose is for students so see that they can use their writing to address issues that they care about in a way that makes a difference for them as well as for their readers. On the one hand, I want them to see that different issues would be best expressed in different ways, and that it's up to them to decide what's most appropriate, though on the other hand I feel they need more practice writing formal papers. Plus, even though those would be much longer to read, they are SO much easier for me to grade.

Tomas has been helping me so much to work this through, which has been so wonderful, but I'm at a point where I really need to assign this soon and yet don't feel settled about it. And now, having just spent the time I was going to spend working on a TPE, I need to get ready for school.