Christina Vaughan ’26

Rosary’s AP Lang class was so excited to edit Servite’s essays!

Rosary’s AP Lang class is taking peer editing to the next level. This week, Rosary’s AP Lang class swapped essays with Servite’s AP Lang class.

Both classes were given the same AP Lang prompt with 40 minutes to write their essays during class. Every student was given a number to put on their papers to keep everything anonymous. Our essays got sent over to Servite for peer review, and they sent theirs over to us. When asked about his thoughts on the whole event, Gavin Barnard ‘26, a student in Servite’s AP Lang class, said, “I think the Rosary and Servite essay swap is a unique opportunity to grow in our writing abilities in a fun and different way. It gives us the chance to hear what we can do better on from our peers and improve upon it. I’m excited to read them!” We totally agree with Gavin. This idea could be a great new way to improve our skills, and keeping things anonymous allows for each student to give honest and constructive feedback.

This opportunity opens the door for growth because both classes are able to get insight they might not hear otherwise. Outside of their usual classroom, each class had a chance to share what they had learned so far. Rosary’s AP Lang teacher Mrs. Langenwalter shared, “Having my AP girls take a peek at their Servite brothers’ essays is a healthy form of support and collaboration amongst peers as it is fun! Sure, the students at both schools get to participate in fun activities and events, but it isn’t often they get to participate in class time. This opens a door for them to learn from one another despite being on different campuses. I know this benefits my class because it creates a new opportunity for my students to grow in their writing due to their exposure to other students’ writing beyond Rosary Academy.” 

From a Rosary student’s perspective, Maddie Lambros ‘26 shared similar feelings of improvement about this swap: “I feel like the best way to improve at something is through direct criticism and feedback, which is exactly what this essay swap allows. This is a great opportunity to not only improve in rhetorical analysis, but to also get insight on Servite students’ writing techniques and strategies.” This way, both classes are able to positively modify their writing. 

On Wednesday, Rosary’s class edited some of Servite’s essays. In the Rosary class, each student got one essay to review at a time, but we sat in groups to help each other with some of the questions we had. We included our edits, the AP score and a note at the end of each essay. Most students edited the essays in pink pen for a signature Rosary touch!

After editing some essays, junior Mikayla Hayward explained, “Although the Servite students’ writing is very different from ours, it was cool to see the comparison of each class’s writing styles!” We are sure that both classes took the time to share valuable feedback.

Though Servite is yet to see our essays, junior Jake Susank shares, “I think that the essay swap is a really cool way to showcase our own writing skills as well as seeing two different teaching styles in our writing. Coming together this way will hopefully make us all better writers. We hope that this experience will be fruitful for both classes.”

Even though we were editing Servite’s essays, we thought that it allowed us to acknowledge common mistakes that we are probably making too. Even though our teachers said it was not a competition, we think it was fun to have a little bit of a competitive, constructive, collaborative, editing session. We wish both classes good luck on their AP test in May!