Pull up the rubric for your first assignment of the term. Find the word strong.

That word is a meeting you have already scheduled.

You wrote it in July, in a template with the boxes already drawn, before you had met anybody. It made sense then. In October it costs you forty minutes at your desk, explaining what strong means to a student who decided it means something else. And they are not wrong to ask. You did not tell them. You told them a feeling.

The test takes three seconds a line. Read the criterion, then ask whether a student could point at the thing. Point at it, in their own draft, with a finger.

Nobody can point at strong critical thinking. Anybody can point at names a counterargument and says why it fails.

Today's working session is The Soft Word Sweep. One rubric, three lines, twenty minutes, done by hand: https://www.harvestkernel.com/the-soft-word-sweep/

Open the rubric for your first assignment. What is the softest word in it?